Open World Burnout

Most people rather enjoy a good open world game, hence why so many games that come out now follow that format. You could play these games over, and over again and find things you never saw or knew about in your last playthrough, you could meet characters that you didn’t know existed before and maybe get some gear or side quests that weren’t available to you in the past… They’re definitely one of the best genres for replay value. However, I found myself thinking the other day that I could count on one hand the amount of Open World games I have actually finished:

• Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Borderlands
• Batman: Arkham Knight
• God of War

Depressingly I think that’s actually it. However, while the list isn’t extensive, and some are definitely more ‘open’ than others, I have played quite my fair share of open world games and here are the ones that I have not finished (off the top of my head):

• Skyrim
• Far Cry 3
• Far Cry 4
• Borderlands 2
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Assassin’s Creed 2

The three key annoying ones for me on this list are Borderlands 2, Skyrim, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I am genuinely invested in the plot of these games and want to finish them, but I always get a little too into my side quests and wandering around not wanting to miss anything, only to then suffer from what I’ve been calling Open World Burnout.

This is when you get so overwhelmed with everything an Open World has to offer that you need some time away from it to play something a bit more linear, or shorter, for a while. You may come back to it later, you may play it on and off, but you need a good break from it every so often.

As the most recent example (and the inspiration for this post) let’s take a look at my experience so far with Breath of the Wild. I played Breath of the Wild for 9 hours straight once and achieved absolutely nothing in terms of plot, I was a little annoyed at myself. A) because time really flies when you play that game and I honestly believed I still had most of the day ahead of me, and B) because I could not tell you what I’d done other than run around collecting monster bits, cooking random stuff together, and finding koroks. I was just exploring and messing about and it felt like a bit of a waste. I haven’t played it for as long since, usually my sessions are max 3 hours and I have very slowly made progress but I get bored of climbing mountains only to find another bastard korok at the top shouting “Yahaha!” instead of maybe a shrine, or a fairy, or something cooler than an annoying, chunky stick chucking a seed at me. This all builds up until I need to take a break for a while. This is a problem I have in most open world games and it always annoys me. Granted some are much bigger worlds than others; Arkham Knight can’t really compare to Skyrim in terms of scale for example, and that’s probably why I actually finished it. Honestly, I do love Breath of the Wild, I think it’s gorgeous and fun in small doses but if it wasn’t a Legend of Zelda game and I didn’t have that nostalgic, loyal attachment to it I’m not 100% sure I’d still be playing it.

“Why not just focus on the main plot then?” I hear you cry. Well, wouldn’t that be lovely but every time I get a new quest I just have a desperate urge to finish it, every time I see a shiny thing I need to pick it up, even if I don’t know what it’s for but it might be important! I could be halfway to completing something big in the main quest when I’ll see something that looks like it might be interesting in the distance on top of that inconvenient mountain that will take me an hour to get to. What could it be? I must know. A temple? A crypt? *gasp* An incredible new weapon?!  “Yahaha! You found me!” *Throws controller across the room*. I just really want to know what is there, what if it’s something I’m missing or something that would make my journey easier? Sometimes that is the case but unfortunately not that often.

Another thing that I find to be incredibly tempting in Open World games is to start them from scratch, making a new character with the intention of playing it in a slightly different way. “I just need the right character for me and then I’ll finish it.” You’d have thought the largest and most obvious change would be through alignment which potentially affects the plot, choices and even the items you can acquire, but I find it very hard to play as a bad character in games so my ‘different way’ is generally playing as a different class and race, going to different locations first if possible, that sort of thing. Some games let these impact your gameplay quite well (Dragon Age is generally very good at this, especially the different races), others may simply change a little bit of dialogue but otherwise not let it effect the game at all. In that case maybe my “right character for me” is just an excuse to go back to the beginning.

Shawty is my third DAI creation, and most likely not the last

Other times I just grow to really hate my character. I played Borderlands 2 as the Mechromancer (how cool is that class??) and I had so much fun with her until, frustratingly quite far in, I hit a wall. Maybe I hadn’t built her skills up properly or maybe it’s down to an insane spike in difficulty but all of a sudden I was terrible. I would get through battles by summoning my robot and shooting stuff from a distance because if I was touched by anything it was instant death. If my robot was killed or timed out I was in deep trouble and had to hide until it was ready to summon again. All while being absoloutely baffled as to how I’d gone from kicking ass to hiding and praying I’d be saved by a giant robot. Not really the way you want to be playing. The annoying thing was I’d started a new game as the Mechromancer because I hadn’t liked my original choice of Assassin, and that my friends, is why I never finished Borderlands 2.

