It is finally over!
My terrible ordeal. I have said goodbye to an addiction that took a heavy toll on me. And it really was an addiction. I continued to do it even though I knew it was causing issues to myself and others and I even sustain physical injury from it, though very minor. I disregarded things that normally would be my highest priority.
What the hell am I talking about?
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
A computer game on the Nintendo Switch. A game I am going to call
The best game I have ever played. There is so much to this game it feels like nothing I have ever played before, and played it I have.
We have.
Just over a month ago my kids saved up and bought
tLoZ:BotW and I happened to see their first attempts. I likened it to
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the
Wii and demanded a go.
Mistake number 1, was take the Switch from the communal TV and place it in my office. It is designed to be easily moved and just thought after playing it I would put it back. That was five weeks ago. My office offers a much more comfortable gaming experience and after seeing my playing in it, my kids demanded the same privilege.
This game is massive and hugely open, allowing the player to use a variety of play styles. For instance, the world is laid out with a number of roads, but I opted to always avoid them. Choosing instead to take my time roaming mountain ranges and gorges. This lead to two things. One, I found a lot of cool things that the play is not supposed to find until later in the game and two, I missed out on a number of plot points because, essentially I was avoiding the plot.
I was playing a minimum of 3 hours a day and 6 hours per non-week day. But that does not include the additional hours my kids were putting in. Meaning that as a family we were averaging 34 hours a week non stop for five weeks.
(and loving ever moment of it)
I could write volumes on what I saw in that gaming world but the easiest way to avoid boring you is to note the game was over six years in the making. There are main quests, shrine quests, side quests and additional quests to complete. Most can be done at any time and in any order but they total the hundreds. Not to mention the collecting of food, elixir, enhancement ingredients, cooking useful food/elixirs, mining rocks and collecting seeds. And that does not cover the variety of weapons, collecting pictures, clothing and defeating enemies.
And that ... does not include the game play physics, the weather patterns, the in world clock, the graphics and the music.
The graphics do need a special mention. The are the best you have ever see, the shadows from the clouds, the non-repeating textures and geology and the furthest draw distance I have ever witnessed.
OK, enough gushing. I have quit
tLoZ:BotW, I announced it to the kids and I am not going back. I completed all the main quests, all the shrine quests, all the shrines and 72/77 side quests, not to mention numerous "bits" that are part of the game experience.
So why not finish off the last few side quests? Because they are silly time consuming filler tasks and I have done many of them and want my time back!
NO MORE!
plus there is something very important I need to blog about and should have flogged about weeks ago ...
