To this day, I struggle with open-world fatigue. I've built up some tolerance for the genre out of necessity, what with more and more games going open-world nowadays, but I still regularly get overloaded and need breaks from open worlds in a way I don't for most games. As a result of this affliction, once I beat an open-world game, I'm done with it. I totally check out after rolling credits. No matter how much side content I missed or skipped, no matter how bad my ending was, I ain't doing that shit again.
I thought this would be the case for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but I ended up replaying its finale in what's technically New Game+. The fact that I still had the energy to continue after the credits is high praise for Nintendo's design philosophy, but I also returned because I had a hunch I'd missed something important. Like, really important – something that'd been hanging over me throughout the entire game. I immediately booted up my save file and started investigating. The resulting saga kept me up until 3am and ultimately became one of the most memorable moments I've had with a game in ages.