I think that for the most part I want to start again because I get bored of running around but I’m not quite willing to give up playing yet and miss the days where side quests were just around the corner, I could learn all these new skills relatively quickly, and I was being introduced to this huge, new world before being let loose to do as I pleased. You tend to start these games near or in some sort of village or base with a fair few NPCs to get you started, but as you explore you often end up quite isolated. Then you do stupid stuff like get so unused to NPC interaction you accidentally back-stab an innocent guard thinking it must be an enemy because you didn’t realise you were near a town and now you’ve got a bounty on your head, alarms go off, you can’t sell anything. Disaster.

Environment affects it too. Generally you will be sent to every area on the map in the main plot for some reason or other and there’s always one which is bigger, boring, and just that bit more grueling. In Breath of the Wild when I was running through the desert it seemed to take ages to get to the Gerudo town, I just started to feel a little brain dead and fantasied about when life was simpler and the environment was lusher at the beginning of the game. I resisted and stuck with it though. It might be something about deserts, in Dragon Age: Inquisition it’s always the Hissing Wastes area that kills me off. It’s an absolutely huge desert, probably the largest area in the game, but there’s almost nothing there. Luckily the thought of traipsing endlessly through The Hinterlands again is usually enough to put me off. Not always though.

Just look at all that NOTHING to explore

I am always in awe of those that can thoroughly explore these worlds, finish the game within a reasonable amount of time and apparently not suffer from burnout. Maybe I just have a short attention span. I still enjoy them though so while I may be incredibly frustrating to watch play an open world game at least you know that deep down I am actually enjoying it in my own way. I really need to finish off Inquisition so that I can start on some of the expansion I bought ages ago. Before I do continue with the plot though let’s investigate the top of that suspiciously shaped mountain… “Yahaha! You found me!”
KOROKS AREN’T EVEN IN THIS GAME!!!

Do you suffer from Open World Burnout? Do you often restart your game? Are you a fan of open world games or do you avoid them?

The Dragon’s Horde : March Edition

Welcome, puny human, to my spooky Dragon cave where I keep my Dragon’s horde. You may have ventured far and faced many perils to come here but now you meet your DOOM. Get ready for… You don’t seem very scared. Is the bunting and collectible teapots not quite what you were expecting? Is the pile of video game not the sort of horde you had in mind? I get that a lot. Well… While you’re here can I offer you a tea? Muffin? Try the sourdough crumpets, they’re amazing.

I thought I’d shake things up and make a new addition to my blog. At the end of every month I’ll write a summary post, invite the protagonists from the games I’ve been playing this month to join the Tea Party, talk about what’s been going on, and add a link to one of my posts that I particularly enjoyed writing this month. I always seem to miss some people’s posts so if you’d like to then please feel free to comment with a link to one of your posts from this month and I’ll give it a read! Similarly, if you’re a new Tea Party guest say hi!

So sit down, make yourself at home, grab a Hobnob (not the chocolate ones, they’re mine) and I’ll put the kettle on.

What I’ve Been Playing

Breath of the Wild

Our first Tea Party guest, who is unfortunately not much in the way of conversation we is Link. He’s going to be here a while as I am constantly on and off with Breath of the Wild. I’m so tantalisingly close to finishing the game but I’m still getting distracted by an insane variety of things to do… I feel like playing this game is actually quite exhausting sometimes and I find it hard to play for just an hour at a time. I need to make sure I have a good few hours set aside and unfortunately that’s kind of hard to come by for me at the moment. We’re getting there though, slowly but surely.

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage

I’m trying not to get competitive with the other Dragon at the table, luckily Spyro doesn’t care about my video game and biscuit horde, he’s all about the gems and is quite happy to be the chatty, if slightly irritating, one at the table.

I’m really enjoying how easily I can jump in and out of this game, if I’ve only got half an hour I can generally complete the main part of a level in that time and it’s just so pretty. This has become my go-to game for when I don’t have that much time or brain power to offer. I’m on the last section of the game now so I should be able to finish this in April.

