Does anyone else sometimes feel overwhelmed by (big) games?

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!

NettoHikari,
@NettoHikari@social.fossware.space avatar

I thought I was alone with that feeling. I'm in exactly the same boat as you.

For me, it's a tiny bit different, because I played BOTW shortly before my daughther was born in 2017. I still had time for games like that back in the day. Now I don't only have a daughter, but a son as well.

When I grab the controller and start playing something time intensive like BOTW and now TOTK, I usually feel really guilty really quick, because there are so many other things to do, that in theory should have a higher priority.

brokensprocket99,

Just do what I do. Split your time between family, work, house projects, errands, and play a little of each backlogged game you have. Get absolutely nothing in your life done by trying to do everything 24/7. This way you get the benefit of feeling like you have no free time while also having the benefit of getting burnt out and overstressed. It can't backfire. 100% sustainable.

Help me.

HannahBecz,

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.

brokensprocket99,

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?

HannahBecz,

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.

Altomes,

This is my biggest issue with open world games I always forget what I’m doing

joelfromaus,
@joelfromaus@aussie.zone avatar

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.

Glaive0,

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!

HannahBecz,

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.

Glaive0,

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?

HectorBarbossa99,

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

HannahBecz,

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.

Tashlan,
@Tashlan@kbin.social avatar

I call them "man on horse" simulators. I think open worlds have generally gotten a bit bigger than they need to be -- I remember feeling like FFXV was actually very empty, despite being massive, and while Skyrim is beloved, so much of current replay has been slogging through massive amounts of nothing. I tend to wish open world games were somewhat smaller but denser, with more variety instead of huge, empty terrains of sort of bad-feeling, filler quests between the good ones.

Eavolution,
@Eavolution@kbin.social avatar

I think the Yakuza games strike a great balance here. There's an open city, rather than an open world. There's something to do down every street.

Skyhighatrist,

They typically focus mostly on a single neighbourbood in a city too right? Further keeping things focused for the player. Granted, I've not actually played through 100% of any of the Yakuza games, yet, but that's the impression I got in the time that I have played.

Eavolution,
@Eavolution@kbin.social avatar

Aye you're right. I've only finished 0 and kiwami, but honestly I could've spent 3x the time I did on them just walking about finding stuff to do. You can't walk far without running into something.

Tashlan,
@Tashlan@kbin.social avatar

They usually have two cities!

liminis,

Yeah, one neighbourhood from one or two different cities. Kamurochō is based on Kabukichō.

Tashlan,
@Tashlan@kbin.social avatar

Yep -- I love that franchise for that reason! Instead of sprawling, they're just dense and full of life. I still got lost even after playing five of those games in the same neighborhood but like, I wish more people looked at that density vs sprawl

liminis,

Absolutely, would that more devs were inspired by Yakuza's alive and dense little districts instead of competing with each other to see who can make the biggest, most boring open world.

rjh,

I just wish they wouldn't re-use the same area in every game. Tried to play Lost Judgement but I think I'm burned out on Kamurocho for the next 5 years or so.

WidowersWife, (edited )
@WidowersWife@feddit.de avatar

I reflected on that as well yesterday. I started Botw on Cemu after hearing so much good about the newest instalment and wanted to see what all that fuzz is about. I really really like it, I always thought it would feel empty from the vibe I got from gameplay videos and screenshots but it doesn't. I played for 40 hours and now I'm on a tipping point.

So after thinking about it yesterday I found a good comparison for me. I thought about ice cream. Bare with me. Imagine buying a really big pot of a new kind chocolate ice cream. It fills all the space of your freezer. You try it and it's awesome, you don't want anything else to eat right now. So you eat it every day for every meal. It still is awesome but at some point it's nothing special anymore and also last time you went shopping you saw that awesome looking strawberry ice cream for which you don't really have space right now in your freezer. So what is your next move. Jugging down the chocolate ice cream until you reach the bottom but hate it or throw it away and buy something new? So here is what I try: I want to get over my FOMO for the strawberry ice cream and try eating just a bit of the chocolate ice cream every other day. I mean, it couldn't be healthy to eat ice cream for every meal and every day right? And if it isn't going to be special anymore I don't need to eat it until I finish it, I won't get any more enjoyment out of it if I'd do.

