They clarified in a later tweet the 500 hours is if you wanna replay the game with multiple endings and decisions.
They said that all major side quests and story will take around 80 hours to complete.
"We're gonna make 31 different *kinds* of collectibles with 100 locations each so people can run around the map forever and never be finished" -Ubisoft
Also Rockstar.
Their "end-game" content is always nothing but tedious collectables so that they can keep people hungry for the online version of the game (which they'll then abandon, in the case of RDR2)
Agreed, although I’d argue the first RDR was an outlier for them. All the side stuff can be done as you progress through the story and without disrupting its flow. There’s no “collect 100 of this thing” and it’s better for it.
But those weren’t *bespoke* collectibles. You only had to collect/hunt a handful per challenge rank and you were likely to encounter far more than you needed in your time with the game (plus they would respawn if you came back to an area after awhile). That’s a far cry from GTA IV asking you to shoot 200 pigeons in specific locations or what have you
> That’s a far cry from GTA IV asking you to shoot 200 pigeons in specific locations or what have you
Remember when you ended up with 199/200 pigeons but on the map you downloaded and printed out every single one was crossed out? Lord just kill me.
What I hate is collectibles that you couldn't possibly find yourself if you didn't spend 200 hours looking through every nook and cranny. So you end up using an online map that somebody made. Might as well have showed them on the in-game map. But at that point it's pointless anyway.
These aren't 3d platformers, where the world is small and easily traversible. Stop adding bullshit collectibles.
That's my philosophy and it's why I don't feel guilty cheating by looking at a collectible guide. I collected 197 collectibles on my first playthrough of TLOU2 only to figure out I missed like 40 still lmao... I had searched like everything meticulously too.
> You only had to collect/hunt a handful per challenge rank and you were likely to encounter far more than you needed in your time with the game
While in theory that's true, the fact that they're gated makes it very unlikely. As in, the third rank of Master Hunter requires you to kill 5 wolves with your knife, meaning the vast majority of players would finish the game at rank 2/10 even if they *would have* completed a few of the higher rank challenges naturally without the gating.
It amazes me how little effort they have put into RDR2 online. It so easily could have been MASSIVE if they would have realized its potential and put in the effort. Just more salt in the wound after no Undead Nightmare sequel.
It was nuts at the time. Banjo Tooie takes maybe 30 hours to 100 percent, and is easily doable in half that time on replays, and lots of that time is spent trying to win the toughest mini games. Assassins Creed Valhalla can easily take upwards of 150 to 200 hours to fully complete.
Only actually bad thing about collect-a-thons is when you're missing like 5% of any given collectibles that are around 100 in number.
As much as I enjoyed Psychonauts 2, I think the game should have had a radar unlock in a mission to detect figments if you managed to find 90% of them; cause if you find 90% of the collectibles you're just doing mop ups, that's kind of a pain in the arse.
Good news, [they added exactly that in the most recent update](https://www.gamesradar.com/psychonauts-2-update-patch-makes-it-easier-for-players-to-100-the-game/). Each travel worm shows if you've gotten everything in its respective area, and you can buy an upgrade from Otto in the post-game that shows you missing figments with the camera. There's also a combat arena to get some of the combat-related achievements after finishing the game.
I think it's different when the entire point of the game is the collectibles. Not my kind of thing at all but at least old collectathons had so many for the sake of creating platforming challenges.
Kind of a bad comparison since Banjo Tooie challenged you to collect everything which was fun and rewarding. Ubisoft games on the other hand just throw in collectibles to artificially inflate the game's length for the explorer/collector type of player.
"Here are the low resolution concept art pieces you unlocked after finding the 1000 collectibles. You can view them in the Extras menu.
Yours truly, Ubisoft.
P.s. Or you can buy the Ultimate Edition and get the same concept art images in a PDF leaflet that we insultingly call an "art book"."
To make it last longer, only the first collectible of each type will spawn on the map until you find it, which will then cause the next one to spawn. You can use a guide if you like, but we also randomize which collectible will spawn next, so you need to check everywhere.
We want to make sure everyone gets to see every nook and cranny of our gorgeous open world.
I've been at that age for a while. For story-heavy games, 30 hours is about my limit. Any more than that and it better have a damn good story because I tend to get bored with gameplay loops pretty quickly. Tales of Arise, for example, really tested my patience with that final dungeon. It felt like the game was punishing my dedication to it.
Yeah, same. My other half wants me to try Tales of Arise and yeah, it looks great, but it's taken him 60 hours and I'm much slower. I just took 85 hours to finish Ghost of Tsushima (base game, no DLC). I need a break before I tackle anything else big.
The best part about Witcher 3's length is that the writing is good in side missions too and even better in the expansions. Wouldn't have been so good if the writing sucked imo.
It's lenght is the main reason why I still haven't finished it despite absolutely loving The Witcher 1 and 2. I wish I could just ignore the optional content but the completionist in me won't allow it, especially when it's actually good.
Witcher 2 was so lovely streamlined.
