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!
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!
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.
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?
Is “Quest tools” something available in the game itself, or is that something different entirely?
And it’s a bit hard for me to talk about series progression because I haven’t played in chronological order. I did A link to the Past, the original NES, then Twilight Princess(wii), BotW, then A link between worlds(3ds), ocarina of time(switch emulation), and am currently having a difficult time getting into Majoras Mask(3ds remaster).
I don’t know if it’s the 3ds format or the game itself that’s giving me trouble getting into it. I couldn’t put Ocarina of Time down and it’s throwing me off with MM. i figured it might have been just going straight from one to the other so I told myself I’d beat Pokémon X and then Fire Emblem Fates(going through other series generations I skipped out on), and try again. X is down and FE:F is underway, so I’ll find out eventually.
I can say while I enjoyed the shrines of BotW - I’d have rather had fewer yet more detailed and larger dungeons instead. I never really felt lost in BotW. I wasn’t a big fan of the Fire Emblem style weapon durability, nor the crafting - But Star Ocean 2 really is the only game I’ve truly enjoyed crafting.
I wouldn’t say that the series has progressed to Mainstream like games like Call of Duty did where the formula has gotten bland and they try to appeal more to new players than veterans. But it definitely doesn’t have the same heart as the original or ALttP, or even Ocarina of Time.
~Elder Scrolls~ edit Elden Ring was, to me, a fantastic Zelda game. Though I have yet to beat that as well.
I hope my incoherent ramblings made some sense of an answer to your question.