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How did you ruin a game for yourself?
Maybe you spoiled the story.
Maybe you min-maxed the fun out of it.
Maybe you played it SO much that eventually its tiny little flaws were all you could see.
Maybe you spent so much time excitedly modding it that, when it came time to finally play it, the fire was out.
Whatever the reason: what was the game, and how did you ruin it for yourself?
This is always how I ruin almost every game that I play for myself: I have an existential thought.
I play them until I remember that everything I do within the game is futile because it's just a game and has no bearing on anything.
And, yes, this sometimes happens with life experiences.
So I ruin games with nihilism.
Werner Herzog and I would clearly be pals.
That's just a matter of scope. Zoom out enough and nothing you do makes much more of a difference than anything else.
Werner Herzog is fine and all, but it sounds like you should become better friends with Jean-Paul Sartre.
My mother used to say the same thing about Sartre.
And, yes, I've done that zooming out plenty of times before. It's not been good for my health.
I feel most alive when I zoom in, but I've got the kind of brain chemistry that can and will stare at a painting or swirl mud in a puddle for minutes. Similarly with how my brain works, focusing on the fractally infinite wealth of the raw experience of being alive makes me grateful that it's happening.
This is similar what happened to Stardew Valley for me. I played it obsessively for maybe 2 weeks, until I had the thought: I could be working more (freelanced) to earn more real money, make more plans to hang out with my real friends, have more real plants to garden, etc.. and once I thought that, that game didn't interest me again.
"Real" is a trap, all experiences pass the same. You don't need a physical trophy for your time to have value.
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Until you make friends playing the game. Or until you play a game that teaches you history or some useful skill.
This is part of why I play games in Japanese now. It feels more productive to improve my Japanese while gaming.
I got frustrated with the puzzles near the end of Blue Prince, and once I looked up one answer, it was suddenly a box-ticking exercise rather than something where the seeds of curiosity became the jewels of discovery.
Try to 100% it on first play through. Always sucks the fun out of it for me.
...300 hours later
Well, looks like the only thing left is the final boss!
...
I wonder what's on twitch
I played Valheim then used a cheat code for a big ship and it ruined it for me. I just couldn’t get into it after that, it just felt pointless. Shame, I really enjoyed it before. Serves me right for using cheat codes!
I did exactly the same thing with GTA III. I was actively playing the game for multiple hours every day and having a blast with it.
I spawned in some tanks, messed around for 15 minutes, and never touched it again.
Here’s a throwback for you: I learned how to skip straight to the end of Myst on an AOL message board back in the ‘90s.
Spoilers
Turns out, all the solving puzzles to travel to other ages, where you solve more puzzles to collect red/blue pages, then return to deliver them to their corresponding books… all that does is lead to a point where one of the trapped brothers tells you a secret page number in a book on the shelf in the library, where you’ll find a pattern you can enter on the panel in the fireplace, which opens a secret compartment to the endgame.
Or you can just get the pattern on an AOL message board, go straight for the fireplace and beat the game instantly. Literally all the puzzles in the game are skippable.
I eventually returned to Myst, years later, with the goal of solving all the puzzles and experiencing things the right way (and it was worth it), but for a long time I was so put off by the feeling that none of it really “mattered” that I couldn’t enjoy the game. I don’t know why it affected me more than all the games with cheat codes that do effectively the same thing. I think it was because the solution is right there the whole time and the only thing keeping you from it is a bit of knowledge that you can learn outside the game. I know that was an intentional design choice but it’s always struck me (albeit irrationally) as inelegant, and cheap.
I really love that about the game. This design choice makes it a tiny bit less like a game and a bit more like reality. Like removing invisible walls from an open world game.
In my opinion if you just wanted to finish the game and just want the answer it might not be your kind of game. Although I can understand that you might have enjoyed it if forced to really play through to complete it.
It’s my kind of game! At least today it is, some 30 years on. I definitely didn’t have mindset for it back then, when I was a kid. I’m glad I gave it another try when I was older!
Outer wilds scratches a similar itch, definitely worth a peep!
Same spoilers as the above post.