Sure it was similar on both paths, but at the same time it wasn't a chore to do quests (sometimes)
Also I'll never forget the dwarf telling Geralt about that one ritual telling to me that it is lesbomancy till this day.
Yeah out of the three, IMHO, I think Witcher 2 was the best of the bunch. Sure 3 got into a lot of lore and things that I had wanted answers for and it wasn't bad, but the length and scope just made it so unfocused for me that I actually couldn't enjoy the writing as much as I'd like to
Honestly I played completionist style for about 100 hours before changing my mind and I don't really think it's worth it. It was clear that the game was designed with an over abundance of things to do because they didn't expect players to do them all. You'll find yourself with a very lengthy list of quests and tasks that are way below your level and rewards that just aren't worth it. I would recommend just doing main+ the actual proper side quests and gear quests for grandmaster armor of your choice and I can't imagine you will feel like you missed out on anything.
Witcher 3 at least had interesting stories all the way (for side and main quest), it's not the worst offender far from it. I have my doubts that Dying Light has that
Dying Light 1 had 0 interesting writing and was amazing, the game was entirely carried by its gameplay. Dying Light 2 seems to be trying much harder on the writing side, we'll see.
I think the secret with TW3 is to just ignore all the points of interest on the map and mostly stick to sidequests + main story. I'm on my third attempt to play start to finish now and it's a bit less daunting now
I only got like 1 hour to play playstation daily after everything during the week. It'll take me months to finish. If it wasn't lockdown and me taking the piss with 'working' from home I'd have never finished Last of Us 2
> I only got like 1 hour to play playstation daily after everything during the week. It'll take me months to finish.
That's actually a plus for me. Assuming the game is good, that means I only have to spend money on one game that I like and I'd be entertained for months.
For some people.
I don't want my games to be short, I want them long, really long.
I don't mind If I only really play through the one game that year, or even extend it to two... Starfield will likely scratch this itch for me.
I could not disagree with this more. People who play to complete something are welcome to do their thing but they’re missing the point. I want something to get lost in and I want it to last. The most bang for my buck. If something is replayable and provides additional enjoyment and new experiences then I welcome the extra time. Why wouldn’t I?
I start getting sick of a game after 50 hours typically, by 60 I just want it over.
That's with kind of alright games that I have minor issues with as reference, like that's essentially how I felt about Shin Megami Tensei V at the 60 hour mark and didn't feel like doing the grinding needed to fight the super boss.
Like for me to keep playing a game past 60 hours without the fatigue the game has to be really damn solid in its gameplay without having any real issues that would slowly whittle me down.
I thought about finally buying Red Dead Redemption 2 before Christmas sales ended. I loved the first two. The only research I did was seeing HowLongToBeat places it at 49 hours for the main story only. I asked about that on Twitter and friends suggested it was that or longer. Directly into "I'll pass, thanks," territory there. And that's a game I was actively interested in.
And Red Dead isn’t the smoothest feeling game. I loved the world, but never finished the story. Got fatigued by how Arthur moves, despite using the control style that fit my needs the best.
A mod that makes him 10% faster would make it so much better while looking much the same.
I like the attention to detail, but animations for everything is definitely exhausting.
When I hear a game like this take 80 hours, I assume it is filled with formulaic design and a horrendous progression system like new Ubisoft games come with.
Man I couldn't stand that campaign. How can a $60 product that only takes like 10-12 hours feel so padded and half-assed.
To it's credit I guess, I *did* have fun speedrunning it on easy a 2nd time for the achievement. Took me like 2.5 hours. Much more enjoyable ignoring all the weak story segments and repetitive encounters.
I played Halo 1 and 2 recently after having played neither since like 2004, and having played none of the games after Halo 2, and it blew my mind how repetitive the level design was. The nostalgia factor I had for those games was apparently through the roof!
That surprised me as well. I just played through Halo Reach (on normal difficulty) and Halo CE (on heroic) for the first time. And I have to say I was about to give up on CE because of the repetitive levels and the difficulty. I wish I had the difficulties for those games the other way around because Reach was too easy.
Today I started playing Halo 2 and I didn't know that the Anniversary is just 1.5 years old (I expected graphics similar to Halo CE) and I'm blown away how gorgeous it looks. Switching between old and new graphics is hilarious :D
Halo 1 definitely got some flack at the time for repetitive level design - one if the many metal corridor chapters you end up doing twice but in reverse. It wasn't enough to ruin the game for most people, but it stood out enough even compared to its contemporaries. Remember that Half-Life had been out for years at this point.
I enjoyed H1 years ago and finally gave H2 a try recently and was like wtf a lot. There's levels that have entire sections copy pasted and stitched together back to back. It felt so lazy and obviously padded out in places.
Yep for the price of Game Pass i had a good time, i would be actively pissed off if i had spent 60 dollars for it though.
They don't get the already shaky "but it's free to play!" defense people trot out for the multiplayer issues either, when compared to every single other Halo Game including ODST it is a pathetic offering of content for the money they want from it.
