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?
No matter how much I’ve played it, I don’t think I’ve ever got past half of the campaign of Sacred.
Now playing Elden Ring and even if I’m just starting out I’m constantly surprised by the amount of stuff in the world, most of which I only discovered the second or third time I visited the area it’s in.
Universal Paperclip, was expexting day, weeks or more of gameplay and there were 4-5 hours of good gameplay. It was perfect.
Miitopia. I wasn’t expecting more worlds from such a simple game. I really enjoyed it though.
Biggest surprise for length was Dragon Quest VII, the PSX version. Started playing it close to release, dropped it several times and finally finished it years later.
I’d played multiple games in the series before and I think the longest one topped out at 40 hours, so I really was not expecting a 100+ hour marathon like that was (although the very, very long prologue should probably have served as a warning).
In most JRPGs of the time, at the 30 hours mark you do your endgame sidequests, collect ultimate weapons and whatnot. In DQ7, you unlock the job system 🙃
I remember being surprised by Lufia 2 rise of the sinistrals. It was my first RPG other than a Zelda type game as a kid.
Developers are demonstrably not getting more efficient with their content. More content means more assets, and that’s why development timelines have only gotten longer over the years.
Yeah, games take time to make. It’s good that they have more content now. Do you not remember how short campaigns used to be?
I do, and I miss it. I’m far more likely to feel these days like they made too much game to its own detriment than to make it a length that felt better for the game’s pacing. Baldur’s Gate 3 was phenomenal from start to finish, but games frequently come in at a third of its length and feel like they were longer than they should have been. Lots of games transitioned to open world that used to be linear, and the open world is little more than a menu that makes it take longer to select your mission, because you have to travel there. They create checklists of busy work to keep you playing worse content between the moments that you actually want to do, like the side missions that litter modern Assassin’s Creed games with progression gates. I didn’t know how good we had it when we got FPS campaigns between 8 and 12 hours in the years following Half-Life 1, because they’ve been so rare since Titanfall 2 came out 8 years ago. Games being longer now is not solving a problem that I had, and I’d argue it’s often creating problems.
Maybe you prefer your games longer, and good on you if you do, but it’s most definitely not due to developers getting more efficient with their content. For one reason or another, because you’re demanding it as the customer or because modern asset pipelines make it make the most fiscal sense, they’re just spending more time making the content.
XCom2 the content just DOES NOT END.
And MGS Peacewalker. How they cramed so much stuff unto the tiny PSP disk is beyond me. The list of unlockables is insane.
Ist too bad Xcom games are so focused on time limits. I know it meant to add to the tension but its just frustrating to me to non-stop rush everything.
I love persona 5 but always quit after 40 hrs of playing it. It’s so damn long lol
Lufia: Rise of the Sinistrals. JRPG for the SNES published by Quintet. VERY large game for the era, there are a LOT of towns with dungeons to go through. Gets a little grindy mid-way through, it also manages to fit such a large quest with such a large game map on the cartridge by having relatively little variety in visuals. There’s one town tileset, there’s one dungeon tileset that gets palette swapped, there’s one cave tileset that gets palette swapped, there’s a relatively small number of music tracks you’ll be hearing a lot.
The North American release of its sequel had a very late game dungeon that was corrupted, and technically possible to move through but you’d have to have played the PAL version to know what you’re doing. One of the few broken games I’m aware of to get a Nintendo seal of quality. Lufia II is actually a prequel, you play out the full adventure of the legendary heroes you play in the cold open of Lufia. There’s a cool detail between the two games, in the first, when the legendary heroes were legendary, the dialog is spoken very formal and pompous. In the second game, when we’ve been with them this whole time and they’re just people, the same dialog plays out the same way but it’s much more casual. “Come forth and show thyself!” becomes “Come out and show yourself.” Probably my favorite detail of the whole series.
Deuteros. This is pre 1995, I believe.
Played the game for over a day, got to conquer the entire system, thought I was done but then I found out that that was only 10-20% of the game
DDLC. It was a free dl, and I never played anything like it, so I figured I’d see what everyone was on about. It was surprisingly short!
BG3 has a lot of length. (☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞
I never expected A Girl Who Chants Love At the Bound of This World: YUNO on the PC98 to take me like 80 hours to complete without a guide.
Duck Detective. Charming game, but quite short.
The Last of Us II. I went in expecting the same act structure as the first and was surprised. If you’ve played it then you know what I’m talking about. Despite mainly taking place over just a few days it really feels so drawn out and a relentless struggle, which felt so perfect for the world of the game.
Drakenguard 3, Nier.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night… At least when you defeat Shaft properly
An ENTIRE NEW CASTLE!?
Beyond The Edge of Owlsgarde. No spoilers, but despite playing it for plenty of hours (don’t have an exact count), I felt it was short. Pretty cool enough of a modern point and click adventure game, though.
The only time I was really caught off guard by a game like that was Darksiders II. I went into the final area expecting a gauntlet of challenges, beat the first big boss enemy in there… And final cutscene and credits. That guy was the final boss. Made me literally put down the controller and say “That was it?” I’ve always known long games were going to be long going in to them.
mohab@piefed.social 6 days ago
Maybe not the length of the main campaign, but good luck 100%ing Cartherine, holy shit. Nevermind Full Body. There's like 8 endings combined + insane challenges and 64-stage game within the game. +100 hours easy, if not more.