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 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