People with bad sense of direction, can you enjoy open world games?

RecursiveDescent@discuss.tchncs.de to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 130 points –

I have always liked open world games as a concept, but I have a very bad sense of direction. So whenever I play open world games I keep getting lost and frustrated. Eventually getting bored and dropping the game. I am curious how other people with bad sense of direction cope with this problem.

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I was going to say the same thing. I've always prided myself on being able to tell you the general direction anything was in, and could drive in a general direction (before Google Maps) and find my way. But I am complete crap at in-game directions even after really trying to get a feel for the surroundings.

Yeah - I'm not sure why it is.

In the real world, I just automatically keep my bearings. It's like I have an internal compass that just tracks it all the time so I don't even pay attention.

And for whatever reason, it doesn't translate to games. If I get myself oriented in a game, I can keep it going for a while, but it never lasts.

I can only assume that there's some physical aspect to it - that the part of my brain that's keeping track of bearing relies on physical cues that I don't get when I'm just sitting in a chair looking at a screen. So when I get my bearings in a game, then keep it going for a while, that's some other part of my brain stepping in and taking over, and it never lasts because it's just a stopgap measure.

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