All 12 GOTY Winners at The Game Awards, Ranked

The Game Awards 2025 have now come to an end and Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 cleaned house. Not only did the acclaimed RPG take home the top award, that of Game of the Year for 2025, but it won eight other categories including Best Art Direction, Best Music, and Best Narrative, just to name a few. This didn’t just make Expedition 33 the biggest success at The Game Awards this year, but it became the winningest game in the history of the event.

In total, there have been 12 games to take home Game of the Year at The Game Awards since the show began in 2014. These games include some of the most acclaimed titles of all-time, alongside some others that haven’t aged as well. As such, with Expedition 33 now joining this very prestigious club, let’s rank all 12 GOTY winners from The Game Awards from worst to best to see how they stack up against one another.

12) Dragon Age: Inquisition

The first winner of Game of the Year at The Game Awards is also the worst of the bunch. That’s not to say that Dragon Age: Inquisition is a bad game, because it’s definitely not. In fact, in many ways, it’s the last truly great RPG to come from renowned developer BioWare.

Still, what puts DA: Inquisition in the final spot on this list is that it was very quickly overshadowed. RPGs that would arrive in the years ahead all pushed the genre forward in major ways, whereas Inquisition more or less stuck to the same formula that BioWare had established in plenty of other games that had come about before it. This, combined with the fact that 2014 was a particularly weak year for video games, puts Dragon Age: Inquisition at the bottom.

11) It Takes Two

It Takes Two is probably the most shocking game to ever win Game of the Year at The Game Awards. Taking down the likes of Deathloop, Psychonauts 2, and Metroid Dread in 2021, It Takes Two’s win helped catapult Hazelight Studios to new heights and showed that co-op-centric experiences were just as worthy of Game of the Year honors as any other game.

While It Takes Two is fantastic and has been one of the biggest success stories of the past decade, it still finds itself on the lower end of this list. Its story, in particular, is somewhat divisive and pales in comparison to some of the other stellar narratives that are found in other games on this list. Still, if there’s one co-op game you’re ever going to play in your life, there’s an easy argument for It Takes Two to be that game.

10) Astro Bot

Astro Bot is a fantastic game and is easily one of the greatest platformers ever. Not only does it feature stellar controls, excellent level design, and ingenious abilities, but it also serves as a celebration of PlayStation’s history. It was the perfect game at the perfect time to commemorate 30 years of PlayStation when it launched in 2024.

Despite all of its positives, there’s just less to say about Astro Bot than some other games that have won Game of the Year. It’s a relatively straightforward, level-based platformer that serves as a great reminder of how prominent this genre used to be. Even if it’s a bit simplistic, this doesn’t diminish Astro Bot in the slightest, as the Team Asobi-developed game is one of the high points of the PS5 generation.

9) Overwatch

Nowadays, it might be easy to overlook Overwatch, the hit multiplayer shooter from Blizzard Entertainment. Overwatch has continued to receive a ton of support over the years and eventually transitioned fully to Overwatch 2 in 2023. Given that this is a live-service game, Blizzard has made a lot of decisions over the years that have soured players at times, which has left Overwatch’s name a bit diminished compared to before.

Still, none of this undoes the peak of Overwatch when it launched in 2016. For better or worse, the rise in hero-based shooters over the past decade wouldn’t have happened without Overwatch leading the charge. In short, Overwatch changed multiplayer games forever, and is without question one of the most important and best

8) The Last of Us Part II

The Last of Us Part II winning Game of the Year in 2020 was pretty divisive because, well, everything with The Last of Us Part II is divisive. Naughty Dog’s most recent release made some decisions with its narrative that many fans still can’t get over five years after its launch.

What cannot be argued about The Last of Us Part II, though, is that it’s one of the most polished and impressive games ever. The attention to detail that Naughty Dog put into every character model, environment, and weapon in this game is astounding. As equally impressive are the improvements that were made to Part II’s gameplay, which make it one of the best third-person action games of the decade. Regardless of what you think about its narrative, it’s hard to argue that The Last of Us Part II isn’t one of the most remarkable video games we’ve ever seen and again shows that Naughty Dog is one of the premier studios in the world.

7) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 might have won more accolades than any other game at The Game Awards, but in this ranking, it sits at about the halfway point. Don’t get it mistaken, Expedition 33 is the full package. It features top-notch turn-based combat, a unique story, and phenomenal performances for all of its characters. Expedition 33 very much warrants the hype that it has received throughout 2025.

