Daryl’s a good essayist and, in my opinion, this one hits a little different, probably even for people who aren’t into video games.
It explores our anxiety and how we handle reaching the end of a game, story… and other things in life.
If you have just under 24 hours minutes to spare, I think it’s worth your time.
Edit: No idea why the YouTube summary text in this post seems to be in German; it is an all-English video.
He qualifies early on the types of games he’s discussing; anything with a story or that has meaning to us. IIRC he even mentioned the very scenario you bring up: A linear game where we still get to choose whether we finish it simply by not playing. He also mentions we can do this with other media like books.
It’s just an exploration of how we handle getting near the end of something that had meaning for us, both video games and events in our lives.