Let me tell you a story in pictures.
That’s essentially what’s happened every time I’ve tried to play The Witcher 3 over the past month. I start the game, all excited to continue hunting for Ciri, then I open up my list of quests and just freeze, scrolling down for a few minutes before I sigh and switch over to Netflix.
I am suffering from sidequest paralysis. I’ve played some 40 hours of The Witcher 3 so far—enough to get to level 16—and I really like it (such good writing!), but every time I pick it up, I just get overwhelmed. There’s too much to do and I want to do everything, so I wind up doing nothing. It’s inexplicable. I can’t figure out whether this is happening because of some weird video game FOMO where I’m worried that I’ll start one quest but really want to be doing another, or because I don’t actually like the game that much and I’ve just convinced myself that I do. (The jankiness does drive me crazy.)
Or maybe I just prefer games that tell me what to do. Sometimes it’s nice to sit on the couch and just play through a linear story—something that doesn’t make you scroll through a giant list of sidequests and try to figure out what you’re in the mood to see next. (Good thing I just got a copy of Steins;Gate.)
I don’t know if there’s a solution to this sidequest paralysis—maybe I’ll just put the game down for a few months and see if I can revisit it one day—but I’m curious to hear your thoughts, Kotaku readers. Have you ever experienced this? What’s your solution?
You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter at @jasonschreier
