I thought I was alone with that feeling. I'm in exactly the same boat as you.

For me, it's a tiny bit different, because I played BOTW shortly before my daughther was born in 2017. I still had time for games like that back in the day. Now I don't only have a daughter, but a son as well.

When I grab the controller and start playing something time intensive like BOTW and now TOTK, I usually feel really guilty really quick, because there are so many other things to do, that, in theory should have a higher priority.

i remember this overwhelming feeling when first playing Witcher 3. At some point I just said f it, ignored the thoughts and had a blast

Hehe I know exactly that feeling! Honestly I found the same with Skyrim, GTA5 and Witcher 3 - I can’t imagine spending 100+ hours on a game like that, knowing I’ll probably not finish it! I know it’s irrational but I’m the same. :)

I loved Disco Elysium and Life is Strange 1 because I truly did feel that I left no stone unturned in my playthroughs - it felt very “complete” and had such a satisfying ending that didn’t leave me wandering around a progressively more empty hand world.

I guess that’s a type of game preference - I love watching other people play big games like that, but can’t do it to myself as I feel it’s never “done.” :)

And yet… I’ll play a wrestling game for probably hundreds of hours, knowing fully beyond unlocking everything, there’s a game I can’t “finish” - weird really! :)

It can be a bit overwhelming, yes. I purposely did enough of the main story line in ToTK so that I could get the Hero's Path and the Travel Medallions. And now I'm ignoring the main story and just exploring the world bit-by-bit, like I did with Breath of the Wild. I'm still thoroughly exploring Central Hyrule. I'm racking up side quests and adventures, but only doing them if I want a break from exploring or want to better my gear or something. It takes the pressure off for me to do it this slow, relaxing way. The game feels like it has hundreds of hours in it, which is what I tell myself when I get antsy. I have almost literally all the time in the world.

I don’t feel this way about open-world games because they do usually have an end and you can skip a lot of the open-world filler content. I get this anxiety about sandbox games. I hate it because I really games like Cities Skylines and I’d love to get into Dwarf Fortress, but I can’t play them anymore because I could spend 1,000 hours in one of them and never finish. That open-endedness keeps me from playing.

I can certainly understand that! I kind of am the opposite though; I like not knowing the exact extent of the game, or where everything is, because to me it then feels more like a real place that I'm really exploring. I don't need to see everything, and honestly I hope I never do see everything because then the magic is gone. I like feeling like a small fish in a very big ocean.

Better not play Elden ring

I do not. I feel no particular obligation to finish anything, and most of the time I do I feel let down that there isn't more. I want enough to be able to play until I feel the desire to play something else, then have plenty more to explore next time that game scratches the right itch.

I just try to trust the game, though in the case of TotK I did have an "ugh not again" moment when I first landed at the surface level. Glad I stayed with it, though. We usually chip away on it for an hour or two each day, but when I'm not in the mood I just do something else. As long as you're enjoying yourself, there's no wrong way to game. ✌️

I personally find that because of the sheer amount of content, these games have great replayability. Every time I start Skyrim, even vanilla Skyrim, from the beginning, I will eventually find something I haven't seen before either because I chose a different style of play or by sheer chance.

I'm playing Elden Ring with my bf using the seamless co-op mod and though he's a veteran who's put countless hours into the game, we keep stumbling upon places and content he hasn't seen previously.

I think TotK dropped a lot of hints about not playing it like BotW, but most probably didn't pick up on it. I made the mistake of exploring a lot on my own and ended up skipping several of the quest stories as a result. When the world is so large, you really need a GPS for your map to constrain your path. It's kinda hard to tell the user "this time is different, follow the guides" when it seems so familiar a place.

There was a lot of effort made to ensure there was guide based content posted online immediately upon release, but this assumes the user will go looking for it.

It's funny that you got that in Skyrim, really felt like that game was terrified that I'd miss some random quest and shove it in my face

Back in the day I remember Gabe from Penny Arcade saying that he used to feel this way until he went on anxiety meds. Going back on the meds made it feel like a free playground to explore instead of being an infinite chore where something could be missed.

Yes, I recently started no man’s sky and at times I find I have to swap to a more simple game because it feels overwhelming.

I never used to feel this way in games, I think it’s a lack of time as I get older. When I was younger I could afford to spend days and days figuring out a game, now it feels like I have limited time and need to use it efficiently.

I call them "man on horse" simulators. I think open worlds have generally gotten a bit bigger than they need to be -- I remember feeling like FFXV was actually very empty, despite being massive, and while Skyrim is beloved, so much of current replay has been slogging through massive amounts of nothing. I tend to wish open world games were somewhat smaller but denser, with more variety instead of huge, empty terrains of sort of bad-feeling, filler quests between the good ones.

I have this with big Minecraft modpacks. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed with all the stuff to do, and I get none of it done. I wonder if it’s related to ADHD or autism. I’ve not been diagnosed with either because I avoid doctors like the plague but when you check literally every box for a disease… Welp.

TotK is a bit of a weird game. I’m still not sure what the "correct" way to play the game is. I did too much of the underground at first because I got a lot of maps. But when I had gotten all the treasures that I found the maps for, I had already explored a lot of the depths. Then I found up I could upgrade my battery more than 30 times, but I still had only five hearts, so I felt like I was playing the game wrong. So up to the surface I went. I thought I will mainly explore the underground after getting the map in that area. But after I learned how to make a aerial vehicle and the fast-building mechanic, I now feel like I skip everything, even places where I feel like I’m supposed to do something clever. But at the same time, I already explored this world by horse in the previous game, so perhaps skipping every obstacle by flying is what I’m supposed to do? Unfortunately, flying from shrine to shrine is pretty boring, and the shrines are ridiculously easy. Not sure where I’m going with this, but I think my point is simply that after probably a hundred hours I’m still confused about how to play this game in a meaningful way, even though I like this game a lot in many ways.

I find that I totally switch off as soon a game starts to feel like a big checklist of "Content" to check off. For open world games, this is usually as soon as there's a fast travel feature. For me, it's not that I'm overwhelmed, I just feel that this framework makes for an incredibly samey experience.