Batman: Return to Arkham Asylum

Looking a little out of place surrounded by bunting, flowers, and a fairy lights, Batman holds a dainty pink tea cup and stays quite quiet. Much like Link, he’s also not much in the way of conversation and when he does speak he’s not particularly interesting. Maybe I should have invited Bruce Wayne instead, he’s a lot more fun…

There’s a story to me getting into this game: I bought the remastered Arkham series years ago after accidentally playing Arkham Knight first, I really enjoyed Knight and was excited to get started on Asylum and City but… Well, I wrote a ranty post back in 2017 about how much I didn’t enjoy it. Basically, I found it repetitive and kind of dumb. It’s sat in my library gathering virtual dust ever since. Recently though I finished watching the incredibly frustrating, but simultaneously addictive, Gotham. If you don’t know it it’s a TV show about before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, with Jim Gordon as the main character. Like with a lot of American TV shows, they seemed to start with this great premise, fulfill it, then rather than just stop while they were ahead they got a new, bizarre plot line where you can’t really tell where they’re going with it and it’s pretty obvious that the writers don’t know either, but hey, they’re getting paid big bucks and they’re going to keep doing it until it’s so mind-numbing that the show gets cancelled or the kid that plays Bruce gets too old to be a ‘kid’ anymore. You’d have thought they’d just do 10 episode seasons with much more focused, better crafted story lines but what do I know? I could go on and on about Gotham, maybe I’ll write a post about it when it’s ended. The main reason I stuck with it is because I’ve always found the characters of DC incredibly interesting, far more so than Marvel (though I’d much rather watch a Marvel movie than a DC one) so luckily for the show’s writers they have a lot to draw from. Also, the best part about the whole thing is Penguin, who I never even considered a particularly interesting villain before but the actor (Robin Lord Taylor) and his portrayal is just absolutely brilliant and he steals every scene that he’s in.
Anyway… Sorry, went off on a tangent there… Once I exhausted the episodes of Gotham on Netflix I had a bat-shaped hole in my life and I decided to fill it by trying the Arkham series again. I only started Asylum a couple of days ago and haven’t got very far at all, but I thought if I get to a stage where I am not enjoying it I’m going to just stop and start Arkham City instead.

My Favourite Post

I wrote a couple of posts that I really enjoyed this month but the one that surprised me the most was A Shout Out to NPCs. I asked some friends for help writing this and they were so enthusiastic about it, it was really nice to talk with them about it and see everyone’s ideas and opinions.

Achievement Unlocked

It was Dragon’s Tea Party’s 2 year anniversary this month! I know!!! That really surprised me. I still consider this blog as a bit of a novelty but it’s been with me through quite a lot now. I’ve had my ups and downs with it, the last few months in particular have been a struggle keeping it up to date but I feel like I managed to smash that writers block up in March and I’m looking forward to seeing what April brings.

What have you been playing this month? Is there anything you’re looking forward to playing in April? Have you written (or read) a post that you particularly enjoyed? Leave a link below!

The Legend of Zelda: The Nostalgia Crisis

Good news everyone! A friend of mine has offered to lend me his Wii U so that I can play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Wind Waker. I’m super excited but also a little worried. I haven’t played a proper “big console” Zelda game for years, the last one I played was Skyward Sword where I nearly threw the Wii motion plus out the window and discovered a hatred for robot fairies. Since I left my parents’ house to go to Uni (about 5 or 6 years ago now) I have only ever played Zelda games on my 3DS because I opted to get a Playstation as my University Gaming Companion rather than a Wii (I know! Woe is me. How did I survive with just my PS4 and 3DS?!). I don’t regret that choice but I have missed Nintendo a lot. The 3DS has done well with Link Between Worlds and Phantom Hourglass but it hasn’t quite filled the void.

While I am super excited about getting my hands on both of these games I am most excited about Wind Waker. I used to love it when I was younger. I spent hours and hours just sailing around the world with no particular goal, just cruising, the King of Red Lions and I had some good times. Sometimes I’d just run around random islands exploring, I’d follow NPCs sometimes just to see where they went, or I’d mess about trying to get up to a ledge or platform for ages just to see if I could. Sometimes my curiosity would pay off and I’d get a reward for my trouble but more often than not there was no incentive, it was just fun to mess about. As far as actual progress goes I usually got as far as finishing the three sage’s temples but then I’d get a little uneasy. In all honesty I was kind of scared of Ganon. That bit where you first see him was super sinister to me as a kid and let’s be honest, how beautiful is that world? Wouldn’t you just want to stay there if you could? By my 8 year old logic Ganon wasn’t actually destroying anything as long as I didn’t progress so… Let’s go visit the bird people! Eventually I’d have a little break playing something else for a bit, then I’d come back to Wind Waker and start again from the beginning.

This was terrifying to 8 year old me.

