4mo ago

My relationship with long videogames

In the past I couldn't, for the life of me, commit myself to playing long games (i.e. 30+ hours) because I fell out of interest and dropped the game.

Lately I started playing two "long" (always keep in mind that this adjective is used by my perspective) games: Red Dead Redemption 2 and Mass Effect 1 (the legendary edition) and weirdly enough, seems like they're sticking with me because I'm alternating one or another throughout the gaming sessions.

I don't know if this pattern will be able to help me with other games as well or if it's just peculiar to those two specific games but I'm crossing my fingers 🤞

Have any of you had a similar experience?

Gaming #Videogames #RedDeadRedemption2 #RDR2 #MassEffect #ME

11 comments

@innkeeper @thegamertavern
I've spent hours in countless RPGs, opening every chest, uncovering every small black spot on every map, pushing the "use/talk/open" button on every single pixel of every empty room, cave, dead end. All this just for these few moments of priceless satisfaction where I got my hands on something that I hadn't found before. "Before" meaning the 2-3 times I already completed that game, doing exactly so, to see every possible path to the ending credits. Call me what you want. Haha 😂😂.
- @LynxounetFR @thegamertavern
  I'm not going to call you anything but I'm colouring myself envious of such commitment!
  I remember doing the same when I was a kid (and, I daresay, with far less choices than nowadays) with a few titles, but that's gone. If I'm playing a game with multiple endings for example, I'll finish it once (if!) and then I'd look up the various endings upon the internet.
  Maybe it's just a habit thing, maybe not
  
  @innkeeper @thegamertavern
  Everyone has his/her own thing that get him/her to play a specific game. I like to discover a lot of what the game has to offer and think about riddles, plan ahead strategies and learn about the lore. Some like challenge, PvP or collecting cosmetics. They are quizz on the internet that give profiles and even game recommendations, I found some to be quite accurate actually. At least about me.
@innkeeper @thegamertavern
Same for the longest time - I just didn't have patience for long games until Baldurs Gate 3 which grabbed me because of the story and characters. Dragon Age Veilguard (not as long as BG3 but still 80+ hours if you do the side quests) is the same.
If a game is long and repetitive, filled with fetch quests and not much plot I lose interest quickly, but a well-crafted story will keep me hooked.
I still like to play in short sessions, a couple hours at a time, which helps break the long games up into "chapters" and make them feel less like a slog.
- @therivercrow @innkeeper @thegamertavern Fetch quests- this is exactly it! I loved Dying Light for a long time but the game quickly became fetch this, fetch that, make me a cuppa tea, give this guy a foot rub etc etc and it just turned me right off the game faster than I picked it up, which is a real shame.
  
  @harrybo @innkeeper @thegamertavern
  yeah, there was a real trend a few years ago of padding rpgs out with pointless busy-quests to make the game seem bigger than it needed to be. I think that's starting to be less of a thing which is nice. I'd rather play a 40 hour well told narrative than 100 hours of "go and find me 10 doohickeys".
- @therivercrow @thegamertavern I should try playing again (but not exclusively ) Baldur's Gate 3 and see if that's the case, it's a game I started playing several times and every time managed to drop off from 😅
  
  @innkeeper @thegamertavern
  It's a big game and can get overwhelming, so I definitely recommend breaking it up into small achievable things. When your characters need a long rest, take one yourself!
  But it is soooooo good though!
I have tonnes of unfinished games - sometimes there's a difficulty spike three quarters of the way through, and I don't have the time to invest in passing it, or you're too busy to play for a while and then can't remember what was going on or what you were doing next - and also, as you say, you can just get bored of one for a while.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an exception for me. I stopped playing that because the next mission is to rescue someone from prison, and I didn't want to. I occasionally start it up to go hunting or fishing etc.
@innkeeper @thegamertavern I play quite a few long games, but I never finish all of them-or they're the type that aren't meant to be finished.
Case in point: Skyrim. That game lives as long as interest lives. Even if I finish the main quest, there are dozens more left untouched or waiting to be downloaded.
Stories eternal!

11 comments