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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have slowly realised that Fast Travel ruins games for me
Oh god, a game without fast travel is an instant con for me.
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.