Well, I did it. I finished the base expansion of Dawntrail in Final Fantasy 14. I’ve got a few patches worth of Main Scenario Quests to do yet (twenty-five quests, according to the wiki that has a little quest progress bar on it) and plenty of other content on my immediate to-do list (some big “Alliance” raids, various exploration zones, whatever it is you do to get good gear once you’re basically “current,” and tons of crafting stuff), but I think now is the time for me to take a break. I’m very tired, if I’m going to be honest. Not of Final Fantasy 14, just in general. I have had a lot of fun and continue to have tons of fun, but I need something without the sense of urgency that comes with most Final Fantasy 14 stuff. I’m not going to forbid myself from playing it or anything like that, I’m just going to give myself a nudge to do other things instead of constantly pushing myself towards Final Fantasy 14. Part of me wants to take a complete break–stop playing altogether–but I don’t want to bail on the people who’re depending on me for various group activities. Sure, static groups sometimes need to replace people temporarily, but things rarely go as well when they do and it would just be temporary. I doubt it would last more than two weeks before I felt the urge to log on for one reason or another. Plus, I actually want to keep doing that stuff, even if it isn’t the most fun or the most rewarding and is, perhaps, the most tiring stuff I do in the game. I want to do it. I am just also very tired.

This isn’t the kind of tired that can be fixed with rest or sleep, though. This is the tired of “I have played one game for what might as well be (and, for all I know, it might truly be) 99% of my freetime for a solid nine months” that needs me to do other stuff for a while to recover from it. I spent so much of the last four years investing in fresh entertainment and new stories and things that genuinely interest and engage me and all of that went by the wayside once I started playing Final Fantasy 14. For good reason, mind you. So much of this game was fresh and exciting and new and the stories it was telling had me hooked from the end of my first month of play. I didn’t need anything else since all the variety I could want was right there! Even now, nine months and six whole expansions later, there’s still new stuff to do! I am writing this literally the day before two brand new activities are set to be released! There’s new dungeons all the time (especially since I’ve been unlocking a backlog), new activities to explore, new recipes to craft, and so much more, and all of that is stuff that exists mechanically within the game! It doesn’t even touch on the player-generated stuff like the wrestling and roleplaying events and just hanging out with the friends I made. This game is as close as it gets to an endless font of new things to do!

And yet I am tired. The stuff is new, but it is often similar to previous stuff. There’s new stories to watch or hear, but I’m still sitting at my desk in my office for hours at a time. There’s always a new conversation to be had or people to meet, but I’m still just sitting at my computer, tick-tack-typing away as I go through the same old process of introduction and conversation. I will never want for things to do, but the lack of broader variety–variety of experience, of types of play, or even physical position–has begun to wear on me. I need to sit in other rooms. I need to do other whole activities. I need to stop getting home from work, showering, and then hustling up to my office to play FF14 while I eat some kind of dinner. I should spend time cooking again! I should do some puzzles! I would watch TV shows or movies, but every single service I once used (save Dropout.TV) has done some kind of heinous shit lately (Disney for the all the reasons outlined in my post about the BDS Movement, Crunchyroll for “AI” subtitles and reportedly signing on with an Isreali company to do their translations, and Hulu for the same reasons as Disney), so I might just sit in my chair and read instead. Or spend time finding an alternate means for watching anime or whatever it is that Media Club Plus covers next, once they’re done with their M. Night Shyamalan mini-season. I don’t know. Any and/or all of that. I just need to do something different for a bit or else I will burn out on my fun games too and I can’t be burned out on both my job AND the main thing I’ve spent my non-job time on this past year…

To be honest, some part of this is motivated by how unaffected I am by the story of Dawntrail so far. It wasn’t bad, mind you, and I don’t even dislike any of the characters (I’m pretty sure the reason so many people dislike Wuk Lamat is the same reason people disliked Keyleth from Critical Role’s first campaign: misogeny). In fact, I liked them all just fine and am looking forward to more adventures with them! I just can’t help but compare the emotional highs and lows, the abolute journey I got taken on, in Shadowbringers and Endwalker to the relatively mundane Dawntrail. I mean, anything would fall short in comparison to that absolute monster of a 1-2 combo, and I know I should be comparing Dawntrail to A Realm Reborn (and it is SO MUCH BETTER than ARR), but the recency bias and absolute power of Shadowbringers and Endwalker push past my ability to reason with myself. I just can’t help but look for even the first hints of those masterfully told stories in Dawntrail and, just like I couldn’t see them in ARR, I do not yet possess a picture even nearly complete enough to imagine what might be coming in however many expansion it takes to end this story arc. I mean, I can see the hooks being buried. I can see the plot threads being woven. I just… The passion of the stories I was experiencing carried me through a couple very long months and then the come-down from all that carried me through two more. Dawntrail can’t carry me through how tired I feel and so it is time to take a break. Of a kind, anyway. Like I said, I’ll still be showing up a few times a week. But I think I’m going to make other stuff my primary activity for a bit and try to enjoy the chilly feeling of on-coming fall, now that it finally chased Summer away (at least briefly).