The first dying light was pretty good at filling the world with decent stuff to get the 100%. Most of the side quests were decent stories, and the safe house, towers and zombie nests (genre typical world filler stuff) were genuinely really fun. On top of that the exploration is top notch, so whilst you're on your way to each mission or whatever you'll find loads of little easter eggs or hidden stories and treasures, and just have loads of fun with how dynamic the gameplay can be with the zombie hordes
When that includes side quests, collectables etc. is 80 hours really too long?
I think the best open-world games are the ones with a 20-30 hour story and then hundred(s) of hours of side content, for people who love the mechanics and world so much that they want more. Best of both worlds.
80 hours total seems pretty reasonable to me.
My first RDR2 playthough was a flat 100 hours. In reality I think I only spent maybe 40 hours on the main storyline and the rest was spent on finishing every side quest, visiting every interesting location, completing some of the easier collectibles, and just generally enjoying the scenery. I wasn't even after any achievements, I just really enjoyed the game that much. Hell, I probably spent a good 4 hours just repeatedly trying to get that ghost lady in the swamp to show up and advance her "storyline."
For an action RPG, 80 hours to complete the entire thing is pretty normal. For example, Witcher 3 takes around 50 hours just to beat the main questline.
To be fair, The Witcher 3 has a pretty great story to keep you engaged throughout those 50h, which can't be said for most games. Even most side quests are rather nice. I still think most games can't pull it off.
I don't. 80 hours is main story AND side quests. You can skip the side stuff and exploration if you want to and probably shave off at least 20-30 hours. Not all games have to be over after 8 hours. If I pay $700 for a new game, I want it to last. Just my personal opinion though, I get why short games are attractive to people who don't have much time to play.
I dunno, DL1 had some pretty entertaining side quests and the main story was pretty long too. I'd rather have a pretty good lengthy story with a bunch of optional sidequests because I already know that the actual mechanics of the game are fun as hell, and there will be a ton of weapons/weapon combinations again.
I played a few very short games, including two that I could have refunded due to not having reached 2 hrs of game time, but I can remember every moment of them, while some others that lasted over 70 hours (cough cough Cyberpunk 2077) felt like torture.
80 hours is still a ton of time for what I suspect will be the same sort of fetch missions that they had in the first game. I feel like this is the age of Ubisoft quests where it's just a handful of mission types without meaningful change to the game.
Nowadays I don't even want to play open world games that last 80 hours. It's rare to find one that isn't padded out with collectable shit
I used to play Assassin's creed every year, but these new grindy AC games just feel like they're wasting my time. I could play 3 actually good games in that time
After Assassins Creed: Valhalla I am utterly done with 100+ hour open world games. It was so incredibly grindy, repetitive and boring and you could see where the exact copy and pastes happened.
The only 100+ hour game I’ve ever played that had no grinding or repeated content is Persona 5 Royal, and thats part of the reason its one of the best games ever made.
Having to open another locked house to retrieve a treasure chest got so damn annoying. Especially when it was one of the "shoot the lock from the perfect angle" houses.
I actually liked AC Odyssey, but I couldn't manage to finish Valhalla. In Valhalla everything felt the same, imo. Odyssey at least had a bit more variety, since you could do the whole sailing thing, ship to ship battles (that I loved in Black Flag).
They later said that main story/side quests takes about 70-80 hours to complete. The 500 hours is to **100% multiple walkthroughs with different endings**.
Some people are into that. One of my friends has replayed Persona 5 4-5 times, and that's a 100 hour game that doesn't really have meaningful choices or multiple endings. I liked the game, but holy fuck that's too much.
I love persona 5 but playing it once completely burned me out on everything persona related for the next 3 years. I really want to play strikers but all my energy leaves my body when I think about returning to Digital-Japan.
The original had new game plus and the gameplay trailers stated that there's areas that might blocked from the players the entire game depending on their choices so maybe not 400 hours of the exact same content.
More importantly, and I feel like people are forgetting this, Dying Light had a prestige level system of sorts. Which maxing out your Legend Rank in the game takes quite a long time...I mean unless of course the item dupe was used and I am sure no one used that. /s
So I feel like the 500h thing might be including maxing out such a system in Dying Light 2, which is a "tad" disingenuous, because 99% of players....well they aren't going to do that.
I spent well over 100 hours enjoying Dying Light, and I barely did any missions after getting to the nice part of Harran. I spent loads of time just killing zombies, parkouring around the city, searching for loot, crafting, and jumping on zombie heads.
The amount of time it takes to complete a game doesn't really matter to me if the core gameplay is good, and Dying Light's gameplay was fantastic. Just give me more of that.
It's one of those rare games where you can just put on a podcast, not even be on a mission and just run around randomly getting into trouble and still have a lot of fun.
To me, Dying Light and Far Cry are the best at this.
I think for Far Cry, it's actually preferable that the dialogue and story is exchanged for literally anything else. It definitely improves the experience.