The only thing keeping Clair Obscur from being higher on this ranking is that every game from here on is simply better in one way or another. Even if Expedition 33 trounced the competition in 2025, there are other entries higher up on this list that have already stood the test of time and are considered all-time classics.

6) Baldur’s Gate 3

Larian Studios has been one of the best RPG developers on the planet for quite some time, but it took things to a whole new level with Baldur’s Gate 3. Set within the world of Dungeons & Dragons, BG3 brought back the dormant Baldur’s Gate IP in an enormous way and helped reshape what D&D games could be capable of. It also easily beat out the competition at The Game Awards in 2023, surpassing the likes of Zelda, Resident Evil, and Super Mario to win GOTY.

Perhaps the only thing negative to say about Baldur’s Gate 3 is that it’s a pretty hardcore RPG that might not be approachable to everyone. There’s a bit of a learning curve to its gameplay, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find an RPG that’s deeper and more replayable than perhaps any other game in history.

5) God of War

In retrospect, many are surprised that God of War even won Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2018 over Red Dead Redemption 2. This was arguably the most contentious battle between two nominees in the event’s history, but PlayStation ended up beating out Rockstar Games to win the award. The fact that God of War was able to best the open-world western speaks volumes to just how excellent the game is.

God of War spins one of the most well-written narratives we’ve ever seen in a video game and combines that with action gameplay that is second-to-none. Combine this with an engrossing and stunning world based on Norse mythology and you end up with one of the most unforgettable gaming experiences to date. God of War not only put this iconic PlayStation franchise back on the map, but it also proved that Santa Monica Studio is one of the preeminent developers on the planet.

4) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is one of the most impressive games to ever come from studio FromSoftware, which is saying a lot. In the wake of releasing its Dark Souls trilogy and Bloodborne, FromSoftware took a detour with Sekiro, a samurai action game that plays unlike anything else. Sekiro is less about pouring skill points into various stats and is more about truly “getting good” and understanding its fast-paced, dancelike combat. While it might be more difficult than any other game on this list, it’s also the most satisfying to play once you get a grasp on its mechanics.

What truly takes Sekiro to another level is its boss fights. While bosses have always been a staple of FromSoftware’s games, Sekiro arguably features the best boss lineup in any title to ever come from the studio. It was a clear winner at The Game Awards in 2019 and is still one of the best action games of the past decade.

3) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is over ten years old, but it still feels as relevant as ever. CD Projekt Red broke new ground with its third Witcher installment when it shifted to an open-world setting that combined all of the RPG elements of the series up until that point. This marriage led to The Witcher 3 being truly innovative and was unlike anything that we had seen from role-playing games to this point.

The thing that remains ever-impressive about Wild Hunt is that it almost single-handedly turned The Witcher franchise into a household name. While the IP was already popular in its own right, thanks to its novels and preceding games, The Witcher 3 is likely the largest contributor to The Witcher also becoming a TV series on Netflix. It’s undoubtedly one of the most pivotal games in the history of the medium and is the top RPG to ever win Game of the Year at The Game Awards.

2) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the most important game to come from Nintendo in this century. Rather than stick to the traditional Zelda formula that Nintendo had iterated on for decades, Breath of the Wild threw out just about everything that fans had come to expect. Instead, it created a game that was more about exploration and experimentation, which harkened back to the roots of Zelda as a franchise. While this seemed like a major risk for Nintendo, Breath of the Wild couldn’t have turned out better.

What puts The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so high on this list is the fact that it’s likely the most influential game to have released since The Game Awards began. Since its launch in 2017, countless games have tried to iterate on the open-world design philosophies at the heart of Breath of the Wild. Despite many attempting to rework these ideas into their own, few have been able to come anywhere close to the awe-inspiring experience that BotW offers.

1) Elden Ring

FromSoftware may have very well created the greatest action-adventure game of all-time in Elden Ring. Expanding on the core gameplay mechanics and systems from its Dark Souls franchise, Elden Ring took clear inspiration from the open-world stylings of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild but expanded upon them further. The resulting product led to Elden Ring featuring the most spellbinding world ever crafted in a video game that players could get lost in for hundreds of hours.

Amongst an endless array of open-world games that have come about over the past 15 years, Elden Ring is the height of what the genre is capable of. It’s not just the greatest achievement that FromSoftware as a studio has created, but it represents the best we’ve seen from video games since The Game Awards began. Maybe one day a Game of the Year winner will come about that tops Elden Ring, but that day hasn’t come yet.

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