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About Ghost of Tsushima...
I've been thinking a while about this, and finally feels like I can put it into words.
This game made me realize I no longer enjoy playing open world/sandbox style games. And while I've played a lot of these and still have some to play, it's a type of game I would start avoiding like the plague. My break point was back when I finished AC 2. I enjoyed the shit out that game, and, having purchased the Trilogy bundle on PS3, I figured it was best to keep riding that high, and started with Brotherhood. Boy, what a letdown.
The map felt 10x bigger than 2, the story, already bloated and all over the place, was everywhere and way more present, and although the color palette was improved, it was the same game. The fact that solidified this was when Ezio started to complain about feeling old and how all of his body hurt. Man, if that wasn't some foreshadowing, I don't know what it was.
And thus, from that moment, open world games seemed to be the less interesting lot to me. They feel generic, empty, boring and over saturated. Ghost of Tsushima highlitghed that with a billboard and a full orchestra playing by the side! And I know it's a good game, I'm actually enjoying the moment to moment gameplay and narrative, the combat scenes and the characters. But the fact that, after having to travel from point A to B (yes, fast travel exists, but not for every situation), you are required to go to point C, D, and Z in missions, and still keep engaged, it's a bit too much. At least for me. I've had situations where you are required to follow an NPC, some environmental stimulus appears on screen to remind you "hey, there's this thing here", start following that, and suddenly the game doesn't like it and forces you to "go back to the mission area, you doofus, you can't be exploring this rich world we're offering, because you accepted to go deliver some stuff to this person".
-"But GoT, it's just 30 seconds, it's not gonna take too long, and I don't want to revisit an area that I'm not planning to come back in the future for just the one thing".
-"Nope, too long!! You signed a contract with this person, if you don't deliver their shit they'll die waiting!!! You'll kill the people of Tsushima with that attitude!!"
Anyway, that's it. Thanks for reading if you did. The ending got a little weird, tbh.
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I think any type of game can get boring after a while, especially if you play solely that type of game over a long period of time. That's whether it's open-world or not. Open-world games in particular can often feel devoided of "life" or an actual focus to them when you have so many tasks to do at hand at any given moment. I wouldn't say they are a type of game I favor over others, but every now and then I try to switch things around and try other more focused experiences to keep the fun going. Like, say, if you're doing an open-world game, mix it up with a fighting or rhythm game on the side. And once you're done with the open-world one, jump into something that's not an open-world title.
Last year I did the whole GTA trilogy of games on PS2 back to back and man, was that exhausting. 😅 The games are fun, somewhat dated but still fun. But playing all of them in quick succession certainly felt tiresome.
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