Lith's Diary - May (Patreon)

Dear Diary,
I kinda disappointed myself this month. I glanced at last month, and I was super busy, but this month... I guess I was worn out, so I've kinda been spending way too much time goofing off! It's always kind of a frustrating feeling, though. I always have so many different things I could be doing to be productive, not just for my work, but for personal projects I'd like to spend time working on. There are so many hours in the day, but when I get like this, they just disappear, but it's almost impossible to even enjoy them!

It's like... you decide you need a break, but you know you could be working right now, and the world might be just a tiny bit better if you were. So doesn't that mean you're trying to derive pleasure by making the world a little worse than it could be? Maybe that sounds... arrogant, actually. I don't mean I can do anything so profound, but anytime I'm not working, I feel like I'm wasting time, and it adds a kind of... bitterness to it. When I'm stuck staring at a loading screen, I can't help but think, look at what I'm doing instead of working. I find myself resenting things that get in the way, like-- I'm blowing my time on this already stupid thing, and now you're making even that take longer?

It's... dumb. I know it is. I've been trying to relax. To accept that time passes, and I can't make the most out of every moment. What's even the point of taking a break if I'm only going to stress out the whole time? I guess... I never thought I'd have to learn how to enjoy myself. That's one thing you'd kinda think you could do without really trying, right? Even if it's not something fun, you should always be able to just stop, and breathe, and recharge...

But I feel like I made a lot of mistakes this month. Wasted my time. I'd say I need to get better at choosing how to spend my time, but I guess a bigger part of it is really just how I perceive what I'm doing with my time. If I can bring myself to accept that for the next few hours I'm going to sit down and play this game, and that's okay, then maybe it would satisfy me better, and I'd be able to work more before feeling like I need another break. Haha... this feels like a really dumb thing to even complain about. I know a lot of people work harder than I do. I guess I'm still just a lazy kitty. Thanks for... humoring me.

I'll figure it out. It's all in your head, right? That's a big part of being happy: accepting what's in your life. Making a conscious decision about how you perceive your world. If nothing is ever good enough, or if the only way to satisfaction is some absurd, faraway goal, then you're dooming yourself to a lifetime of being unhappy. We have to fend for our own emotional well-being.

Hmm. I guess that's why I stopped playing that new Tomb Raider. You knew I was going to start talking about video games at some point, right? Well, I liked the first Tomb Raider. Uh, the first new one, I mean. The big reboot. It had a nice feel of desperation and building up from nothing, and there was a decent amount of stealth and exploration, and it all came together in a satisfying mix, somehow. I think the atmosphere sold it a lot, actually. Anyway, that led me to try the new one, since I heard it was pretty much more of the first one. But... I dunno if a different team took over it or something, but it felt like a pretty different game. Or maybe I'm a different gamer than I was then.

There was a little stealth to the game, but there was a lot more combat and bombastic set pieces I think-- and much more than either of those, there was just... ridiculous, endless amounts of collectibles. I feel like 90% of my gaming experience after the first few hours was just advancing five feet in the plot, then stopping to strip the land of layers upon layers of resources. Coins, ammo, berries, leaves, mushrooms, twigs, animal skins, scrap metal, feathers, maps leading to other collectibles, relics, diaries, voice logs, murals, clues leading to caches, unique weapon components, bonus zone-based hidden objectives... and even after you comb the area, you often have to come back once you've unlocked the latest way to break down a flimsy barrier of one kind or another and delve into new "hidden" passages. The game is beautiful, but it feels like you're interacting more intimately with the environment, grooming it for its endless procession of secrets, than trying to actually engage with any kind of plot, or the handful of bad guys you murdelate so they don't shoot you while you're prying open more lockers.

I know that they're optional. Technically, you could just blaze past all of them and complete the main story in probably 1/5 the time. But that's not how I play. I believe in being prepared, in being meticulous, in scrounging for everything you can so that if you fail, you know it's not because you were careless three zones back, it's because you're doing something wrong now and you can fix it. This attitude served me really well when I played Alien: Isolation. It's also a game that's about combing your environment for supplies so you can survive in a desperate situation, but the gameplay actually follows that. None of the stuff you hunt down is for... vanity. And there's never so much of it, or the levels so huge that you feel like you're wasting a bunch of time just scavenging an acre of land bit by bit. It felt like you were lucky for every bullet you managed to find hidden away here or there, because every bullet could make the difference between life and death. In this Tomb Raider game, it honestly just felt like collection for collection's sake. A game of easter eggs between you and the environmental designer, except you get magic vision to highlight all the hidden stuff after a while, so it becomes more a question of how to climb, jump, and burn your way to whatever weird place the next supposedly hidden resource is. It wasn't fun, it was tedious.

So I stopped playing. I was trying to like the game, and I wanted to finish it, but it just wasn't worth it.

The funny thing? I moved on to Prey, and that's absolutely packed with resource gathering, hunting materials down in every nook and cranny. You can definitely tell it's a Bethesda game, it has a lot of that Fallout feel in that respect. And I think it actually works well, this tiem. But I might talk about that more next month. For now... I've got a lot of work to do, and I guess I've got to learn to let myself really play and not worry about work while I'm at it.

I hope you're enjoying your free time when you can get it, Diary. And I hope you're not working yourself too hard. Take care of yourself, okay? You've done a lot to help me, and to help Lithier, and I want you to know I appreciate that. But don't let that come before more important things in your life. Always remember to keep yourself healthy and happy, so you're ready to tackle what tomorrow may bring. If you won't do it for yourself, then do it for me, so I don't have to worry about you, okay?

Know that you're in my heart. Always.
-Lith