I’m not sure why exactly, but I just struggle to finish basically any game where there is a heavy focus on story.
I seem to get about 90% of the way through them and then just stop playing abruptly. I think sometimes I do that because I just play too much in too short of a time, so I burn myself out on it unintentionally because I’m just enjoying the story so much up to that point. Other times I seem to be able to tell where the story is going and I don’t like it, usually because it’s tragic and I don’t want to experience the tragedy I know is coming; It’s like this sense of dread overcomes me and I struggle to continue. Other times still, I seem to just know the end is coming and I don’t want it to end so I put it off and then forget that I was almost done with it.
Does anyone else do this? I feel bad for having not finished a ton of different games, even the ones I was really enjoying at one time.
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For me the biggest hurdle in these types of games are when I’m hit with the ‘completionist’ bug. I want to check every corner of the map, finish all the side quests - often burns me out before I can finish the actual story.
I feel the same. What does it even mean to finish a game anymore? There are so many things to explore, so many tiny tasks to accomplish. Did you have fun while you were playing? Do you want to start playing something else? Sounds like you finished the game.
That’s how I think about it anyway.
This phenomenon has pushed me into more “railroaded” or “theme park ride” games recently. It Takes Two and Hi-Fi Rush really shepherd you along the story path. You can poke around the room you’re in, but compared to more open world games, it’s much easier to keep yourself pointed toward the next story point.
I can still have fun with open world games, but I think I appreciate smaller ones more.
Long term I’m going to have much better memories of the 30 hours I put into Sable than I am the 200 or whatever it is of TotK.
Seriously, people should try sable. It’s like a toned down botw in the desert without combat. Such a super chill game with an interesting world.
Yes, same here. I have the last mission (I think, “Meet Hannako at Embers”) in Cyberpunk still to do and I pick it up and do a handful of side quests every few months. Maybe I’ll finish it, eventually.
Same, that often keeps me from finishing open world games
oh yeah 100%. I get super into collecting all the little knick-knacks, realize how boring it is, and give up the whole game. Including Zelda, sorry not sorry
Yeah same here. I have found myself playing almost entirely sandbox games these last few years. Where there isn’t really and end goal (or at least one I’m not required to complete) and I just get to build something or manage resources, etc.
That’s also my case, open-world games that are actually open-world. Mostly Minecraft. And I’ve tried FPS games, they’re too hard for me and I die too much in them. (And in most of them these days the “meta” changes every 3 milliseconds so strategy is impossible)
That, and online chess, though I have ADHD so I’m restricted to the really long time controls like 15 minutes with 10-second increment and therefore stand no chance against 90% of players I meet IRL and friend on chess.com since nobody wants to play anything longer than blitz these days and they always insist on 3 minutes unless I randomly challenge some complete stranger who often doesn’t even live in my home country. Of the many 3-minute “blitz” games I’ve embarrassed myself in, both online and IRL, only in like 5 did I last more than 15 moves, only in 3 did I not lose on time and and only in one did I actually win.
This is exactly where I’m at with spiderman ps4. I cleared out the map but never finished the story, now if I go back I will be nowhere near as good as I used to be, so it remains unfinished
I can count on one hand the number of games I’ve finished in the last 4-5 years. Off the top of my head
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- Spider-Man (PS4)
- Red Dead Redemption II
- L.A. Noire
- Middle Earth: Shadow of War
Games I stopped playing:
- Horizon: Zero Dawn (PC)
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Disco Elysium (I know. right.)
- DEATHLOOP
- Spider-Man: Remastered (PC)
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
- Divinity: Original Sin II
- Dying Light 2
- Half Life - Alyx
- Boneworks
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (I think I did complete this game once when I was 14 or so)
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Fallout 4 (I did complete the story to this a long time ago but I wanted to give it another go a couple years back)
I played Horizon: Zero Dawn once and kinda dropped it after a few hours. Came back a year or so later and got into it just for a bug preventing me reaching the final stage. Fuck that game.
Also Mass Effect Andromeda bugged out after like half the game to the point I had to restart. Didn’t touch it anymore. Then I played the OT remaster (which didn’t allow me to proceed to the last ten minutes of story because some progress saving bullshit or something similar, can’t say for sure anymore). After that I replayed Andromeda and liked it as a ME game although it’s pretty mid but then my TV broke and I didn’t replace it as I’m kinda not needing my PS because I became way more active. Would be nice to finish a ME story for once tho.