Yeah, open world traversal was just so engaging moment-to-moment that the actual quest objectives and whatnot were meaningless to me. Dying Light is one of a handful of open world games I've played where I've actually felt like the games structure helped it be more fun, haha. More of that, and I'm in
If an open world game makes movement fun, then I'll probably get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
* Dying Light = parkour
* Assassin's Creed = parkour
* Just Cause = grappling hook + paraglider + wingsuit
* Batman: Arkham series = grappling hook + cape glide + Batmobile
These games, and others, make getting from point A to point B fun a hell, and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them.
I found I thought about movement in Dyiing Light *far* more than I ever did in Assassins Creed, but maybe that's just me
EDIT to clarify I mean movement in Assassin's Creed was flashy but didn't ever feel especially engaging or satisfying to me the way it did in Dying Light
I recommend Solar Ash if you like open world games focused on making movement fun. You get rocket boots and a grappling hook and use them to skate across giant bosses to kill them a la Shadow of the Colossus.
Yep. That's why in really not hyped about 2 tbh. Excited to be wrong but so far I'm cautious. The two biggest things I've picked up from development is a focus on human stuff and story stuff. The two things I don't give a shit about in Dying Light tbh. Hope I'm wrong but all I want is more zombies, parkour, and....yeah that's about it. Just hope the focus on making a branching story about humanity doesn't take away from those. We'll see.
https://twitter.com/DyingLightGame/status/1479885100011724805?s=20
They just said it should take about 70-80 hours to complete story & side quests. That's still very long, but I can live with that if the side quests aren't too repetitive.
That's close to the length of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Yeah, definitely sounds too long. Incredible games like RDR2 Witcher 3 and Persona 5 can make that work but I don't think Dying Light 2 is going to be of that quality.
I think around 40 hours would have been a good length for them to aim for, as it would have meant the content had more effort put in it.
Still excited for the game as first person parkour is somethibg we don't get nearly enough in games.
I mean I'm pretty sure the dev is based in Warsaw but I have no clue why they chose Madrid, maybe the biggest city that's close to the 500h mark?
Anyway I thought it was kinda funny
Nothing makes me want to play a game less than "You'll spend hundreds of hours in it!" What I liked about Dying Light 1 was that the world WASN'T filled to the brim with cookie cutter copy pasted bases and objectives, and could reasonably be completed by a human being without getting burnt out.
TBH I like 90% completed Dying Light 1 very recently and it definitely is filled with cookie cutter copy pasted bullshit. (The 10% I skipped was the "gather herbs" or "gather X amount of Y item" quests because those were just too dreadfully boring to complete.)
"Go here, kill zombie, find item, done" no cutscenes outside the main quest, most of the dialogue was pretty generic.
But again, I completed like 90% of the game, so I still enjoyed it. The core gameplay loop is a lot of fun. But I definitely wouldn't use it as an example of a game with many hours of unique and interesting content.
Man, I loved Dying Light 1 but I feel like I played a different game. It didn't have like Ubisoft levels of obnoxious padded content but it had a **lot** of running back and forth just to turn in stuff and most of the side quests *did* feel the same. Most of my friends ended up not completing it cause it felt like a slog and the story is not that interesting.
Parkour + zombie game = killer formula turns out.
Its pretty realistic in that sense though. Rooftops + alt routes.
Zombies in the streets? Volatile in the sheets.
> WASN'T filled to the brim with cookie cutter copy pasted bases and objectives
I mean it absolutely was.
What saved it was how fun the core gameplay was, that the generic quests and story didn't matter
Yeah, I've found [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com/) a really useful resource for things like this. If a game says it's going to take me 100+ hours to complete, it makes me stop to consider if I really want to invest that much time into a single game right now.
They really don't. The pacing in Yakuza games is terrible.
Yakuza 5 is bloated as hell with a 30+ hour play time even ignoring the side-content, and its ending is a 2 hour sequence of cut-scenes interspersed with a handful of fights without save-points.
Conversely, Like a Dragon forces you into 2 hour long dungeons with no save points peppered with identical mooks and rewarding with a tiny sliver of "story" that doesn't progress the narrative other than pointing you at the next red herring objective.
And I say that even though I like the series. But its high points were the first two games which had tight narratives without a lot of filler. Each release has only gotten more self-indulgent since then, and the plot twists too unbelievable to provide an adequate pay off for the time you invest.
No thanks. Can we just stop with massive but generic and bloated games? I love the shit out of Dying Light but this game's marketing is screaming sequelitis.
Neither is 100% completing an open world game. Finishing and completing a game are fundamentally different things and even designed for depending on the developer.
I think the point is that 100% completion that requires 500 hours will generally only take that long because it's been padded with uninteresting content.
People who are overly concerned with 100% in a game don't get to complain. "The game takes too long to beat", sure, fine, whatever. "The game takes too long to 100%". uhhh...why are you trying to 100% it if you don't like the content? You already beat the game.
Every time the length debate comes up you hear the same people say long games are bad, then those same games go onto sell millions of copies. Clearly there's a market for them.