To be fair, the notion of what counts as "completing" a game is, to some level, not strictly defined. If you define it as "reaching the credits", then perhaps it stops meaning much of anything in this case. But if you define it as "completing the content in the game", then, honestly, nothing really changes here. You could just say the "end point" is when you receive the code!
Games are a lot more than just reaching an ending - they're about all the things in between. I wouldn't say it counts as "completing Myst" in any meaningful way if the player hasn't actually completed any of the game's content. For example, on speedrun.com, while there is an Any% category that indeed can be completed in under a minute, many of the runs instead are for the "All Pages" category, which in my view is a much more impressive accomplishment.
There's been a few games I've gotten notably deep into, took a break from to play something with some friends, and then just failed to return to. Now, I can't bring myself to complete because I was too far into it to want to redo everything, but at the same time it's been so long that the story will be lost on me or the mechanics impossible without restarting. So, you might say I've ruined those.
Consequentially, this has prevented me from playing some games until I'm full and ready to play from start to end. I was looking forward to Hollow Knight even before I started seeing the internet go wild about it, yet it remains in my library untouched. Maybe someday, maybe someday...
Hollow Knight is exactly the game that did this to me. It’s beautiful, and exploring the map is thrilling, in fact I would only play this game in pitch black darkness to enhance the atmosphere, but eventually I hit a skill plateau and wasn’t able to advance any further because there bosses I just couldn’t beat, and eventually I drifted away from the game and when I tried to go back to it my skills had deteriorated even more and I realized that sadly this game will be a Did Not Finish for me. At least it made the wait for Silksong easier 😅
This is what continuously happens to me with Elden Ring. I get 85% of the way done, take a break, and then can't manage at all. I absolutely loved the game but I don't have fun with cheese builds and I'm not good enough to play the way I want to. So I think I'm fine leaving it where it is.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
I almost ruined this game for myself.
And it’s funny that I found this thread now after what happened yesterday...
So, years ago, I played Breath of the Wild on my sister’s Switch. I never owned a Switch. I played through the main quest of the game in about 40 hours, got to experience the main story line, and that was it.
Fast forward to this year, and I was able to buy a Switch 2, the first console I owned in many, many years.
I bought the Switch 2 edition of Tears of the Kingdom and thought that now that I’m not constrained on time for how long I can play the game, I can attempt to complete it to 100%.
It seems that Nintendo has caught onto the fact that completionists are a group of people that exists, because they released this companion “app” to both Zelda games via the Nintendo Switch app, which among other features, includes a map with all the collectibles that you can possibly obtain in the game and more. You can connect the app to your Switch 2 while you’re playing so that it will display your current location on your phone. It’s excellently implemented. I have used it a bunch already.
So, at first, I played through the main storyline, right? I did everything right up until the final boss. Again, it took me close to 50 hours. I wanted to leave that final boss for later though. So, once I got to this point, I began using the app to go around and systematically complete all the other objectives.
But yesterday, after more than 60 hours of gameplay, I began feeling a little burnt out. So, instead, I just went to a certain location in the game and started to do a bunch of random side quests without relying on the app guide.
And would you believe it? I immediately felt like I was enjoying the game again.
So, my conclusion is that, as much as I would like to be a completionist, my mind just doesn’t work in a way that makes that a reasonable objective today. It was easy to be a completionist in the late 90s, when I played Super Mario 64, for example, and got all 120 stars. There just wasn’t that much to do in one game, so it felt less like a repetitive grind. But the modern games that I want to play these days have become so large, that it begins to feel like a chore when I try to complete them, rather than a fun activity, especially if I have to use any “external” guide to do it.
So, today, after work, when I sit down to play, I will ignore the companion app and just play the game on my own terms. If I never complete it to 100%, so be it. It cost me $80. I have played it for more than 60 hours already, and I know that I still have at least another 40 if not more before I feel like I want to play something else. I think that’s already more than a good enough return on my investment.
It’s OK to die without completing the games that I own.
lol
I need to repeat this to myself more often.
Woah, that’s a lot of time. Good on you for having such a lofty goal, and for knowing when to toss it!
I’m also replying since my answer is the same game, but much different story. During Covid, I bought a Switch lite and played through Breath of the Wild. It was such a great experience! I felt sort of like I was done with the Switch after that, so I sold it and moved on, regardless of the pending sequel.
