Submitted 6 days ago by delitomatoes@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
We know that certain games are big, like BG3 or Persona 5. But recently games like FF7 rebirth and Indiana Jones just kept going on and on past “Act 3”. Also Rise of the Golden Idol seemed a little short to me
Are developers getting more efficient with generating content?
Dragon Age: Origins. The base game was easily 80+ hours of interesting story and game play. Each DLC added 20-40 hrs a piece. I used to play it a ton.
I don’t recommend giving money to EA, though. They have properly shit all over the sequels.
I just finished The Veilguard at 68 hours. I loved it, but haven’t played Origins. I bought it, but refunded after I saw how buggy and unsupported it is on new hardware these days. Maybe they’ll have a remaster some day, since everyone seemed to love it.
What problems did you have with it? Still runs surprisingly well for me. Haven’t tried Veilguard yet, but plan to as soon as I have some time. Felt that none of the sequels where able to match Origins yet, though.
It probably wouldn’t be too resource intensive to run it on an XP virtual machine. You’ll want a version that runs on its own, though (no game store launcher, drm, etc)
You are 100% correct.
Hollow Knight.
Surely this is the end of the map… Ok but now Suuuuuurely this is the end of the map… OK NOW SUUUURELY…
I love it when a game is about exploring and half of the content is optional.
It Takes Two. I thought the game would be over about four times, but then it kept adding even more mechanics and got HARD. I thought it would be super casual, did not expect that much length and depth to it (ignoring the cheesy story 😅)
This. There’s just so much game in that game.
It was a really fun game. It took months to finish it, in small chunks, trying to fit in time here and there with my kid. I’m glad we finished though.
Pokemon Silver. Beat the Elite 4 and surprise now you get to go back to Kanto.
Blew my tiny mind…
Nier Automata actually kinda pissed me off the first time I played it. Thought I was finished with the game and was confused by the ending, turns out that was just ending A. Gotta play again for B, and then C, and can’t forget D and E for the full picture.
Had to take a break from the game but I went back for the rest of the endings and they’re worth it. Also they cut out a lot of the side quests and grinding after ending A. Getting that first ending is actually like 50% or 60% finished. But yeah, at first I was getting flashbacks to the PS2 games that tell you the true ending can only be seen by playing again on the newly unlocked ‘Very Hard’ difficulty
Ending B was absolutely just padding.
There’s maybe a few segments where it’s interesting to see 9S’s perspective, but so many other scenes that weren’t bot-specific.
The Talos Principle. After a short bit in the game, you go to a hub area that goes to other areas like the one you just came from. Eventually, you find out that there is another hub area above this which leads to other hub areas. I didn’t remember if there is another layer on top of that, but either way, once I hit that second hub layer, I remember realizing that the entire game was multiple times larger than I had thought, and I had no way to know if it would expand again when I made it to the next area.
The Talos Principle was such a great game! I think I’ll play it again before buying part 2
My wife and I each 100%'d Talos 2 and it was abundantly amazing. It had been years since either of us completed 1 but the way the story is structured you hear about the events of the first game in detail pretty regularly. I’m trying to be vague for spoilers. And of course I’m not trying to talk out of replaying 1, but just know you don’t have to, understand 2, and in my opinion it might be a touch tedious to do them back to back.
Both fantastic games tho that started a lot of good conversations between us.
There’s a remaster coming out early next year! I’m planning on doing the same when that comes out
Untitled Goose Game, but the other way. Got to the end of what I assumed was the first world, but it turned out that was the entire game.
Still a good game, but if I’d known I would have waited for a sale or something.
Okami. Every time I finished an area, I thought I was nearing the end of the game. And every time, I was presented with a new, even larger area.
There’s like three different points in the game that look like the end before revealing more. It’s a chunky game. If it was paced slightly better and the dialogue trimmed (by a lot) it would be perfect. But it’s close enough
So pleased about the sequel coming! Loved that game.