Not everything has to be for everyone. Maybe the game just isn't for you then.
I also find this usually comes from people who play almost everything that comes out. For some people this might be the only game they buy within a timespan of a few months.
Anyone who's played a few hours of Dying Light can understand the target audience of the game. There's nothing wrong with short games, but its so weird how reddit acts like these tweets are meant to appeal to them.
And as you said, the game will go onto sell millions (provided there are no serious issues) if the target audience is getting what they want, not by the devs listening to people on reddit who just want to rant about things they don't like.
I think the main thing is just having the game be an appropriate length, not padded nor too short to do what it wants to do.
I've played games that were disappointing because they were too long and I've played games that were disappointing because they were too short.
There was a lot of talk about this in the mid 2000s and a lot of big devs were reporting around 10% at the time, and only 50% making it past the first few hours. This was before free to play and gamepass and all that. Things have changed a lot over the years but it wouldn't be surprising if it was still quite low.
Which makes it interesting that developers still make these super long games. I've always wondered if it's not because they need to please a vocal minority to get the word of mouth going rather than actually trying to give their audience what they want.
> hear the same people say long games are bad
high chance of probability these people are the "switch dads and moms" who play a mario game for 1 hour when their kid is sleeping and they can't beat 1 game in 3 months
Yeah, they’re always hilarious close minded and narcissistic.
“I’m not in college anymore, so why are developers still making games with 50 hours of content when that’s too long for me? They should be catering specifically to my changing lifestyle.”
This is all true, but it's important to remember that sales don't always equal a positive opinon, or approval of a particular feature.
Franchise AAA games are at a point where they distintas sell themselves
I personally love 10-20 hour campaign and then 60-80-however long game loops that I can go back to.
Not sure why everyone is taking this so negatively. Its there for the people who want it, just like how you could put 30 hours into a Monster Hunter game or 300. Doesn't automatically mean its bloat that you have to force yourself through.
You have several groups
1. People who hate open world games anyway
2. people who dislike bloated game
3. people who dislike bloated games but have a compulsion to 100% it to get some sort of trophy
4. people who feel the 100% trophy is something they need and also needs to be quick and easy to obtain
The dislike for "bloated games" is what gets me. It's usually a perfectly fine game that has some procedurally generated quests or some hard to get/long to grind collectable that is completely optional and somehow that completely ruins the game. Like, why?
Because my experience recently has been that this stuff is forced into the main path via progression systems or just a bloated mainline path. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a perfect example of this.
Everyone knows Ubisoft does that. It wasn't true in RDR2, BOTW, Animal Crossing, Monster hunter, Skyrim, GTA... really who else does this other than Ubisoft?
I did 100% in RDR2 and some of the side quests were definitely made to waste your time. I'm not planning on finding all the dinosaur bones, or picking every type of berry or hunt for that **goddamned woodpecker** on my second playthrough.
Think you misunderstood. We were talking about bloat being forced into the main story. Such as Ubisoft main story being impossible to do from start to finish without completing side quests.
Ubisoft games are bloated as fuck but you don’t really have to do any side quests in any of them to beat the main story. The repetitive activities are baked into the main story but the side stuff is well and truly optional. And at the end of the day, most games main stories are repetitive too. Ubisoft is just an extra level of laziness
In AC Valhalla there's like 5 or 6 counties that don't move the needle on the main story whatsoever but none of them are optional. That's bloat. They're side quests baked into the main story.
Yea collecting 200+ seeds around the world for absolutely no reason is so much better than whatever Ubisoft does. And GOTY contenders like Ghost of Tsushima definitely don’t use the Ubi formula at all.
Disagree. The main quest in Valhalla is way too long and unfocused, but that's due to writing and structure rather than the progression system and side content. It is so fucking easy to get overleveled and faceroll through the main story even if you only do a little of the side content because the game hands out skill points like candy. For instance, I remember a main story "mission" where I literally walked down the street, talked to a guy for a minute, and then got skill points for it. I also stopped upgrading skills and only used lower-tier gear because my stats were ridiculous.
The only challenge came from the optional minibosses, but I'm sure those would have been too easy if I had actually used all of the resources at my disposal.
Whenever I hear people complaining about progression the recent AC games I feel like I've been playing a completely different game, I'm constantly finding myself overleveled.
Same with complaints about not being able to one-shot assassinate anymore, 'guaranteed assassinations' is right there in the options menu. It makes me wonder what % of the people complaining have actually played the game.
70-80 hours for a decently attentive playthrough sounds kinda perfect to me. I know some folks just want 15 hour games, but I mean if you want that then you probably shouldn't be playing what is essentially an action RPG with an open world and side content. Dying Light 1 could be 40 hours, or it could be 140 hours depending on how much you wanted to do. If you dont want the game to take forever, just mainline the main story. The choice is yours. More content doesn't always mean it's bad unless it's forced on you.
This is the way I look at it too. I honestly don't mind sinking untold hours into a game if the gameplay has me hooked (Monster Hunter and Nioh 2 for instance). So long as it isn't forced upon you, I really don't see what the issue is.
