I’ve recently found that big (mostly open world) games tend to overwhelm or even intimidate me. I’m a big fan of the Rockstar games and absolutely adored Breath of the Wild, but my playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom has been a bit rocky from the get-go.
As soon as the game let me explore all of its content and released me from the tutorial island, I was able to roam the lands of Hyrule freely as I once did in Breath of the Wild, but I’ve come to a sort of paralysis. I feel like there’s such an enormous amount of content to see that I’m constantly anxious to unintentionally skip content or to not make the most of my experience. I did not feel like this back in Breath of the Wild, and I’m not really sure why. I did, however, have this same sense of FOMO when I first played Skyrim. That game also made me feel like I was constantly missing stuff which left me kind of unsatisfied.
This is not a big problem and all of the games I listed are great games. I’m posting this because I unconciously took a two week break from ToTK in order to alleviate that feeling but when I came back to the game today and still felt the same, I thought of posting here and maybe hearing your opinions on this thing.
Have you ever felt the same in big open world games? Do you feel like this in more linear games with multiple endings? (I do) Do you think I’m an overthinker and should just rock on? Looking forward to your comments!
I feel a bit of both ways, on one hand, I love having a familiar universe that I can throws hours into and making it my sort of gaming home base (FFXIV). But when I play something else, I get nervous about them being huge or time demanding. I’ve been enjoying finding and binging through shorter games that I can knock out in a couple days, experiencing other worlds and stories, but not having to commit substantial life to them.
There’s an amazing amount of trying to make games “worth it” by adding tons of side content, and my ADHD ass can’t ignore it…So when a game doesn’t do that, like Singularity, Remember Me, or even Alan Wake, I love it. A nice, linear, intentional story with none of the “help my farm from the rats” bs.
I’m still working through the story of FFXIV (5.3 at the moment), but I do find it hard to give myself ‘permission’ to play big experiences with a lot of optional endeavours when I’ve actively playing XIV. Presumably that’ll be far less of a thing when I’m caught up in the MSQ and have my main jobs up to 90, but it’s difficult to ignore sometimes.
I suppose we should just be thankful that XIV didn’t copy the philosophy of WoW wholesale where taking a few weeks’ break means you’re hopelessly left behind.