Fast forward to the day before Tears of the Kingdom launched, a week after my 35th birthday. Knowing I had no Switch and no plans, I went on YouTube and watched all the cutscenes for the game because I wanted to know the story. I didn’t quite finish, so I left the end for after work the next day (launch day). My wife came home, while I am sitting and finishing up, with a surprise OLED Switch as a late birthday present!
So, I hooked it up and played Mario Party with my kids, then finished the YouTube video. I was basically at the end and had spoiled the majority of story (like, maybe in the final cutscene or boss) - oh well, story spoiled. Took a few months to decide if I even wanted the game after that, then when I finally got it, I had trouble vibing with no story to pull me along.
After a bunch of starts and stops, I did eventually push through a bit to where I enjoyed playing, and I completed the main game. Great experience overall playing, but I sure got bored at the cutscenes.
For a boardgame version, ticket to ride, once I realized I can ignore all mechanics and focus on longer routes its ruined. You can force yourself to focus on them, but then it feels awkward, because some routes will be randomly better.
Recently we had another game, dont remember the name, where you have to guess a character portrait between a list, and some gives clues saying they are either like or aren't like a certain portrait,but cannot give more clues. It becomes trivial if you made a system like first card is sex, second is hair color, etc
For TTR, depending on which version you're playing, longer routes are not always better. Even when longer routes are "better", there are counter strategies.
At the risk of ruining it even further for you...
Blocking opponent's routes is a viable strategy. Taken to the extreme, you can choose low-point route cards from your opening hand and only block opponent's routes, losing the points from your cards, but making up for it by placing trains quickly and making your opponents fail their higher-point routes.
The counter to that is to take a lot of small, short routes, which are much more difficult to disrupt. And then the counter to short routes is taking long routes (like you've already discovered).
A lot of people don't think purposely blocking is in the spirit of the game, or dislike negative interactions like that, but I think it's actually required. Instead of just "long routes are better than short routes", it sets up a rock/paper/scissors dynamic that might make one strategy dominant for a specific game, but won't necessarily be repeatable in the same playgroup.
I don't think that would work on the American version since the route itself gives very little points in comparison to just placing long segments, but I guess it would work on the others.
If you miss how ticket to ride felt when it was new to you or are just looking for something else that does what it did (or something similar) but better, I recommend checking out this video recommending games to replace it with
That's awesome thanks! Big fan of railroad ink, will check the others
I played Minecraft a lot years and years ago, had a nice little survival save file. It wasn't fancy but it was fun enough, and I was proud of my little house. Even after I left my house and got horribly lost, I was still proud and wanted to find it again.
Then I joined a server where a bunch of people had mods. The main one I wanted: flying. Because I loved to build in the sky, and I kept falling to my death on accident. I changed the crouch button to Caps Lock because you wouldn't fall off edges when crouching and Caps Lock kept it permanent, but I still wanted to fly.
Problem was I had a Mac, which made installing mods trickier than on Windows. In the end, my attempts to install the mod borked some files and deleted my survival file. So I started a new one since I lost track of the house anyway... Then tried to install the mod again, and the same thing happened.
I remember a line from Bennet Foddy in Getting Over It about how starting over is so much harder and more demoralizing than starting from scratch, and that absolutely applied there. I stopped playing single-player survival altogether, and one of the server mods graciously gave me Creative mode just so I could fly and stop falling to my death. When I joined another Survival-focused server from the same community later, I'd forgotten most of the basics and had to check the wiki so I wouldn't starve.
Even now years and years later, I have little motivation to get back into it despite a good friend being a very avid player. I think that experience just soured the little passion I had.
Tunic.
Not by looking anything up, but just being obtuse. I misread the tell on the first door and thought I needed to ring a third bell and was just missing a path, especially since I saw some unexplored area.
No.
I eventually walked up to the door and ventured through, unimpeded.
I tried to keep playing after that, but I was just frustrated about misreading that, I had spent a lot of time hunting for the third bell after all. I also didn't want to misread another tell either or look stuff up so I just stopped playing.
Also Tunic here, because I'd lost my notebook and refused to make notes at the time. Wasn't really "ruined", but the deeper stuff basically requires using notes.
