Speedrunner or Completionist? Be Honest
Straight Line to the Credits
You play for the shape of the thing. A game, to you, is a story or a challenge with a beginning and an end, and everything hanging off the sides is optional scenery you are content to leave unvisited. That means you finish far more games than most people, which is genuinely enviable in an era of enormous unplayed libraries. The cost is occasionally walking straight past the best room in the building. Once a year, pick a game you liked and go back for the parts you skipped.
“I finish games. All of them. Just not all of any of them.”Efficient with Exceptions
You are efficient by default and sentimental by exception. Most of the time you take the shortcut, use the fast travel and let the collectibles rot, and then something catches you and suddenly you are hunting every single one of a particular type because you like how they look. That inconsistency is not a flaw. It is taste operating without a rulebook. You get the best of both approaches as long as you notice when a game has earned your attention, rather than defaulting to speed out of habit.
“Efficient by default, obsessive by exception, and I can never predict which.”Thorough Where It Counts
You have a working definition of enough and you stick to it. You will explore an optional area, take the side quest that looks well written and walk the route once before you start fast-travelling, but you will also abandon a collectible hunt the moment it stops being interesting. That is arguably the healthiest relationship available with a modern open world, which is built to reward attention indefinitely and does not much care whether you were enjoying yourself. Knowing where to stop is a skill and you have it.
“I go thorough where the game earns it and walk away where it does not.”Every Last Chest
The list is the game. You want the map filled in, the counter reading maximum, the final irritating chest behind the waterfall, and you would honestly rather do the tedious mechanic than know it is sitting there undone. There is real pleasure in this and real expertise too, because completionists learn systems inside out and tend to be the ones who find whatever nobody documented. The only thing to guard against is finishing a checklist you stopped enjoying around item forty. Permission to abandon is granted.
“The counter has to read maximum or I will simply not be able to relax.”