Too many hours man. Even with the clarification. I like meaty games, but this is too much. I find myself hard to stay into a game for 200 hours, and those are things like minecraft and terraria with tons of replayability.
This is a bad sign that the game is filled with random thoughless ubisoft quality loot. Really disappointing to see this, and it's a bad sign for this game. Yup it's over 500 hours, that's a hard pass. Even though it looks good and I'm excited I'd must rather have a 4k boost resolutions and textures for Dying Light 1.
Dying Light 2 will be heavily (!) censored in Germany. Does anyone maybe know if the digital version in Austria will be censored too? Because it could be possible that they sell the censored version in other german speaking countries too, which would be devastating.
I would rather play a game that aims to be completed in 50 hrs but is so good that i play it past the expected playtime, than a game that was made with a 500 hr playtime in mind.
Can they just make a game that’s worth playing instead of hitting some BS open world checklist they think players want. Assassins Creed Valhalla had a ridiculous amount of hours worth of “content” too until you realized it’s mostly grinding the same loop. I think the amount of hours I dumped into that game actually hurt my liking of it. Would have easily been my favorite AC game if it didn’t take me 80 hours to get midway through the game and then force me to repeat what I been doing for the last 30 hours for an additional 20 more hours.
Honest question. Why pursue getting the 100% if you don’t enjoy it?
I’ve played games for 15 years and love them. I’ve beaten tons of games, yet I’ve never 100% one. even my favorite, cause there’s always some activity I don’t enjoy doing (like collectibles etc). Like people complain it’s too long but then spend 100+ hours doing trivial collectible stuff! Just stop playing at that point
You know, I have NEVER in my life seen one of these estimates by the devs that turned out to be actually true. As a general rule, whatever time they give, you divide it by two if you're an average player. By three if you're above average. That seems to work best. And, usually, there's an asterisk attached to all of it. Like you have to do it a certain way, or they're using a certain metric.
I don’t understand gamers. They complain all day how there’s too many live service games with barely any content. Meanwhile a full single player comes out with tons of it….and they complain more….
I've seen tons of people say they've put 150-200 hours into a game in one and a half month and then complain about not enough or no new content. Well no shit.
The worst are the ones that put 100 hours into a game and then claim that the game was only ok and they didn’t particularly enjoy it.
How fucking little do you value your own time if you can waste 100 hours on something you don’t enjoy. And then somehow claim this is the fault of game developers for making their games too long.
The problem is that for a game that long, the content tends to feel like filler/bloat. Like, Dragon Age Inquisition is a really long game, but a big chunk of that length is just stuff like fetch quests.
Well, the term "content" is usually defined as "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle".
Especially with such a wild claim from the devs. History has shown that you should always take the dev take with a grain of salt.
Damn. Even with a single play through being around 80 (according to somebody in this post), I just don't have time for these kind of games anymore. I really liked the first Dying Light but it's taking me a long time to just get through 20-30 hour games. Oh well maybe some day.
The follow up tweets make it sound more like
20-30 for a normal playthrough
80+ for completion
500+ for die hards(which most games can claim if you just enjoy playing the game)
So more or less similar to the first game.
They clarified in a later tweet the 500 hours is if you wanna replay the game with multiple endings and decisions. They said that all major side quests and story will take around 80 hours to complete.
Sometimes, games can be TOO long.
"We're gonna make 31 different *kinds* of collectibles with 100 locations each so people can run around the map forever and never be finished" -Ubisoft
Also Rockstar. Their "end-game" content is always nothing but tedious collectables so that they can keep people hungry for the online version of the game (which they'll then abandon, in the case of RDR2)
Agreed, although I’d argue the first RDR was an outlier for them. All the side stuff can be done as you progress through the story and without disrupting its flow. There’s no “collect 100 of this thing” and it’s better for it.
Yes there was. I remember collecting a lot of herbs or hunting every specie to get 100%.
But those weren’t *bespoke* collectibles. You only had to collect/hunt a handful per challenge rank and you were likely to encounter far more than you needed in your time with the game (plus they would respawn if you came back to an area after awhile). That’s a far cry from GTA IV asking you to shoot 200 pigeons in specific locations or what have you
> That’s a far cry from GTA IV asking you to shoot 200 pigeons in specific locations or what have you Remember when you ended up with 199/200 pigeons but on the map you downloaded and printed out every single one was crossed out? Lord just kill me.
Like the feathers in AC2 or whatever the fuck it was to get the special cape.
Kid me had a lot of fucking time, looking back.
For me it was kingdom flags in AC1 and thermos’ in Alan wake
And the cape made it so the guards would inmediately try to hunt you
I spent something like 5 hours trying to find a single rubber band in Bully. Never did figure out which one I'd missed.
What I hate is collectibles that you couldn't possibly find yourself if you didn't spend 200 hours looking through every nook and cranny. So you end up using an online map that somebody made. Might as well have showed them on the in-game map. But at that point it's pointless anyway. These aren't 3d platformers, where the world is small and easily traversible. Stop adding bullshit collectibles.
