Okay, but this was more than prerelease hype. This was showing footage to players things they can do, with the explicit intention of driving up pre-orders and day one sales (I think pre-ordering is extremely silly, I don't participate, but that's neither here nor there). Lying about your product to get people to pay $60 for it is extremely unethical, and some EU governments found it to be enough to take them to court over. So this is beyond your personal 'judgments'. Sorry.

Limiting this arbitrary contest to just AAA games is pretty silly, seeing as they have the budget to hire amazing writers, and some of them get blown out of the water by indie titles. That's not the argument you think it is. Gaming is just wider than that, and I would argue the boundaries should be expanded to include all entertainment seeing as all forms of entertainment are making a bid for your limited time/attention, but that's just me. If you must have ONLY AAA games, then Red Dead games, GTA, and Mass Effect games are some from off the top of my head. Granted I don't play that many.

Your bar for labor-of-love must be really really low if a game just working is enough for you. That same year, No Man's Sky was much more deserving of the award as it isn't being made by a corporation with endless resources, and yet it managed to improve itself at least twice as much.

Tbh, you writing out several paragraphs defending yourself for enjoying Cyberpunk kinda smells like fanboy behavior to me. You try to be reductionist and dismissive a lot in what you wrote, which is pretty lame and anti-intellectual. We're here to discuss the facts, not what you enjoy spending your money on. More power to you, spend your money however, but I'm not here to discuss that with you.