It’s Hard to Say Goodbye (to an Open World)

Last night, the day after posting a monthly recap in which I lamented the fact that I hadn’t finished any games in January, I “finished” Horizon Forbidden West.

But what does “finished” even mean with an open world game? With more linear games, you complete the story, maybe see a literal “The End” screen, the credits roll and then you are returned to the title screen. Not here and not with a lot of open world games. Instead you complete the last quest, the credits roll, and then you bounce back into the game with your character standing there with a “Now what?” expression on their face.

Generally speaking this is a good thing. Now you have all the toys and skills and the world becomes your playground. But for me at least, it makes putting the game aside a bit of a struggle. I was looking forward to finishing HFW because I have so many other games I want to play but now that I’m done, I’m finding it tough to say goodbye to Aloy and the world.

Specifically here is what I’ve completed:

Trophies

All in all I earned 58 of 80 trophies.
I missed 9 in the main game
I missed 10 in the DLC
I missed 3 in the New Game+ section (one of which is finish New Game+ at Ultra Hard difficulty…yeah no thanks)

The World

Finished the main quest of the main game
Finished the main quest of the DLC
Finished every Side Quest that I found
I did NOT uncover all of the world. There are still parts of the map covered in ‘fog’

Character Development

I’m well beyond the level cap
I’ve earned every skill I’m interested in, though there are some that could be upgraded a bit more
I have good gear, but not the best gear, and not all of it is upgraded fully (but it was up to the challenge of the final boss)

Activities

I did not complete the fighting rings
I did not complete the hunting grounds
I did not complete the machine races
I did not play the in-game board game, Machine Strike
I didn’t even ‘solve’ all the cauldrons

The first 3 of these Activities are all time based and I HATE time pressure so I just opted to ignore them. Machine Strike just didn’t appeal to me (I never find games inside other games to be too compelling) and the cauldrons, I just didn’t get around to doing.

Next Steps

So what’s next?

1) I could just not play anymore and be done for now
2) I could chase Trophies though several of them are based on the activities I didn’t do because I didn’t like them
3) I could explore the parts of the map I missed just to see what is there
4) I could start a New Game+

So which will I choose? I’m still not sure. Currently Aloy is back at her base, safe and warm. I always tend to take characters “home” when I’m done with an open world game. It’s weird, I know. I am pretty confident I am NOT up for New Game+ right now but the rest… well we’ll see. I have 112 hours on my current save and more in total since I re-started a couple of times. Seems like it should be enough. On the other hand it has been FOUR years since I earned a Platinum Trophy and doing so here seems plausible.

But…all those other games are waiting to be played.

Just not sure what I’ll do yet. Breaking up with an open world is hard to do. Am I the only one that has this problem?

[Image above is Seyka, not Aloy. Seyka is one of the main characters you meet in the Burning Shores DLC. I liked her a lot.]

 

3 thoughts on “It’s Hard to Say Goodbye (to an Open World)

  1. I end most sessions in most games by taking my characters home or at least to a spot that looks comfortable enough to spend the night. It seems like the right thing to do and on a practical level it saves me having to spend the first few seconds of every new session figuring out where the heck I am.

    1. I’m glad it isn’t only me. Though I have to confess I don’t think about the practical applications but do it more because it seems like the right thing to do. 🙂

  2. My general approach to open world (and open world adjacent games) runs something as follows:

    1) DO ALL THE THINGS!!1!
    2) Realise: There are too many things to do ALL THE THINGS, and start (more or less) beelining the main story.
    3) Quit.

    Having said that; it’s funny reading Bhag’s response above re: taking the character home, because I did that in God of War (2018) not having any idea it would ‘do’ anything, it just felt right, and the game did reward that.

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