When something good comes to an end, you’ll often hear people say “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened!” That mindset — an incorrect quote falsely attributed to Dr. Seuss — might have worked well when I was saying tearful goodbyes to summer camp friends I adored as a child, but when it comes to feeling sad about finishing up an RPG that’s had me mesmerized for hours on end, I tend to employ another method to protect my heart: I just put off finishing the game indefinitely.
Yes, I know, I know. I wasn’t always like this, of course. It started with books — I’d put off reading the final chapter of my favorites, but I could never resist for long, and would eventually devour the final pages of the text. With video games — specifically RPGs — something was different. I’d sink more than 100 hours into an ostensibly 60-hour game, doing every possible side quest before advancing the story. It first started with The Outer Worlds, which I devoured every inch of, then ghosted the game like a bad Tinder date as soon as I got to the final encounter… only to start another playthrough that is also nearly (but not entirely) finished. I did it with Final Fantasy 7 Remake too, and in my defense, so did this guy, but he at least had COVID lockdown as an excuse. I just don’t want to let go.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was next. I inhaled the game, and then — having been spoiled on how my Inquisitor’s romance with Solas would end — couldn’t bear to finish the final scenes of the game. Almost any time I’m emotionally invested in an RPG (that I don’t need to finish immediately for work purposes), I end up waiting a few months to a year before dragging myself across the finish line, or just starting a new playthrough.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was a death trap for me. With so many ways to play — multiplayer, Dark Urge, Origin characters, various races and classes — it has absorbed me for more than 1,000 hours at this point. (To be fair, I have finished a “vanilla” plain-ol’-Tav playthrough, but I’ve got three others going at the moment, and still manage to uncover new things within each playthrough. So I’ve got two nearly-finished multiplayer campaigns, an unfinished Dark Urge, and an unfinished Origin run sitting there, taunting me. Many of them are close to finished, but I don’t want the fun in Faerûn to come to an end.)
Everyone plays differently, of course. Some Cyberpunk 2077 players prefer to grind up past level 50 before even speaking to Takemura in one of the game’s earliest quests. But most people don’t seem to share my struggle in finishing the tail-end of games that they love. You’d think Skyrim‘s Radiant Quests and other games with similar, endless quest-generating mechanics would provide me some comfort, but unfortunately, I find them too repetitive and boring to bother with. Starfield’s New Game+ system sounded like a dream come true, but when I got my hands on the game, I was so disappointed in its story that I didn’t have the will to make myself finish it.
And maybe that’s the real problem: I’m afraid of disappointment, and I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait to fall in love with another game’s story, so I cling tightly to the one I’ve got.
