After you rescue the brother is where you get to The Crater. It’s huge, open, and fun. It seems like the developers must have played Elden Ring near the end of their project because the game became more and more open the further you played. If all the world was as open and interesting as this area it would be my GOTY also. But early on, it was sort of lame. I loved Horizon too. But, that story was just so amateur. If you could mix the storytelling and combat from Ragnarok with the beautiful open world of Horizons you would have something that would have gave Elden Ring a run for the money for GOTY. But this year Elden Ring is clear winner. That game is just MASSIVE. The entire game so far in God Of War is about 1/8 the size of the world in Elden Ring. I prefer games like God of War and Horizon. But just the scale of quality content in Elden Ring is too impressive to ignore this year.