I have ruined a whole bunch of Minecraft runs by deciding to cheat in one way or another. Sometime it's spawning in some resources to cut down on grind. Sometimes it's using TP to get to my stuff after dying because I can't be bothered to travel the distance. But every time, the cheating eventually eats away at the fun until I quit. Over the years I have learned restraint, and now I just never cheat as a rule (not even a little bit).
But I also have one non-cheating example. I was just hitting my stride in Create Astral (a Minecraft progression modpack focused on the Create mod). I was trying to figure out how to work with a certain mechanism (IIRC it was an automated cobble works), so I spun up a flat world in creative to tinker with things. Once I was satisfied, I quit the world and went to delete the test instance. But I wasn't paying close attention, and I accidentally deleted my survival world instead. I was just far enough into the game that the thought of starting over just killed the whole thing for me. So I just walked away from the computer and moped for a few hours. I've never had the motivation for that modpack return. :(
I have given up on a world before due to dying and not knowing where I was and lost all my good gear
That's basically why I almost exclusively play with keepinventory enabled. Whenever I don't, it kills gameplay for me because I get stressed about losing things I spent a lot of effort on, so I carry nothing on me all the time instead (a la tildes minecraft server)
At some point, I really started to notice the 'win fight, lose in cutscene' trope, and it's ruined so many RPGs for me. Once you start paying attention, it's everywhere and it's so frustrating. Why do they do this?
They used to do fights you couldn't win before those cutscenes, and more people hated that.
Tales of Symphonia had several unwinnable fights that you could technically win, altering the cutscene after and doing some minor changes in the process.
Wish more games did this but it's pretty rare
Just recently, I ruined Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 by going on a trip.
I didn't really have a choice in the trip and it had occurred to me that I shouldn't start playing the game until after my trip, because this could happen, but yup, here we are. I played about 30-hours leading up to my trip and then on my trip itself, had no time or interest in playing much of anything. I did jump back in to Transport Fever 2 during the trip when I had a bit of downtime, but upon returning home, I have zero motivation to play KCD2 and instead have jumped back into my 130-hour play of Transport Fever 2 still.
I'm disappointed, because I bought the game several months ago and saved it for when I felt ready to start, which I did two weeks ago. Now, I'm just sick of it. I don't want to listen to people talk, I don't want to explore anything, I'm just bored.
Most games that have some sort of building/automation mechanic.
I love games like that, but eventually, I automate everything possible and run a huge operation that I then have to plan out the next phase for, and at a certain point it just becomes work. I no longer am enjoying myself, I'm fixing problems and opening spreadsheets to plan things and optimizing stuff. That stuff might be enjoyable in some other context, but ultimately I'm doing all of that just to watch number go up in a game.
If I was getting produce I could eat, or money in my bank account, or some other tangible reward, I'd be enjoying myself, but for me it's just too much effort to invest into a fake world that doesn't really mean anything or help me in any way.
I stopped playing Satisfactory for this very reason. There seems to be some tipping point where the scale of things is just too much and it starts to feel "heavy" to me.
Interestingly, I think what you described in the second paragraph is exactly why I don't get tired of Minecraft (modded or vanilla). All of the automations usually serve to actually produce some block or resource that I need in game for other things, so it never feels like automation for automation's sake.
That's around nuclear power for me in Satisfactory. Because it turns into a game where I'm planning more than I'm actually playing. It doesn't feel that way with regular production items, Space Elevator items though feel exceedingly pointless.
Elevator items are complex production chains with high input requirements and since you can't use them you create them for the total benefit of... Nothing. I dislike them in the first tiers, I actively avoid them around nuclear. It's just a shame progression is gated by them so you're forced to build them at some point, but it always ends up being the last thing I do after already creating everything else.
Yep, that's exactly where I quit. I had just finished a massive fuel power plant and moved into the last space elevator phase. I started looking at what I was going to need to continue, realized I needed a lot more power, and closed the game. I've loaded the game a few times since but just can't muster the energy to continue.
Edit: ha, just realized my unintentional pun. 😂
Dark Souls 1.
