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!
Don’t forget taking so long a break between games that you completely forget what you’re supposed to be doing, and if the game offers no sort of recap/hand-holding quest system - you have to start from scratch.
At which point the daunting nature of that overwhelms you and you just sit there browsing your catalog for something new to play/continue until you’re 15 minutes past your allotted time - and you’re now even further behind.
Win/win all around.
This is my biggest issue with open world games I always forget what I’m doing
Right?!?
I’m trying to play Elden Ring, Last of Us Part I, Diablo IV, Stray, BOTW, SW: JFO, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spider-Man: Remastered, Hogwarts: Legacy, Atomic Heart, It Takes Two, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and more.
I’m not going to beat any of these before Starfield comes out, of which I will surely add to my catalog of “actively” playing games. I’m currently working on D4, but I did go back to BOTW briefly and get the third devine beast done, because my kids got me TOTK for Father’s Day, so I feel compelled to not sleep on it because I want them to play it with them.
I haven’t even finished Skyrim yet. How do people do it?
I think they skip the “have kids” part of life.
Like I enjoy games, but I’d rather spend time with kid and spouse than play them. Like I almost feel guilty taking time for myself to actually play them.
The spouse isn’t so much an issue to gaming, as separate work schedules gave ample time to just game. Kids on the other hand, and a special needs one for me, as the at-home parent take up almost every waking second of my day, from 7am to 8pm - 9pm if you count cleaning up the days activities.
My backlog is similar to yours - with the same “gotta get them in before Starfield comes out”. And I know it’s not gonna happen.
It was a much simpler time when you only had one console - and like 2 games + whatever you rented for the week.
happened with me and new vegas. I did it in the spring of 2021 and did everything but the dlcs and the final confrontation at hoover damn.
Started Dead Money, hated it, and quit it and started old world blues. After this I was burnt out so I just stopped playing NV, and wanting to come back recently I tried to resume in the DLC.
I have no idea what the hell is going on so I have no idea if I’m going to continue where I left off or start the game over, only to miss the DLC content again when I inevitably get bored after the main game
Oh I want to go back and actually finish NV. I bought it at launch and played, but when I actually got to NV it was such a disappointment that it took me out of the entire game, and I didn’t get much further than that. I guess I got caught up in the in-game hype of New Vegas so much that I ended up with Paris Syndrome when I actually got there.
So I know I’m gonna have to restart, even if my save is somehow in the cloud because I have zero recollection of that game - having been nearly 13 years since I played now. And I don’t have the time to start a Bethesda game and finish it so close to another one coming out.
Ha! Thats the first time I’ve heard of someone getting Paris syndrome in a game. It is definitely an overhyped location in game, but it probably doesn’t help that its an overhyped location IN an overhyped game.
New Vegas is definitely a roleplaying masterpiece with great writing, but the actual level design and gameplay loop are mid af. It’s great for when you wanna go around and kill some time/relax in a desert wasteland where you occasionally shoot mutant critters or Roman cosplayers while listening to some of the best Jazz and Country Western of the era, but outside of that it isn’t the most fun world to explore and the gunplay is mid.
Also see: taking so long between games that a save breaking update is released that ruins your 30hr save game. At that point just closing the game and browsing Lemmy instead.
For me, TotK has been great for forgetting what’s next. The whole game is chunked into small little tasks that string together. It’s rare that I’ve managed to set a goal and gone straight to it. It’s usually “warp to x in order to do y but now, z is on the way and it says to go to b. But b redirects me to do g,h, i, and j before I can fight my way to c. Aaaand whoops I just finished temple and I was just trying to deliver eggs to the shop keep.
That may not be to your taste, but I’m enjoying the happy accident moments of the game. I feel like a diagram of the quest flow would look similar to a technical diagram for the whole us postal system. Just play in the sandbox and have fun. You’ll eventually get where you’re going!
Yeah that’s fine and all, it’s basically the same formula Bethesda uses - and a formula I love for gameplay. The issue is coming back 6 months to a year or more later and then trying to get back into it. Which is a struggle with games like that.
I usually keep handwritten notes about quests and activities, but sometimes even then I still cannot get back into them because they rely on intricate knowledge of gameplay mechanics I’ve forgotten over the timespan of absence.
I love Zelda, and have been slowly working my way through my catalogue of unplayed titles in the series. A Link to the Past was actually the first game I got with my SNES. But I skipped out on the N64 and GameCube ones. But I don’t have the time for TotK just yet. I did get BotW at launch - and it was fun - but the final boss fight was rather underwhelming.
But to be fair the only Zelda boss that hasn’t been a real pushover is the original NES one where it will let you fight the final boss without the item you need to defeat him. And in no way tells you this.
Anyway I still need to beat Pikmin 3 and Super Mario Odyssey (all launch purchases) before getting yet another Switch game. TotK is on my radar, but Starfield looms ever closer and I know I’ll never beat TotK in time. HLTB puts it at like 58 hours just to do the main story. That’s a daunting amount of time at my point in life right now.
I wish you the best.
Also, allot more than HLTB recommends unless you decide to mainline the story with no distractions.
I’ve found that the quest tools are really useful to combat memory issues, but not overwhelming. They let you grab the 15 minutes you have to really focus on what you’re doing if you’d like. They keep all the information you need (and even cut down the information you don’t.) And it’s always there for you to come back to if you decide something else is more fun.
I haven’t beaten the game yet, so can’t say one way or another about the final boss of this one, but I’ve heard it’s better than most.
I’ve got every other Zelda game that’s not a weird CDI game (or Zelda II, though I may go back to that one) and have made it about half way through a full play through, more if you count games I played a long while back.
This series is great. I’m really curious to hear what someone else doing similar thinks about the progression of the series from way back?
Is “Quest tools” something available in the game itself, or is that something different entirely?
And it’s a bit hard for me to talk about series progression because I haven’t played in chronological order. I did A link to the Past, the original NES, then Twilight Princess(wii), BotW, then A link between worlds(3ds), ocarina of time(switch emulation), and am currently having a difficult time getting into Majoras Mask(3ds remaster).
I don’t know if it’s the 3ds format or the game itself that’s giving me trouble getting into it. I couldn’t put Ocarina of Time down and it’s throwing me off with MM. i figured it might have been just going straight from one to the other so I told myself I’d beat Pokémon X and then Fire Emblem Fates(going through other series generations I skipped out on), and try again. X is down and FE:F is underway, so I’ll find out eventually.
I can say while I enjoyed the shrines of BotW - I’d have rather had fewer yet more detailed and larger dungeons instead. I never really felt lost in BotW. I wasn’t a big fan of the Fire Emblem style weapon durability, nor the crafting - But Star Ocean 2 really is the only game I’ve truly enjoyed crafting.
I wouldn’t say that the series has progressed to Mainstream like games like Call of Duty did where the formula has gotten bland and they try to appeal more to new players than veterans. But it definitely doesn’t have the same heart as the original or ALttP, or even Ocarina of Time.
~Elder Scrolls~ edit Elden Ring was, to me, a fantastic Zelda game. Though I have yet to beat that as well.
I hope my incoherent ramblings made some sense of an answer to your question.