You missed the end of the quote, “Dragon Age: The Veilguard is this year’s Alan Wake 2, squeaking onto the Golden Joysticks’ GOTY shortlist at the last minute, joining fellow award outliers Tekken 8 and Helldivers 2.”
The similarity with Alan Wake is that it launched so close to the cut off for the shortlist.
I think the author is saying it doesn’t belong on the list, along with Tekken and Helldivers.
How many adaptations came out this year? Maybe they had to have a list of 6…