All Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree scores, can a DLC win the GOTY award?

Almost absolute unanimity in the gaming press. Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoftware have done it again. Two years after shaking up the rules of open worlds and giving the world that masterpiece called Elden Ring, the company has come up with a DLC with more content (and quality) than entire games. This is how the absolute totality of critics expresses it, promising about 30 hours of martyrdom and joy and dozens of new features, among which stands out a new and curious level design.

In the opinion of MeriStation USA, our colleague Mike Reyes, master of the art of taking on monsters and bloodthirsty enemies like it’s a walk in the park, gives his honest opinion:

“Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is set to be the one and only piece of downloadable content for the now legendary game, but that doesn’t really feel like a bad thing after spending close to 80 hours already exploring every inch of the Land of Shadow. That’s 80+ hours of new content, on top of everything that the main game has to offer, which will vary from player to player. However, there is no denying that FromSoftware spent the last two years perfecting its craft to make the most out of this expansion. Even though the game is 2 years old, and having seen some phenomenal heavy-hitter titles in the industry with mind-blowing graphics, you simply need to take a look at the screenshots in this review: all of them were taken (on PlayStation 5) from the first few hours of the expansion, none of them pre-rendered and yet jaw-droppingly beautiful.″

Could it be possible that we are talking about the first game with not a 10, but a 20? Will Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree be From Software’s third GOTY after Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019) and Elden Ring itself (2022)? Will Geoff Keighley modify the basis of The Game Awards to make expansions and DLC eligible for the award?

All reviews for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

With more than 30 reviews published at the time of writing, Elden Ring has an impressive score of 95 on Metacritic and another 94 on OpenCritic. In other words, it is already the best-reviewed game of 2024. Not Prince of Persia, not Final Fantasy, or anything else.