I hope this makes as much sense to you as it does to me

Manticore,
@Manticore@beehaw.org avatar

Absolutely. I hear Witcher 3 is good, and I believe that it is... but after playing it for 5 hours and feeling like I got nowhere, the next day I just genuinely didn't feel like playing it as I'd felt very little character progress, and zero story progression.

Games are continuing to market towards younger people - especially kids - with spare time to burn. They consider their 120+ hour playtime to be a selling point, but at this point that's the reason I avoid them. If I'm going to play for an hour or so at the end of my day, I want that game to feel like it meant something.

I prefer my games to feel dense, deliberately crafted, minimal sawdust padding. I've enjoyed open-world in the past but the every-increasing demand for bigger and bigger maps means that most open-world games are very empty and mostly traversal. Linear worlds aren't bad - they can be crafted much more deliberately and with far more content because you can predict when the player will see them.

Open worlds that craft everything in it deliberately are very rare, and still rely on constraints to limit the player into somewhat-linear paths. Green Hell needs a grappling hook to leave the first basin, Fallout: New Vegas fills the map north of Tutorial Town with extreme enemies to funnel new players south-east.

And what really gets me is that with microtransactions, the number of games that make themselves so big and so slow that they're boring on purpose, so that they can charge you to skip them! Imagine making a game so fucking awful that anybody buying a game will then buy the ability to not play it because 80% of the game is sawdust: timers, resource farming, daily rotations, exp grinding. Fucking nightmare, honestly.

ArugulaZ,
@ArugulaZ@kbin.social avatar

I greatly prefer games that wrap up in thirty minutes or less... you know, fighting games, old-school arcade games, puzzle games, that sort of thing. Sometimes it's fun to just wander around in an open world, but big video games are big time sinks that require a big commitment, especially at the start when you have to learn the ropes. Sometimes these big games aren't well explained and you have to fumble your way through their complicated play mechanics, an issue I had with Biomutant. Struggling and confusion are not a part of the gaming experience I particularly enjoy.

HiDiddlyDoodlyHo,

I felt the same way when I opened the new Hitman reboot, and a bit when I opened TotK. What I like about BotW and TotK is that you basically can't miss content. Some events are one-time-only but you have to experience them actively first. Quests and adventures will wait for you. I feel a lot more paralyzed and FOMO if the game just doesn't wait for me to explore what I want in my own time.

Cartendole,

Interesting that the Hitman games make you feel like this, I thoroughly enjoyed them because of the ability to replay levels endlessly, which made me feel like I can't miss anything because I can just start over if I want to try a different approach.

smart_boy,

I find that I totally switch off as soon a game starts to feel like a big checklist of "Content" to check off. For open world games, this is usually as soon as there's a fast travel feature. For me, it's not that I'm overwhelmed, I just feel that this framework makes for an incredibly samey experience.

Stalinwolf,
@Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca avatar

I never fast travel in games that allow me the option not to. I find them infinitely more engaging that way. Skyrim got it just right with their well-balanced mounts.

joelfromaus,
@joelfromaus@aussie.zone avatar

I played through most of Horizon: Zero Dawn before I realised it even had fast travel. It was that moment that I realised I’d been enjoying traversing through the game world even if it meant everything took a lot more time. Since then I’ve used fast travel less in games.

shanmukhateja,
@shanmukhateja@social.linux.pizza avatar

@joelfromaus This reminds me of my first time with Skyrim where I was buying huge quantities of food, potions and other supplies as “preparation” for travelling to other places.

The best example I remember was the first time I had to travel to Riften and I was going through all these supplies on my horse and it was so fun!

I came to this conclusion after asking myself how would I be doing it in the time period set by the game.
TOTAL IMMERSION!!😍

I think I was 16 back then.

animeborn,
@animeborn@mastodon.social avatar

@joelfromaus @Stalinwolf spiderman was the one game where I refused to use fast travel I didnt care how far I had to go web swinging was just that fun

TwoCubed,

I liked the silt striders in Morrowind. You had to pay them to fast travel to a certain destination. That seems realistic to me and doesn't break immersion.

Stalinwolf,
@Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca avatar

I’m with you on that too. I was thinking more “click on the map and appear there” kind of fast travel, but stationary transit between hubs is fine by me. Awesome you mentioned Morrowind anyway since I just started modding it again this week for a new playthrough.

liminis,

Morrowind's fast travel was the best execution ever, yeah. It's like, paying for a journey as you would in real life, often to new locations entirely, rather than magically teleporting to the middle of a city.

