Another part of Witcher's Continent unfurled in front of me, and Geralt, the protagonist, ventured into the fog.
So I went after her, traveling to a part of the game world I had never seen before. I had been searching for Ciri, the protagonist Geralt's adopted daughter, off and on since April, and I sensed the trail was finally warming up. During my last night in my old apartment, I decided to do something symbolic to mark the end of my time there.
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I moved to a new city, moved in with my partner, and started the first in a series of new jobs. Rather than being a threat to the types of games I've always loved, I'm finding that this can be an opportunity to rethink our relationship to the spaces video games create and become more deliberate in how we choose to relate to them. Martin's novels-less like a discrete experience and more like a series of connected voyages that become part of your routine in such a way that it begins to blur into your life, tied to the memories of that period. It's the sort of experience you might have reading George R.R.
Since embracing this style of play, I've found that open-world games are like trusted friends who are there when I need an escape or a jolt of excitement. Instead of rushing through them or viewing them as content generators, I abide in them. They grow in my imagination as they occupy more and more space in my memory. I've found that these games exist more vividly in my mind as I embrace this style of gameplay. Forget open world: No Man’s Sky is an open galaxy, and you should absolutely jump into it if you look good in a spacesuit and love discovering exotic alien wildlife. I feel like this might be the way well crafted open worlds are supposed to be experienced-not as gluttonous binges or narrowly focused rampages, but as long-term occupancies. It's a slow cartography, maps of imaginary spaces growing in my head, inch by inch. Every few weeks or so I'll return to The Witcher or Metal Gear Solid V to complete a few missions, reacquainting myself with these worlds and getting to know their inhabitants a bit better. Instead I've been coming back to them, time and again, over extended periods, to explore them. Interesting games have come so quickly that I've been unable and unwilling to merely plow through the open-world games that caught my intention. This year, I've tried something different.