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 have this with big Minecraft modpacks. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed with all the stuff to do, and I get none of it done. I wonder if it’s related to ADHD or autism. I’ve not been diagnosed with either because I avoid doctors like the plague but when you check literally every box for a disease… Welp.
You might find a sweet spot with tech mods. When there’s an established hierarchy or crafting automation you plainly must do, it becomes a lot more engaging and you can usually focus on one mod at a time. For example, Mekanism asks you to stack factories upon factories to progress, and AE2 makes that a lot more simpler. I get the crafting and storage mods first before I focus on other mods, personally. That’s what gets my ADHD fix on.
I’ve been trying to focus on ones that have quests, so I have a clear path to follow. But it seems like, if there’s quests, there a bajillion quests which is also overwhelming. I’ve made some custom modpacks and those suffer even worse because I have no clear goals. After you’ve put a few thousand hours in a game, it gets hard to define any achievable goals that you’ve not done yet.