Final Fantasy XI (an MMO) has something that feels spiritually similar to me, in that you can ride airships and ferries to different cities; but it's real time, and some people use ferry journeys for fishing for example.

Silviecat44,

I have slowly realised that Fast Travel ruins games for me

EssentialCoffee,

Oh god, a game without fast travel is an instant con for me.

liminis,

I often feel the same about more mainstream open world games; though I've been happily surprised by Insomniac's Spider-Man game so far. Things don't overstay their welcome, story progress isn't gated behind a bunch of generic side content, and the side content I've experienced so far has -- beyond being optional -- still had a flair for the unique. Hope more AAA devs who insist on the open world formula learn something from them.

iNeedScissors67,
@iNeedScissors67@kbin.social avatar

The older I get the more I prefer linear games. I'm playing FFXVI right now and I'm actually quite happy at how linear it is. Couldn't finish XV because the map was too damn big.

ThemboMcBembo,
@ThemboMcBembo@beehaw.org avatar

I feel the same!

CO_Chewie,

Man this post made me think about why some games that seem right up my alley (fallout, cyberpunk, etc) I just can't seem to finish. I have a perfectionist issue where I feel I need to do all the available side quests before moving onto the next mission/level/boss. I might try to pick up cyberpunk again after I complete my fallen order replay and just stick to the larger missions.

I am really looking forward to starfield but I really don't know if I'm prepared for it.

Metatron,
@Metatron@beehaw.org avatar

I have suffered from this at times. Mostly from friends worrying about 'value propositions' or whatever. Now I just play for enjoyment. If I ain't digging it, I move onto another game for a while. I can always go back if I want, but it is ok if I don't want to go back.

I think this tends to happen when a game throws too many mechanics at me that I don't care enough to learn because the game isn't grabbing me.

I find keeping a couple games in rotation also helps. Keeps things fresher.

Currently playing Last of Us part 1, as I've never played Last of Us. Enjoying the more on-rails experience, compared to open world.

kyoji,
@kyoji@beehaw.org avatar

Absolutely, it feels like so many big budget games made recently command 50+ hours of your time, or have really complicated mechanics that require note taking and maths to really enjoy. Those things are great, but man, just the thought of starting a behemoth like Tears of the Kingdom makes me anxious.

0xpr03,

some blame that on the idea of "1€/1$ per play hour" - and when these games come with a price of 60€+ (modern AAA is 80€), they'll get content shoved inside..

I think it's just bad game design that became the norm. I'm pretty sure you can make a game that's received as worthy its price, without overwhelming players like me with the sheer amount of content.

djidane535,
@djidane535@kbin.social avatar

Here is my secret: I don’t care if I miss something. It’s not a problem if you miss a side quest or intentionally skip something (especially if you don’t enjoy it, it’s an annoying side quest). Completing a game can be quite enjoyable, but as soon as it becomes a chore or you see it as a todo list, that’s where I personally back off.

For example in TOTK, I really enjoy my time just exploring here and here. I didn’t like the abyss at first so I played 30h+ hours before starting exploring it, and now that I feel more confident, I am passing most of my time there (that’s why I have played 70h+ hours with only one dungeon completed 😅). I knew about a 4th power, but I didn’t find it until very recently. I was enjoying my time with what I got, extrapolating about what it could be, but it was not a problem not to have it.

GlowingLantern,
@GlowingLantern@feddit.de avatar

Honesty, it's just a matter of framing. Don't think about the things you're missing, think about the things you could do. See the enormous amount of content as potential adventures you can choose to have, instead of chores you have to complete. If you miss things, that's okay. I love games where I discover new things years later. It makes them feel much larger than they actually are.

0xpr03,

same for me with the witcher 3 and horizon zero dawn

wet_lettuce,

I think I'd feel less overwhelmed if these games had hand-holding features. I recall Fable and Fable2 having some features that basically highlighted the route for you or hinted at which way you should go.

I get that open world is supposed to let you explore freely but if you are doing a specific task..help me get there!

I've started and stopped Witcher 3 3x. I just couldn't get into it. I realized I kept getting stuck and not able to figure out where I was supposed to go. I got frustrated and gave up.

EssentialCoffee,

Why not just google a game guide?

I always look at a walkthrough if I’m stuck.

Cattypat,

This is why I have so much trouble with the Fallout series. I love the games and their universes but I just can't deal with how overwhelming it is to actually play and realize how much there is to do. I never had this issue with other games like Subnautica for some reason.

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