I have a wierd thing, where I want to finish every Fromsoft souls game I play at least once with the Moonlight Greatsword. So, when I arrived at Seeth the Scaleless, I obviously tried my best to cut his tail and get the sword (I knew how to get it from various challenge runs I watched). But I didn't manage to. I tried over and over again, but couldn't cut the tail. Eventually I just lost motivation to play the game.
I even thought about asking someone to drop me the weapon.
Anyways, if anyone has tips on how to get that thing, please let me know.
It's a very difficult tail cut. The best opportunity to get it is right at the beginning of the fight. You'll need an attack that can hit big and fast, so consider a powerful spell or greatsword. Buffing up with something like Power Within will increase your chances.
My approach is to avoid breaking the crystal directly. Instead, lure Seath over and let him line up a shot to destroy it. This puts him directly into a stun animation which allows you some time to run past him and get one or two shots in. Aim for the very tip of the tail (the center back tendril), and try to avoid getting caught on his other tendrils/legs. I'd suggest not using lock on here -- which is also true for most DS1 bosses.
If you miss that opening, it becomes much more difficult. He pivots on a dime and does very large damage with his "back punish" attacks. Even when overleveled, it's easy to get smushed or cursed. So I'd suggest just quitting to menu and trying again. That will put you back outside the fog wall, and reset the fight to its initial state. Hope you killed the clams!
Thank you. I'll try it this way.
Haha I worked hard to get that tail too. And then I never used it once. One of my stronger memories of my dark souls play throughs. I stuck with the claymore the entire time once I got it about a third of the way through or so.
World of Warcraft...
I quit in 2018 after ~350 days played. I ruined the game for myself by comparing it to a crack addiction. I've used this comparison many times to some friends who asked me to come back or asked me why I stopped.
Now, I cannot go back because it will be like officializing the fact that I'm an addict.
I really love the game...I so much wish I could just play it for like 3 months and stop, but I know what crack is. It's impossible.
Similarly for me is Final Fantasy XI. It's a hugely meaningful game to me, I have an emotional attachment to my main character, but I can't play it for only a short time each day, or when I have free time. Any time I play it it's the only thing I think about, I spend the time I'm not playing planning what I'm going to do when I do play it, I have dreams about it, I will literally sit there doing nothing on it rather than do anything else.
This wasn't as much of a problem when I didn't have any serious responsibilities, but I have a baby now. Either I would neglect my duties as a parent, or I would not get the enjoyment out of playing that I'm hoping for - I can sit and hope it would just be the latter but I'm not willing to find out.
Ultima Online.
When I was a kid I saved up and bought Ultima Online only to find out about the subscription. Kid me did not understand how that was even a thing. I could not afford the extra cost and never installed it. My ignorance and naivete ruined the entire Ultima series for me.
The old LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle (the original 1995 version).
I'd asked for it for Christmas; the copy I received came with the walk-through book. Once I got a little stuck and referred to the book, it snowballed, and I started referring to the book every time I got stuck, even just a little.
It turned what had been an enjoyable game into a visual novel, which was not what I wanted. I try very hard to avoid puzzle solutions for games now.
Depending on the game, I'll give myself thirty minutes. Not like "start a timer when I reach a puzzle" but once I get to the "Alright, what?" moment, I've got thirty minutes.
If I can't find an in-game solution, I'll look for a guide to get myself back on track. Often times it's "Remember that thing you clicked on a half hour ago? Now when you click on it for the seventh time, you'll get new dialogue."
Eventually, I'll give up on a puzzle when playing now. I'll look at a guide, and more than half the time, I'll say, "that's stupid; how was I supposed to figure that out?" I'm generally pretty good at puzzles, so if I'm truly stumped, its generally, genuinely, a stupid puzzle. The rest of the time, I'll get mad at myself for not realizing the solution.
I did have to quit playing Myst (the original version that came on a CD-ROM with a soundcard I'd bought) at one point; in the spaceship, where you have to set the 5 notes on the sliders to exactly match the notes played on the piano. I guess I'm pretty tone-deaf, and I just could not get those notes right. Since the sliders could only be moved by the mouse, I couldn't even brute-force it by getting close and adjusting with the arrow keys. Once I realized I'd never get it, I just stopped playing. I've still never completed Myst.