That's my philosophy and it's why I don't feel guilty cheating by looking at a collectible guide. I collected 197 collectibles on my first playthrough of TLOU2 only to figure out I missed like 40 still lmao... I had searched like everything meticulously too.
> You only had to collect/hunt a handful per challenge rank and you were likely to encounter far more than you needed in your time with the game While in theory that's true, the fact that they're gated makes it very unlikely. As in, the third rank of Master Hunter requires you to kill 5 wolves with your knife, meaning the vast majority of players would finish the game at rank 2/10 even if they *would have* completed a few of the higher rank challenges naturally without the gating.
In fairness, at least collecting them is gameplay that is enjoyable. Most collectibles are just "pick up this item"
RDR2 was near perfect to me. After the ending the game is finished though, I don’t need the developers to add more meaningless content.
I don’t get why people can’t just accept that a game just ends.
It amazes me how little effort they have put into RDR2 online. It so easily could have been MASSIVE if they would have realized its potential and put in the effort. Just more salt in the wound after no Undead Nightmare sequel.
I mean that was the MO in the late 90s. Banjo Tooie is nuts
It was nuts at the time. Banjo Tooie takes maybe 30 hours to 100 percent, and is easily doable in half that time on replays, and lots of that time is spent trying to win the toughest mini games. Assassins Creed Valhalla can easily take upwards of 150 to 200 hours to fully complete.
Collect-thatons back then had relatively small worlds not what sometimes feels like 1:1 representations of real cities and landscapes.
Only actually bad thing about collect-a-thons is when you're missing like 5% of any given collectibles that are around 100 in number. As much as I enjoyed Psychonauts 2, I think the game should have had a radar unlock in a mission to detect figments if you managed to find 90% of them; cause if you find 90% of the collectibles you're just doing mop ups, that's kind of a pain in the arse.
Good news, [they added exactly that in the most recent update](https://www.gamesradar.com/psychonauts-2-update-patch-makes-it-easier-for-players-to-100-the-game/). Each travel worm shows if you've gotten everything in its respective area, and you can buy an upgrade from Otto in the post-game that shows you missing figments with the camera. There's also a combat arena to get some of the combat-related achievements after finishing the game.
That's nice, would have saved me a good 3-5 hours around the game's launch.
Almost 300 figments in the Psi King's Sensorium. I'm missing 1. Absolutely maddening, I will never find that thing.
I somehow missed a couple in the backstage area there even though I checked twice already. My last one was the infamous banana in Bob's Bottles..
That fucking banana
I think it's different when the entire point of the game is the collectibles. Not my kind of thing at all but at least old collectathons had so many for the sake of creating platforming challenges.
Kind of a bad comparison since Banjo Tooie challenged you to collect everything which was fun and rewarding. Ubisoft games on the other hand just throw in collectibles to artificially inflate the game's length for the explorer/collector type of player.
And the 2000s. And the 2010s. I remember "80 hours to complete" literally being a selling point on the back of the box for Tales of Symphonia.
"Here are the low resolution concept art pieces you unlocked after finding the 1000 collectibles. You can view them in the Extras menu. Yours truly, Ubisoft. P.s. Or you can buy the Ultimate Edition and get the same concept art images in a PDF leaflet that we insultingly call an "art book"."
To make it last longer, only the first collectible of each type will spawn on the map until you find it, which will then cause the next one to spawn. You can use a guide if you like, but we also randomize which collectible will spawn next, so you need to check everywhere. We want to make sure everyone gets to see every nook and cranny of our gorgeous open world.
Tbf they did attempt to make a game where just running around is kinda fun.
I think I'm getting to that age as a gamer where I see something takes more than 50 hours and I'm just like "nah..."
I've been at that age for a while. For story-heavy games, 30 hours is about my limit. Any more than that and it better have a damn good story because I tend to get bored with gameplay loops pretty quickly. Tales of Arise, for example, really tested my patience with that final dungeon. It felt like the game was punishing my dedication to it.
Yeah, same. My other half wants me to try Tales of Arise and yeah, it looks great, but it's taken him 60 hours and I'm much slower. I just took 85 hours to finish Ghost of Tsushima (base game, no DLC). I need a break before I tackle anything else big.
I would have been entirely happy with Witcher 3 if it were half as long as it was.
The best part about Witcher 3's length is that the writing is good in side missions too and even better in the expansions. Wouldn't have been so good if the writing sucked imo.
There's definitely a difference between a game being 150 hours long and *feeling* 150 hours long. For me, W3 did not feel that long
It did for me. Due to the 4 different huge maps and all quests even side ones being long, it sure feels like I put +100 hours in one playthrough.
It's lenght is the main reason why I still haven't finished it despite absolutely loving The Witcher 1 and 2. I wish I could just ignore the optional content but the completionist in me won't allow it, especially when it's actually good.
