[General Discussion] RPGs, a sprint or a marathon?

I suppose I'm a marathon runner lite. While I do plenty of aimless wandering and hunting for sidequests, it's rare that I become obsessive about them or rare drops. I just like to take my time exploring the game world, talking to everyone, searching out of the way nooks that look like they might yield treasure, that sort of thing. If I'm really enjoying a game then I'll go to an FAQ to see if I'm missing any important side stuff, especially things that offer deeper backstory into characters, but I never look past where I'm at in the game (intentionally, at least). It's that aimless wandering that keeps my backlog as large as it is, since I tend to finish RPGs at least 10-20 hours after most peoples' times.

Achievements are pushing me a bit more towards the middle distance type, though. Fallout 3 and Tales of Vesperia are the only 360 RPGs that I've gotten into enough to notice, but both have been played to far greater lengths of completion than I would usually even consider. Vesperia is a prime example, since I still think Tales of the Abyss was slightly better. How many times did I play Abyss? Once. How many times for Vesperia? I'm on my fourth run at the moment. Once through normally, once for speed run achievement, half-run for low-level achievement, half-run for completion before I deleted it in a half-asleep moment of stupidity, and another run for total completion that I'm nearing the end of. It's absolutely insane, yet I'm doing it. Still, I'll never be the type to read through an FAQ and ruin the game before starting it just to go for side stuff or achievements.

I also have an odd tendency to stop playing an RPG once I get near the end, either by accidentally discovering it through an FAQ or sensing from the story that the game is almost over. It can be annoying, but I just lose interest for some reason. Even if I'm really loving a game it can be a bit of a struggle to push past that desire to go play something else instead, which is the other reason why I have so many unfinished RPGs.

Jam it back in, in the dark.