For me, this game was Elden Ring. This is a bit of a personal story.
How I Ruined Elden Ring for Myself
I’d already played a lot of souls-like games. When Elden Ring came out, I decided to play a strength build, and wielded Godrick’s greataxe throughout my unfinished playthrough. I usually focus on a single style of play, so I opted not to use magic or other ranged options (which, as it turns out, are very strong in Elden Ring). I also didn’t use any ashes or summons, as I enjoyed soloing every boss.I had 2 paths out of Limgrave, one of which (Caelid) was clearly more challenging. I initially went the easier (i.e. “correct”) direction and defeated the boss of Raya Lucaria, but then my completionist tendencies took over and I headed back to Caelid.
I cleared each optional dungeon in Caelid as I discovered them, but at this point many of the bosses were killing me in only 2 or 3 hits. Also, since the game is packed with these dungeons, some of the bosses are essentially “fight 2 of a previous boss simultaneously.” These duo fights are often iconic encounters (specifically thinking of Ornstein and Smough in DS1), but in Elden Ring, it just kept happening.
After the fifth or sixth consecutive duo fight, the game just wasn’t fun anymore – especially not for my melee-only solo build. I was annoyed, but unfortunately, I was still progressing, which made me confident I didn’t need to turn back or adjust my playstyle.
As I trudged my way through Caelid, I talked to a friend about how frustrating the game had become. This friend was also playing Elden Ring, was also a Souls veteran, and his advice to me was basically: “Git gud.” Ok.
After yet another agonizing duo fight, I reached the boss of the Caelid region: Radahn. You are clearly “meant” to summon NPCs for this fight, but I insisted on soloing Radahn - despite the limited range of my horseback melee attacks, the janky camera, and the fact that many of his attacks killed me from full health in a single hit. It was incredibly frustrating, and when I eventually succeeded, I had this overwhelming sense of relief: “Thank god that’s over.”
In retrospect, all these self-imposed restrictions – no magic, no ashes, no summons, no turning back – were obviously some hardcore challenge-run crap that was not appropriate for a first playthrough. Why did I do that?
I’ve already mentioned my completionist tendencies: regardless of what I’m doing, I feel pressured to excel, and I have a very low tolerance for my own errors. So, whenever Dark Souls fans would loftily, mockingly say “git gud,” I listened. I internalized the idea that if you used summons to beat a boss then you didn’t really beat them, and felt pressured to prove myself.
I kept playing after Radahn. I only stopped once the friend I mentioned earlier showed me their character: they were using the Sword of Night and Flame to instantly obliterate everything in the game with a laser beam death ray.
Something snapped: my friend had told me to “git gud,” but they were cheesing their way through the entire game. I asked myself: “Who am I doing this for? What am I trying to prove?”
I immediately dropped Elden Ring, and haven’t played a souls-like since.
Now that Nightreign is out, I’ve been itching to give the base game another shot. Hopefully I can just… enjoy the game. I hear it’s very good.
I am in the same boat. To be honest I am really proud to have finished Dark Souls without summons. Beating O and S took a long time for me. I spent like a weekend on it. (Maybe 6 hours or so) and I needed to take a few walks outside to calm my nerves down and stuff. It felt so good when I did it. It’s not really a feeling I’ve had playing games since I was much younger. (I can get a rush playing age of empires online, but that feels like an endless path of loss and wins with elo balancing. I think it’s too much of a toxic feeling for me). Because of how I felt with dark souls I really want to get through Elden ring the same way. I often wonder if it’s worth it at all.
Side note: I had a similar feeling playing through onion delivery in ufo 50. When I first tried that game I thought this is so obtuse and the controlls are so unnatural. But over the course of a week trying to beat it before a weekly podcast of ufo 50 games came out I learned so much about the game. I got into flow states driving. I memorized more and more locations on the map. It’s like I could feel my brain making connections about how to get around that city. It was amazing and I felt so accomplished when I did it after getting closer and closer through the week!
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - It seems I had too high expectations of this game and it wasn't delivered.
