If you want to win game of the year, your best bet is to create an open-world game. The genre dominates when it comes to end-of-the-year considerations. The efforts are often the most eye-grabbing and they capture the imagination with their promise of adventure and fun.

Despite more than two decades of mining the format, developers are still finding ways to make open-world games feel fresh. Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin are two projects that transport players to different worlds but diverge on how they do it. Capcom’s epic demands players immerse themselves in its high-fantasy adventure while Team Ninja’s samurai epic brings fresh eyes to a type of open-world game that Ubisoft specializes in.