I think I’m kind of a strange type of completionist, although that’s a sentence that sounds like I’m telling a date, “I’m not like all the other boys; I’mdifferent.” It’s just that Trophies and Achievements in games have never been that important to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I sure get a kick out of them! I like a little sound and pop-up telling me I’m so good, so very, very good. But they’ve never been really important. What is important to me as a completionist is seeingeverythingin a game and, worse, talking toeveryone.
It’s a type of careful completionism (Google Docs didn’t throw a red underline on that one, so I’m assuming it’s a real word) that sucks down time and, ironically, keeps me from completing anything. The harder I try to see it all, the less I see.
Games Have Too Many Things In Them These Days
To be clear, game companies are doing nothing wrong here. This is all my fault, and all a ‘me’ issue. It is good that games likeClair Obscur: Expedition 33andAvowedare bursting with things to do. They’re very different, but as both are ostensibly roleplaying games, they each have a lot of places to go and a lot of people to talk to. So whenever I enter a new area, I find myself not just looking for hidden items or the next cutscene, I’m also trying to talk to each individual person. All of them.
Anything that speaks, I want to have a conversation with.That’sthe obsession in my head. Perhaps this comes from my background as a writer who knows from experiencehow much work goes into every minor storylineor - hell - even just passing barks. Perhaps it’s because I value the story most in a lot of my games, so I want to get every scrap of info. I always want more lore, not more loot.
The problem here is that this attitude makes every single area takeforeverto complete. So, so long! Somehow it takes me more time to make my way through a small village, speaking with every person more than once to make sure their dialogue doesn’t change, than it does slashing through a standard dungeon. Which is absolutely stupid.
Because I also want to find every hidden dungeon and every corner of the map - again, not because it has some special enchanted ring at the end of the rainbow, but because I want to see every part of the game that the developers put in. Between dialogue and geography, I spend far more time aimlessly searching than I do what most would consider ‘playing through the damn thing’.
Gaming Needs The Little Moments
And that’s fine! For a while! Eventually, I get exhausted with talking to every classmate in every hallway everyday in aPersonagame. I get annoyed with myself for not moving things along faster. ‘This game is taking forever’ and ‘we need to talk to every person on every sidewalk’ seem to have a cause and effect relationship that my brain will never reduce down to, ‘You don’t need to hoover up every stray speck of flavor text’. I wish I could.
But I’m also someone who used to buyMagic: The Gatheringcards for the stories and the art and only got good at the gamelaterwhen other kids in class taught me. I make high Charisma, high Intelligence characters in both live and digital RPGs for a reason. My favorite type ofDungeons & Dragonssession is when the DM does voices and characters and fighting is down to a minimum. I want to reiterate, I don’t hate the gameplay, I just like (pretend to insert Spongebob rainbow meme dot jpg) the world!
In fact, to be completely fair, I’m probably making the gameplaylessfun by trying to do a 100 percent run on dialogue and little readable books found in chests. I’m probably making the storylesscompelling by stopping for hours and doing nothing between every important moment. I know that everyone is allowed to play a game the way they like it, and there’s no wrong way to experience something, and let people enjoy things, etc., etc.
But thisisaffecting how much I enjoy the game. I get bottlenecked. The more frustrated I get with talking to everyone, the less I want to play the game. Obviously, the less I want to play the game, the less likely it is I’ll ever actually see the ending. I, in effect, make the whole thing less fun by foisting absolutely nonsense expectations on myself. While nobody is watching or paying attention and it doesn’t matter.
It’s an obsession. I want to see every mountain and hear every person because, to me, a handcrafted world is fascinating. But wanting to both complete a 60+ hour story and verify I hear every line of dialogue and find every hidden easter egg for my own satisfaction are not completely compatible - at least for me. You’re probably better than me at games, which I’ve had to accept since most people are probably better than me at everything.
I could’ve been done with so many games by now if I just kept moving forward. There are so many titles I’ve left behind after spending too long in one place talking to the same characters. I lose interest via the very thing that I’m interested in. Between this, real-life jobs, and new releases I’ll also never finish, I have a graveyard of games that are 80 percent done. That’s stupid. That’s a skill issue and it’s on me. But it’s also something I have to work on.
So I am working on it. As silly as this sounds as I type it, I’m trying to be more mindful of my own time in a game. If I’m the chosen hero on an epic quest, perhaps my time is valuable? Hell, I don’t even speak with family members this much at holiday gatherings. I don’t need to discover every character that says a variation on, “Welcome to our town! There is an armor shop to the North!” And I don’t need to break the reality of the game by hearing guards all over a giant map say the same three lines in the same three voices.
I just love great writing. I loveinterestingwriting. I love feeling immersed within this world, participating in these peoples’ everyday lives. Even if they don’t have a quest for me, I’d rather hear their thoughts than not. I want it all and, unless I dedicate months to one game, it’s unlikely I’ll get it all.
Caring about seeing everything is fine and good. But, for the love of God, I need to do it with some moderation or I’ll never finish a game other thanDoom: The Dark Agesever again. Which, honestly, considering that one is pretty great, would not be the worst thing.
