</div>

This post is nearly a week late; I was traveling, and then I managed to get sick the moment I got home. I wanted to write something about the games that keep me company when I travel, but I found myself with a little more time to focus on games than I typically do when I’m out and about. This post is still a little navel-gazey, but maybe this resonates with others who approach video games in a similar way to me.

When traveling, I usually dip in and out of small comfort games: run-based games like Slay the Spire or Into the Breach (one of my most-played of all time), ever-expanding puzzle games I’ll never finish like Isles of Sea and Sky or Paquerette: Into the Bunburrows, or just familiar favorites like Hollow Knight where I can pick at a new save file*.*

These habits cut directly against my typical impulse: to play something new or different, to explore, to acquaint myself with a wider range of games and the conversations surrounding them. Instead of exploring, I want simple distractions, things to do with my hands while I have a podcast playing.

A couple weeks ago, I visited my in-laws with my partner. It turned out that my partner was already sick, and my in-laws go to bed pretty early, so I knew that for several days I’d have a couple hours each night to myself while everyone else had already wound down. I was trying to stay off my laptop a bit, so I had brought my switch 2 with me.

With the realization that I had time to dig into something heftier, I was struck with a gaming craving that I stumble into once every couple of years: a desire for a big, sprawling JRPG to sink into. These kinds of games were once appealing to me, but lost their luster in the past half a decade or so as I’ve become increasingly interested in playing a wider variety of games.

Nowadays, it’s rare that I’ll make it past 25 hours into a game; I seek out shorter games intentionally, and when I play longer ones, I typically fall off before I see them through.

But that doesn’t stop me from occasionally longing for a game that I can spend a long while with, one where I’ll develop a relationship to its characters and its world through sheer exposure and infinitely-repeated barks just as much as I will through the overt narrative.

I agonized over a bunch of full-priced options on the eShop before letting guilt guide my hand: I should, I thought, take another crack at a game I’d left languishing in my library after falling off of it four years ago: Xenoblade Chronicles.

</img> </div> 
At the time I’d found it mildly entertaining, but it didn't keep me engaged enough to stick with it. It seemed plausible that I hadn’t given it the attention it deserved, so I impulsively bought the Switch 2 upgrade and started a new file.
The broadly understood JRPG style (especially when it involves elaborate systems that demand experimentation and gradual understanding) rewards attentive and patient play. These games tend to include a lot of the tedium that I reflexively avoid: running around between places, fighting the same enemies over and over again, and side-questing over inconsequential minutiae.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been slowly unraveling an unhealthy consumptive instinct that’s driven me to always seek things that are new to me, to strive to fill out my critical repertoire, to approach playing games like a collector rather than an appreciator of the art form. Despite playing games pretty curiously and deeply, I find that I’m still prone to choosing what I play pretty shallowly, and find that my patience to maintain that attentiveness tends to falter.
So going back to a game that I played several years ago, knowing I’d reasonably need to repeat those first 8 or so hours, and managing to have a good time doing so: that feels like growth! This time around, I’ve had a greater appreciation for Xenoblade’s systems maximalism: it’s a game that wants you to wander around with a full-to-bursting quest-log, snapping up every item and peeling off to chase down every exclamation mark in order to to tick all the numerous boxes in the game. It incentivizes you to try out every party configuration and maintains novelty by giving each character a different kit to get the hang of, and different ways to build them towards one another’s strengths.
I might write more about Xenoblade at some point, but for now I don’t have as many fully formed opinions as I'd like. What I can say, though, is that I’ve stuck with it well past where I had gotten to before, and I feel like I’ve developed a lot more of a rhythm with its systems and its quirks than I had previously. I've even been actively resisting using the faster traversal option introduced with the Switch 2 upgrade.
I tend to easily fall into the trap of overly strategizing around exploring art forms I love, and video games exacerbate this by demanding a greater investment of money and time than most other media. Sometimes I feel like my vision doubles and I start to confuse the things I most want to play with the things I think I want to play; the game of the moment, the series I’m growing tired of, something new and shiny, or something old and toweringly influential. Sometimes, it’s enough to dust off something from a little while ago and give it another spin. Sometimes it’s okay to repeat things and try to find something new in the repetition. I hope I’ll stick with Xenoblade Chronicles; not just to tick the box of seeing it through (although that is within the spirit of its design), but also because I want to imagine that I’m regaining a bit of the lost patience and attentiveness that will let me enjoy games like this again.

Thoughts About Games - Xenoblade Chronicles

Novelty, Patience, and Travel Games