Even if you notice that your brush techniques an inventory screens don’t look complete, it really does feel like the end. Then when they do look complete and you’re sure you’ve finally finished it, there’s one more region and some upgrades.
I’m not usually surprised by the length but by the girth.
I went there too. Heh.
We’re talking about side quest, right?
Yakuza games a completionists dream/nightmare
Hollow Knight. Every time you think you’re nearing the end, there’s still a lot more. The true ending and optional DLCs add so much.
The final two doc battles more than doubled my overall playtime. Absolutely brutal bosses.
I loved nightmare grimm, but didn’t bother with the Godmaster stuff tbh. The boss rush was way too much for me.
That Pathfinder Kingmaker was long as hell. Not sure i want to start the sequel until I’m good and ready for another pleasant slog.
Pleasant slog should be the tagline on every owlcat game.
Love them but they definitely love a long game and a fuck you puzzle here and there.
I just finished it recently as well and also need an break until I start WotR.
I still think owlcat is nuts for adapting not one, but two full APs to video game form. Those are each six books worth of TTRPG adventure and those can take years to complete
As an older gamer I want the opposite: shorter games. I don’t have the time to sink.
I 100% Tunic in 15 hours. I expected it to be longer and harder, considering it’s not even in a real language and you have to translate it.
Wow, that’s very fast imo. Good for you!
Great randomizer out there for it. And it’s Archipelago compatible so you can mix it in with other randomizers alone or with friends, in case you want more!
Portal
Surprised that it was so short?
Well I mean the false ending
For me Portal as well. I knew back then that people said it’s an afternoon game but I thought “an afternoon for a good player, certainly not me”. Finished it in an afternoon.
GTA IV actually, not even counting the two huge DLCs, just the base game alone.
GTA in general has a long story. Which I honestly don’t mind. It means you get your money’s worth with the story alone. All the messing around is just secondary and an added bonus.
I was trying to think of one since I feel the opposite most of the time. This one did surprise me with the length. You think the end is approaching, but some more bullshit is ejected at Niko every time. The main quests takes a lot of detours (in a good way). There isn’t just one villain and you help/fight tons of different factions across the islands.
I remember grinding my way through Pokemon Conquest, having a decent time but also kinda wanting it to reach its conclusion. I get to the end of the main campaign, scroll the credits, and then it tells me on next boot that there’s now some more content to play.
“Oh cool, a postgame,” I thought.
No. There was not a postgame. There were something like eighteen new campaigns to play.
To a certain kind of person this must’ve felt like Christmas morning. I put the game in a drawer and didn’t turn it on again out of sheer intimidation.
Going back a ways here with Castlevania: Symphony of The Night. It seems like a fairly fleshed out game as it is when you get to the “final” boss but then you read a guide and find out “ending A” is only half of the game
Upside down castle
Fallout 4. The amount of world exploration and itty bitty stuffs almost makes me lost myself in exploration, even though the story can be really short depending how you progress the content. On my first playthrough, I clocked at ~90hrs of play time and only just passed the 1/4 of story progression just because I sucked in sidequest and exploration.
Never thought I enjoyed the base building and assisting settlements aspects, Bethesda did great job on Visual storytelling speaking as Interplay/Obsidian Fallout fan.
Another case is STALKER Anomaly mod which can gives you theoritical endless playtime as long as you creative to build your own CYOA Stalker story. Though I don’t recommend Anomaly if you’re looking for the STALKER lore (as they’re fan project) and should be treated as post-vanilla playthrough.
Considering how simple its premise is, Another Crab’s Treasure seems pretty basic, like its story doesn’t have much left, at several points. People online gave some takes that four boss fights from the end, they thought each one would be the final boss.
Far Cry 3 also did this well. You finish the skill tree, do the last few missions where the increased power slides the difficulty down…and then it turns out you unlock a whole other island to make use of your full ability tree in every encounter.