So what am I worried about? Well… I had turkey dinosaurs for dinner the other day for the first time in years and they just weren’t anywhere near as good as I remember them. I would still like to eat a lot of them, but I know that it won’t be with the same enthusiasm that I experienced when I was younger. What if the same thing happens with Wind Waker and I don’t love it like I used to? What if it’s not how I remember it and the nostalgia I feel for that time gets tainted with a feeling of melancholy because the nostalgia’s built it up and I end up disappointed? What if Wind Waker is a turkey dinosaur?

The (adorable) character closest to a turkey dinosaur

The core thing concerning me is how my play style has changed as that is the thing most likely to impact my experience of the game. I find it incredibly hard to just mess about in games now but that was the thing I enjoyed doing the most back in the day. Now I always feel like I should be doing something for a reason. Am I going to spend an hour following random NPCs around just because I’m curious to see where they go? Hell no. Why not? I don’t know… I don’t have time for that I guess. Or do I? I have no time limit on this game (my friend has a Switch now so there’s not much reason at all that he’d need the Wii U back – of course I do plan on giving it back… Eventually), no one is going to be nagging me to finish it. Now that I’ve finished God of War 4 there are no other games that I want to focus on this year, sure I can’t spend as much time on it at once like I used to but that doesn’t mean I need to rush it… Maybe I will follow random NPCs around! Maybe I’ll catch a pig and try to throw it onto my boat because they’re adorable and I want a pig companion! Maybe I’ll use the Hyoi Pears to posses countless seagulls and just fly around because I like flying… I just want to experience it again with the same feeling that I used to have when I was back in my room in my parents house, excitedly putting the tiny GameCube disc in, listening to the jaunty theme music, seeing the beautiful blue Wind Waker start up screen, and settling down and spending hours and hours at a time exploring.

Some readers may be thinking “what about Breath of the Wild?! Aren’t you more excited for that?!” Honestly? No. It’s not that I don’t want to play it. I desperately want to and when it was released it was killing me that seemingly everyone else was playing it but I have been waiting to play Wind Waker for years. My friend told me that there’s a condition to me borrowing his Wii U: I have to play Breath of the Wild before Wind Waker and at that moment a wave of unexpected revulsion towards that game crashed over me, let’s face it, that’s not going to happen. I’ll play it first if he is there in the room with me because I know he wants to discuss it and everything but as soon as I’ve kicked him out I’m getting into my cosiest pyjamas, making a nice cup of tea, grabbing a packet of biscuits and just shutting myself away to sail the Great Sea.

You know what? To finish off this nostalgic post let’s have a quick listen to the extremely nostalgic Gamecube start up music…

Aah, sweet nostalgia with a twist.

 

Is there anything good from your past you’ve been unwilling to visit for fear of ruining the nostalgia? How would you feel about playing some of your favourite games from your youth now? Have you played the remastered Wind Waker and was it as good as you remembered?

Hyeeeh, kyaaah, HYAAAAAH! (or The Comic Con Legend of Zelda Meetup)

In my previous Comic Con post I mentioned how I went to a Legend of Zelda meet up at but that I didn’t have the pictures. Now I do! They were taken courtesy of Celery Moon Designs, she was lovely and has provided me with one of the best pictures taken of me for a loooong time, and I’m an awkward model so that is quite an achievement. Have a look at her page to see more Comic Con pictures and more of the album that the below are from (and some awkward ones of me trying to look tough).

At the group meetup there was an interesting split between Breath of the Wild and the ‘old’ games so there was a lot of diversity. We had some individual pictures and then a big group one, then by game, good characters, bad characters… It was really fun and it was great to meet everyone. Keep an eye out for the Midna’s and Princess Leia-Link, I had slight cosplay envy.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I have to say the best LoZ cosplay in my opinion (other than myself, obviously) was a Wind Waker Link that turned up with Medli in a full size King of Red Lions boat. She was actually driving it around the convention like a little go-kart, it was incredible and it looks absolutely perfect too. She has a Facebook page called StarKey Studios with some other incredible cosplays she’s done, they look amazing. If you take a look at the page there is a video of the boat in action driving around with Captain Jack Sparrow on it while onlookers sing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune. It’s pretty awesome.