Morrowind - I don't consider it being ruined for me, but whenever I play I use all the features it has for my advantage (ie. picking skills I won't be using much thus I control how fast I level up). I also check on uesp.net (the game's wiki) to see best approach to some quests etc. But after all those years I either learned a lot myself about the game or I gathered the knowledge from others or wiki, so I really know the game quite a lot already.
I usually don't mod games, I either like them for what they are or hate them for the same reason, so I don't lose interest because of trying to perfect it.
I also don't spoil myself and don't look up wikis or walkthroughs if not absolutely necessary. If I did that ie. with Outer Wilds, I would ruin the game completely! Or if I have read anything about Horizon Zero Dawn (and I mean anything! I didn't know the world the game was set up in until later in the game when the pieces came together).
This is something I keep close to my chest and tell nobody, but I spoiled myself on Outer Wilds, and Outer Wilds is a game that absolutely should not be spoiled.
Oh, and, uh, spoilers.
Chapter 1: The fall
Upon release the game had 1-year exclusivity on the Epic Games Store. I knew I wasn't going to buy it on Epic, which then led me to watch a series by a YouTuber I watched at the time. And watching that series was great, I was able to come along on the journey anyway, I theorised, I was wrong, I was scared, I was amazed, I cried.
But when it was over I realised my mistake. That was it. That was my Outer Wilds experience. I wasn't going to feel that when playing the game for myself, and when I did finally but the game and play it... it was a hollow experience. I had ruined it for myself.
So fast forward a couple of years and Echoes of the Eye comes out. There's now part of this game that is unknown to me and I haven't spoiled myself on. But I wait because there are other games I want to play. But I hold fast and don't spoil myself, until the day I start playing.
And it's good. I fly around parts of the base game to refamiliarise myself with the world and gameplay, then start going to The Stranger and exploring around. I'm having fun, there's an interesting mystery and new mechanics. Having to do the thing at the place with the thing is a cool way of gating what is really the core of the DLC, forcing you to learn a bunch about the people that built this place before meeting them yourself.
And meet them you do. And they're in the dark, waiting, making noises, and chasing me. I don't deal with horror. I just can't. It's not for me. I know people get an adrenaline rush from it and that can push past the fear. I don't. I just feel the fear with no enjoyment.
I wanted to stop playing, and I did, but I also wanted to know what this story I was playing built up to. So I...
Chapter 2: The other fall
What do you think I'm going to put here? "I stopped playing and never thought about Outer Wilds again"? No, I searched it up and ruined the DLC for myself too. Am I going to forgive myself for this one? No, I can't. This was a decision I have to live with now. Not only did I spoil the base game, I spoiled the DLC too despite knowing how I felt after spoiling the base game.
It's even worse because this fear is exactly what the DLC is about too. The owl people were too afraid of The Eye so they hid it away and the Nomai wouldn't even have received the signal in the first place had there not been one individual willing to stand up for what they believed in. I had that crippling fear too, but as a player instead, which prevented me from doing what I needed to do. Instead I
retreated to my own simulated sanctuarygoogled it instead.I've often thought about making a page on my personal website that's a slideshow similar to the ones on The Stranger that tells this story, but with parts about me spoiling myself burned out. There'd be a way of accessing the unburned original too. I haven't done this because I'd need to make the art and that's not really my forte. At least, that's the excuse I tell myself so I don't have to do it. I don't have to confront this reality and actually think about what this means to me.
Because despite all this, it's still an important game to me. The emotions this game evokes in people, I still feel them. The wonder, the curiosity, the despair, the emptiness, the love, and, of course, the fear. I just have... other emotions with it too, self-inflicted of course.
This has happened to me a lot of times for games that people think are superb, like all time top #20: I read their consistently positive reviews. Then I play the game, and it is only very good and I'm disappointed.
I ruined Outer Wilds for myself by doing this. I also cannot get into Factorio, because it's all the time not as good as I think it should be. Well, I eventually just watched somebody play through Outer Wilds which at least gave me the story -- which is obviously enjoyable. I just couldn't grind it through.
Thankfully, this doesn't happen every time. I knew Undertale would be special before I touched it, but it remained great through the game. I think part of this is the soundtrack: you just cannot communicate in words how good a great soundtrack is. Outer Wilds had an ok soundtrack but not great in the same musically brilliant way as Undertale.