I’m in another weird spot with video games. A brand new one, this time around, which is kind of refreshing, but it’s still weird. I’ve never really been one to cling to a video game if I wind up not playing it all the way through. The two previous exceptions to this are huge, sprawling games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, both of which take multiple hundreds of hours to play all the way through and are a “sometimes” game for me. Now, though, as I shift most of my gaming time towards Final Fantasy XIV and occasionally dabble in a second playthrough of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a second attempt at a second playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom, and a second playthrough of Chained Echoes in preparation for the upcoming DLC, I find myself looking at games I didn’t finish and wishing I had the time to play games that aren’t either super engaging or just unengaging enough to listen to a podcast throughout. I mean, I WANT to play those games, even if I seem to struggle to make myself do it sometimes. It makes sense that I might have a difficult time pushing myself to play more Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth given how much I don’t enjoy the open-world segments and how many of them there are, but I actually do enjoy playing Armored Core VI but I just can’t seem to make myself sit down and play it with any kind of frequency. Nor can I seem to make myself play Dragon’s Dogma despite being incredible excited by everything I’ve heard about the game and having a podcatcher chock full of podcasts to listen to while I run around it’s wide-open world. Instead, I play a new game with my friends and replay other games when I’m not playing that.

I wish I had a better idea about why I’m doing this. I don’t really enjoy Tears of the Kingdom that much. I’m willing to play it, though, because of how much thought it provokes in me, but I wouldn’t say that I’m having fun with any part of that experience other than the podcasts I’m usually listening to or the Dropout.tv show I’m mostly watching while running around that warped, too-big version of Hyrule. I still absolutely love Chained Echoes and Veilguard, though, so those aren’t a mystery, but I’m also genuinely excited about the 1-3 more playthroughs of Armored Core VI that I’ve got in my future, as recommended by the video game reviewers whose opinions I respect (to get the full experience of the game’s story, reportedly) and I can’t seem to make myself sit down to play it more than once a month, even after deciding not to bash my skull against every single challenge I can find. I just don’t feel as interested in the idea of playing it as I often am in even the lackluster experience of Tears of the Kingdom.

Maybe it’s the thought-provoking angle. All of the other games I’m willing to play are games that are giving me something to think about or chew on. I’ve got tons of criticism and easy emotional investment in FFXIV. I’ve got an entire history to explore with the Legend of Zelda franchise via Tears of the Kingdom given that it is maybe the first Legend of Zelda game I’ve played that I don’t earnestly like. I’ve written a whole damn essay about Chained Echoes and am prepared to discuss the game in general for hours at a time the instant I find someone else willing to talk about it. Even Veilguard is making me feel things this second time around, as I spend time focused on different characters, exploring different relationships, and looking for more information about the story and its characters now that I know how it all ends (plus, it’s fun to roleplay through the game as a different person than my last character). I think here’s probably a lot to eventually say about Armored Core VI, but all I’ve seen so far is a lot of corporate greed, slowly fading revolution, and the promise of horrible safety in the face of too much power concentrated in too few hands. Which is all fairly interesting, mind you. I just don’t have a lot of stuff to say about that yet. Which is where the subsequent playthroughs come in, I suppose, given that some paths are apparently barred your first time or two. I haven’t actually looked up the details because I want to experience them myself, but it’s difficult to make myself spend that much time and energy on a game when the part I want is still some hours further down the line.

As I look at my gaming horizons, mostly filled with FFXIV, Wanderstop probably in March, Chained Echoes DLC in the late spring, whatever might wind up happening with the Switch 2, and whatever other interesting stuff I don’t know about or have forgotten about (I did just remember a new Baldur’s Gate 3 patch and that one Star Wars game I got for free as a result of building my computer), I really don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I’ve got so many games I’d like to play and never enough time to play them all (ESPECIALLY because I’ve just gotten myself super into an MMO) and yet I’ve got a couple games I want to have played but that I can’t seem to muster up the energy or enthusiasm to actually play. Maybe that’ll change whenever I take my big post-project break from work or should the US lock down again due to resurging Covid (probably not) or Bird Flu (feels far-fetched to think we’d shut down because of that, given how okay we are with Covid deaths nowadays, but who knows), but right now I’m not sure I can imagine myself playing any of my unenthusiastic games. I mean, I had two whole weeks to play literally any Armored Core VI and I played none. Sure, I burned my hand and that made holding a controller with any amount of intensity a painful prospect, but I had at least a few days I could have played it where I chose not to.

Maybe that’s the secret. They’re all Playstation games and I’m holed away in my nice, warm office for the winter. The only games I’m willing to leave my office for are the ones I can play while relaxed and wrapped in blankets (TotK and Chained Echoes). Which I can also play when my hands are too sore from work to grip anything tightly. Maybe it’s the combination of all those factors that has left me willing to replay a less-than-fun game (TotK) rather than spend time on something I still enjoy, albeit in small chunks (AC6). Maybe I’ll write again later this month and say it was all that and more besides that has me unwilling to spend the time on those games. Right now, all I know for sure is that I can muster up the energy for a night of puttering around FFXIV much more easily than I can convince myself to do a single mission in AC6 or even figure out where I left things off in Dragon’s Dogma…