I seriously can’t get over how awesome this boat is

Finally, while we’re sort of on the subject of Nintendo, when I was writing my last post with the links to artists at the bottom I was desperately searching for the business card of one of my favourite stands whom I bought a realistic Pokémon bookmark from but I couldn’t find it and I had to publish the post without it. Turns out I had put it in clear view the whole time but due to my messiness I was sorting through piles of clothes and bags thinking I wouldn’t have tidied it away. Anyway, here is a picture of my gorgeous bookmark (unpopular opinion: Bulbasaur was my favourite starter) and the artwork on the back of her business card, I really like the colours and the realistic twist. Check out the shop here! She specialises in fantasy and mythology if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Waiting Game

I got myself hyped up for the new God of War game the other day by watching the 10-minute gameplay trailer, and it looks amazing. God of War is one of my favourite game series. Thing is though, I had actually watched this same trailer almost a year ago when it was first released and had completely forgotten I’d already seen it. After realising this I Googled when the release date for the game was and my heart sank as ‘Could be December 2017’ appeared on my screen, almost mocking me. First of all –could be??? Secondly, why do I have to wait so long? I’m not saying that in an ‘I’m so excited I can’t wait’ kind of way (well I can’t wait really but that’s not the point) I’m saying it in a ‘just release the bloody game and stop creating this unnecessary build up’ way.

I swear that (sounding a little old here) back in the day games weren’t announced years before they were released. Studios might announce they were making a new game a few years in advance, eventually a trailer would be released, and the game would follow a few short months later. That trailer for God of War 4 came out in June 2016, and still there is nothing other than “Ooh the voice actor mistakenly said ‘2017’ in his IMDB profile, are we getting a 2017 release?” A 2017 release? How about a NOW release? Why hold back? The last God of War game came out in 2010!

It’s been a while since Kratos killed literally every mythological Greek being ever mentioned (except Aphrodite of course, wink wink)

This happens with a lot of games, I am still waiting for Dead Island 2, the creators seem to be pretending they never released a trailer for it waaaaaaay back in 2014 (the trailer is SO COOL by the way which makes the delay even more antagonising, watch it below). By the time that comes out the PlayStation 5 will be released and they’ll have to remaster it immediately. Same with South Park: The Fractured but Whole which was announced in 2015 with trailers and images sporadically appearing throughout the years but the release constantly being pushed back. Then of course there’s the infamous Final Fantasy VII remake, getting repeatedly delayed every six months or so, I’ve almost given up caring about it.

I am no video game design expert by any means, I know that games take a long time to make and that some of the aforementioned games might have hit some technical flaws which have taken a while to be ironed out. But if that’s the case, then why release these impressive trailers only to release it years later when the hype has died down and people have forgotten about it? If the game isn’t finished yet (or very nearly finished), and there is potential that issues will be coming up with it, don’t release a big trailer! If you have to release anything maybe just share some of the new character art (“Check out Kratos’s new Norse-inspired look!”) or set up a Dev Blog to keep fans in the loop (“Hey, here’re some of the weapons we’re thinking of making available in Dead Island 2!”).

This might just be me but I like having a teaser and then a couple of months later a big trailer with a release date that I can put in my calendar and get more and more hyped up about the game as it gets closer to the date, then a few months from then the game actually comes out on the expected date and I can play it. Right now my process is more like: “ooh this game looks good” *a year later* “ooh this game looks good, can’t believe I haven’t heard about it before” *another year later* “wow where did this game everyone’s playing suddenly appear from? I can’t believe I’m only just hearing about this now”. This probably means that I have the memory of a goldfish more than anything else but you get my point.

There are of course some games that the long-term announcement approach works very well on. Look at Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That was announced in 2013 and throughout the years they consistently released images, trailers, and other information about the game that kept it top of mind. What they did at the same time though was release new Zelda games (A Link Between Worlds, Triforce Heroes) and remaster old ones (Majora’s Mask, some were still enjoying the remastered Ocarina of Time too at this point). Obviously most companies don’t have such a long legacy of games to do this with but the point is that they managed to keep Zelda fans satisfied by releasing more content as they worked on ‘the big one’ and it didn’t matter so much if it was delayed (if it was at all) because we were busy playing Majora’s Mask on our 3DS. Another good example is Overwatch, announced in 2014 and releasing images, storylines, the works along with it. Blizzard released World of Warcraft expansion pack Warlords of Draenor a few months after Overwatch was announced and then they released Legion a few months after Overwatch was released (probably knowing that it wasn’t going to be as popular as previous expansions, hence the close release dates) so they had lots of content and something going on consistently, keeping Blizzard fans hyped about something either way.

So there’s my latest rant, I feel a bit lighter now. I hope you lovely readers enjoy my ranting posts as they seem to be recurring.

Is there a game that you’re looking forward to being released but has a long wait time? Any fellow God of War fans out there waiting for 4?