The worst feeling is when you progress the main quest by mistake while trying to clean up side things.
Dead Space has that really cool diegetic "locator" system so if you come across multiple paths you can see which way points toward the story, and take your time exploring the other direction, knowing you won't accidentally start a story cutscene that locks you out of explorable areas
100+ hours in Skyrim and maybe 6 main quests done?
I never actually saw dragons after the opening cutscene in Skyrim. I went off to do the thieves guild and brotherhood questlines, bought a house and then retired happily.
Fus roh duh?
I'm grinding stats okay?
Me with BG3 right now. Every side quest feels super important or at least engaging!
me playing botw, getting the master sword, and then instead of finishing the main quest, proceeds to destroy every guardian in hyrule to get the ancient armour while also doing shrine quests on the way lmao. the gorons can wait
Ludonarrative dissonance overdose when the main quest is about hurrying to save thousands of people from an incoming disaster but the hero keeps playing card games with everyone they meet
Speaking of card games, my favourite example of this is Witcher 3.
I GOTTA FIND AND SAVE CIRI, SHE'S IN TERRIBLE DANGER! ...but first, Imma collect every Gwent card
That's the exactly example I had in my head!
The other thing is letting side quests pile up into an unmanageable mess. That's me in Genshin right now, I'm off exploring French Atlantis while a ton of people and other creatures are still waiting for me to clean up the desert and forests in the Middle East Educracy. (I think I got all the quests in Electric Japan, The Earth Kingdom, and German Starter Town)
