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 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.
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.
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
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.
They usually have two cities!
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.
Yeah, one neighbourhood from one or two different cities. Kamurochō is based on Kabukichō.
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.
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.