Too bad villain to have the motivation to continue was weak sauce compared to Vaas
Final Fantasy 12
I had just come off of FFX while running through all the FF games that I could. With FF12, I got to a point where I had a solid amount of freedom and did a bunch of side quests and stuff. Then the next portion of the story takes you to this mountain, and I thought, ah cool, this looks like “new base” material. They lay out new information about the plot and then the next stop is to assault an air ship.
Kick ass, I think. This is probably roughly the story equivalent of the assault on Bevelle from FFX, you go in, fight your way through, a cinematic happens and the thrust of the story changes, new info drops, motivations change and are renewed just like in FFX.
Nope. You get to the boss on that ship, it’s some dude you have little to no investment in fighting. You kick his ass, he transforms, easy fight, and the game just ends.
I sat in actual open mouthed disbelief. There was no way the game ended there, at what I felt was dramatically and game time wise to be the obvious mid point. And yet, there the credits rolled.
I was so disappointed.
I haven’t played since the original release, but I vaguely remember feeling the same way. If I remember correctly you get to the boss and he is practically like who are you guys. I felt so let down there was no build up between the boss and your characters.
And then Square repeated it with FFXV. Whole time I was like why do I care about this villain? Apparently you had to play some side game or read a story to understand why you were meant to care.
Nethack.
The first few dozen times I played it, it felt like it took forever to get anywhere. The most recent time I played, it felt quick and easy to get to the bottom. (I got stuck on something, though, and haven’t been able to continue past the valley of the dead.)
Celeste. I was not expecting the core and farewell
Dragon’s Dogma 2. IYKYK
Yo been Waiting to get to try this, how big of an upgrade is it over the first one? I only got like 10-20 hrs in that but I’ve to admit its a very unique game and its been on my list
Xenogears. 80-hour game, and that’s without grinding for everything. And, it probably would have been close to twice as long if they’d been funded enough to complete it. As it was released, the second disc began with a 2-hour cutscene with a save point in the middle, which essentially summed up most of the second half of the story. Amazing game. Like playing through an entire mecha manga.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
I knew it was a jrpg from the beginning, but the way the stories unfolded and piled up had me confused. There was a new question every chapter and it just bwcqme bigge and bigger. Awesome game
Ghosts of Tsushima.
The several Acts was a nice touch
New factorio dlc felt comically long, and yet I’m having to force myself not to make a new save.
I’ve been wanting to play that. Considering it already takes me something like 30-40 hours to launch my first rocket in base game, I’m anticipating that getting through the DLC is going to keep me busy a while.
Astlibra: Revision
I’d put a conservative minimum first playtime at 60 hours… For slower, completionist, players? 80-100 hours.
If that first playthrough is on the impossible setting?.. I don’t wanna think about it. Lmao
Well thanks, you just promoted one of my steam wishlist items higher lol
ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
I got surprised by DeathStranding.
Did not expect that a game that’s basically about going from A to B through walking could be that lengthy, having great scenery and a weird, vague but good story.
I’m really excited for its sequel, just hoping it will also be available for PC on release.
OhFudgeBars@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I wasn’t surprised by the length of the base game, or even by the presence of the post game, but by how much time the game spent ending. You beat the villain, that should be it, right? Lol no, you have to traverse the whole game world without vehicles and no network support. That’s it, right? Lol no, here’s a giant boss monster. That’s it, right? Lol no, here’s a shitload of cutscenes. Then the credits, then cut to black. That’s it, right? Lol no, more cutscenes, then one last delivery… and one last burst of cutscenes, some of which should have come earlier. That’s it, right? Lol almost, you have to watch the credits again, and then one blessedly short cutscene before the postgame, and then you can finally go to the main menu and quit.
I really liked the game, but good lord.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 4 days ago
Classic kojima
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 days ago
They already said it’s going to be a PS5 exclusive.
misk@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Is that correct? Kojima bought full rights to the IP couple of months ago and released Death Stranding on everything immediately. Seems like it’ll be timed exclusive at most.
ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Honestly, that’s a real bummer. I hope it’s a timed exclusive (so with time it will be on PC too).