Yeah I struggle too. For me the problem happens because I have a limited amount of time to play, and if I have any large gaps between playtime I’m likely to start the game from the beginning to start fresh.
It’s also why I really appreciate recaps on load screens, like with dragon quest XI.
Quitting because I don’t want to deal with an unpleasant ending I can see coming, and sometimes just because the end is coming at all, is a huge problem for me. Games, anime, manga, books (when I still had the ability to concentrate enough to read books, anyway)… I have some kind of deep-seated issue with endings. It’s ridiculous.
I skip boring cutscenes and all sidequests, I found it’s the only way I can chain together regular sessions. If I’m not really having fun, due to feeding my completion obsession, then it turns into a chore and I just quit.
My reason to play is for having fun, so I only do what entertains me.
When you say 90% if you mean that literally, then you might be like I was as a teen. Basically when I unlocked what was the final dungeon I would stop playing, it wasn’t because I was burnt out on the gameplay though but the opposite. The story had a finite end, the story could basically be inferred and I was no longer interested.
The thing is because I never got closure I thought about some of those games alot and would often replay them so when I went to university I ended up going through most of the games from my child and teen years and getting closure and it feels great to be honest.
Yeah that’s definitely how I am. I can tell what’s coming and so I maybe just lose the “need” to complete the game.
I did that with Morrowind finally last year and just had an amazing time playing through it all the way.
It’s very rare these days that I finish a game but I try not to worry about it. I don’t want to force myself - at that point it just becomes work/a chore
Same. Honestly, I’m here for the gameplay. I appreciate a bit of background story, but when there’s too much reading and cut scenes, I get bored.
I think a lot of games struggle in their final act. Often it feels like cut content forces writers and developers into conclusions that are unsatisfying because they feel rushed and incomplete. So maybe you’re just playing the good bits? Think of the last game you played where the ending felt truly satisfying. Doesn’t help that everyone’s trying to shoehorn live service microtransaction bullshit into their games.
I can only think of two games in the last couple years where I’m glad I finished it—Outer Wilds and Hi-Fi Rush. Probably no coincidence they don’t have micro transactions or indefinite online play
I wonder how much of the “weak ending” stuff is almost by design, though. You look at the Steam stats (or console achievements, whatever) of any narrative game, and something like 5% of players finish it. I wonder if developers just intentionally spend more time on the earlier parts of the game since they know more people will see it.
Dragon Age: Origins is an example of a really good story-driven game. Any time I play it, I usually quit shortly after the Landsmeet. I feel like the whole Archdemon part of the story is really just a neat MacGuffin, so actually mobilizing and fighting it is really just a huge letdown.
I usually finish games, but I don’t really have that completionist mindset. I only play as much as I feel like. Often I come to a point where I want to wrap the game up and just rush through to the ending, not caring about side quests or whatever.
It doesn’t happen to me because I usually only play one game per time, at my very slow pace (I am a patient gamer after all) so I don’t get burn out.
When I’m feeling tired about a heavy story game I usually play something light like Mario Kart, Animal Crossing or your favorite multiplayer game, that way I avoid the burn out.
And well, this is a hobby after all, if you feel no other gaming workarounds/habits works for you you can always switch to another hobby, watch a movie, tv show, anime, read a book, go for a walk, or ultimately for me, go to Lemmy lol.
Hope it helps a bit.
I’m the same way, still working on finishing rdr2
RDR2 is actually one of the few games I have finished in the last few years.
I’ve actually gone hard the opposite direction… I used to just skip all the story because I didn’t care. Idk what that took out of my game experience, but considering I started gaming in the early 90s, probably not much…
Idk what changed either, but I’m finding it much easier to play story heavy games (as long as I would like them entirely without the story), and even really huge story heavy games… not always to completion, but usually as close as I can get.
But I do heavily intersperse them with fluffier games, because too much long story is still very draining. I managed to binge forbidden west to the point that when I downloaded the dlc, I abandoned the game (I know I’ll go back to it eventually, I love the mechanics, but I talk to everyone and go through every dialogue option, and that’s just a lot). But I’ve also played a number of others that I didn’t collapse in upon myself by the end, so I think it’s the burnout that keeps me from finishing them (exact same reason I used to skip all the story - it’s tiring when you just want to play).
Oh man, literally me. Stopped playing Fallout: BoS standing with the nuke in front of vault door. Didn’t learn the finale until years later when I watched it on YouTube. I just always assumed I just don’t want the story to end.
