@Nielsen I think going back to the original post, maybe you should have said "it wouldn't surprise me" rather than "probably". I think that would have shaved off a load of these posts asking for burden of proof and going orund the houses.
Personally, I can understand why Horizon often wins these awards even though I myself am not particularly hyped about it. I enjoyed 3 quite a lot, I found 4 to be nowhere near as exciting or engaging as 3 and I'm yet to ssee anything that makes me think 5 will be a better experience than I found Horizon 3 to be.
Sure it'll probably be a better game, but ideas do get stale and if the trend to continue pushing more focus to online play continues I'll keep getting less and less interested. But that's just me, I get that it's a huge draw for many people these days.
On the RDR2 front, that was a very technically accomplished title for it's time, I love it, but I also know people who dislike it's slow pace. And that kind of ties right into why Horizon is so popular, it's super fast paced, too fast paced for me, I don't like to progress too fast, I like to enjoy the journey, but it's very much a case of different strokes for different folks.
Sure, the awards could be biased for some reason, but there's not really any evidence to say that they are beyond personal preferences for games which you or I think are better.