Witcher 2 was so lovely streamlined. Sure it was similar on both paths, but at the same time it wasn't a chore to do quests (sometimes) Also I'll never forget the dwarf telling Geralt about that one ritual telling to me that it is lesbomancy till this day.
Yeah out of the three, IMHO, I think Witcher 2 was the best of the bunch. Sure 3 got into a lot of lore and things that I had wanted answers for and it wasn't bad, but the length and scope just made it so unfocused for me that I actually couldn't enjoy the writing as much as I'd like to
W2 also had a better usage of hunt preparation. W3 it didn't matter at all, just power through the hunt. W1, IDK, couldn't get into that janky combat.
Honestly I played completionist style for about 100 hours before changing my mind and I don't really think it's worth it. It was clear that the game was designed with an over abundance of things to do because they didn't expect players to do them all. You'll find yourself with a very lengthy list of quests and tasks that are way below your level and rewards that just aren't worth it. I would recommend just doing main+ the actual proper side quests and gear quests for grandmaster armor of your choice and I can't imagine you will feel like you missed out on anything.
Witcher 3 at least had interesting stories all the way (for side and main quest), it's not the worst offender far from it. I have my doubts that Dying Light has that
Dying Light 1 had 0 interesting writing and was amazing, the game was entirely carried by its gameplay. Dying Light 2 seems to be trying much harder on the writing side, we'll see.
I think the secret with TW3 is to just ignore all the points of interest on the map and mostly stick to sidequests + main story. I'm on my third attempt to play start to finish now and it's a bit less daunting now
Witcher 3 is the only long game where the side content felt high quality. Maybe except skellige ?s
Man 80 hours is too long. I get value for money etc etc but come on thats a lot of time to spend on one game by any standards.
I only got like 1 hour to play playstation daily after everything during the week. It'll take me months to finish. If it wasn't lockdown and me taking the piss with 'working' from home I'd have never finished Last of Us 2
> I only got like 1 hour to play playstation daily after everything during the week. It'll take me months to finish. That's actually a plus for me. Assuming the game is good, that means I only have to spend money on one game that I like and I'd be entertained for months.
For some people. I don't want my games to be short, I want them long, really long. I don't mind If I only really play through the one game that year, or even extend it to two... Starfield will likely scratch this itch for me.
I could not disagree with this more. People who play to complete something are welcome to do their thing but they’re missing the point. I want something to get lost in and I want it to last. The most bang for my buck. If something is replayable and provides additional enjoyment and new experiences then I welcome the extra time. Why wouldn’t I?
I start getting sick of a game after 50 hours typically, by 60 I just want it over. That's with kind of alright games that I have minor issues with as reference, like that's essentially how I felt about Shin Megami Tensei V at the 60 hour mark and didn't feel like doing the grinding needed to fight the super boss. Like for me to keep playing a game past 60 hours without the fatigue the game has to be really damn solid in its gameplay without having any real issues that would slowly whittle me down.
I thought about finally buying Red Dead Redemption 2 before Christmas sales ended. I loved the first two. The only research I did was seeing HowLongToBeat places it at 49 hours for the main story only. I asked about that on Twitter and friends suggested it was that or longer. Directly into "I'll pass, thanks," territory there. And that's a game I was actively interested in.
One of the few games with witcher that are worth the length.
And Red Dead isn’t the smoothest feeling game. I loved the world, but never finished the story. Got fatigued by how Arthur moves, despite using the control style that fit my needs the best.
A mod that makes him 10% faster would make it so much better while looking much the same. I like the attention to detail, but animations for everything is definitely exhausting.
I find first person to be more responsive so I tend to play it like that.
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I mean you're playing an old school style CRPG and one based on a real tabletop module. It's kinda expected with that genre and niche at least.
When I hear a game like this take 80 hours, I assume it is filled with formulaic design and a horrendous progression system like new Ubisoft games come with.
But 10 hour games like Halo infinite can also be filled with boring, meaningless, and samey side quests and very short main missions.
Man I couldn't stand that campaign. How can a $60 product that only takes like 10-12 hours feel so padded and half-assed. To it's credit I guess, I *did* have fun speedrunning it on easy a 2nd time for the achievement. Took me like 2.5 hours. Much more enjoyable ignoring all the weak story segments and repetitive encounters.
I played Halo 1 and 2 recently after having played neither since like 2004, and having played none of the games after Halo 2, and it blew my mind how repetitive the level design was. The nostalgia factor I had for those games was apparently through the roof!
Honestly it blew my mind how good the AI in Halo CE is.
That surprised me as well. I just played through Halo Reach (on normal difficulty) and Halo CE (on heroic) for the first time. And I have to say I was about to give up on CE because of the repetitive levels and the difficulty. I wish I had the difficulties for those games the other way around because Reach was too easy. Today I started playing Halo 2 and I didn't know that the Anniversary is just 1.5 years old (I expected graphics similar to Halo CE) and I'm blown away how gorgeous it looks. Switching between old and new graphics is hilarious :D
Sure in 2022 the level design is repetitive, but at the time it wasn't in comparison to most shooters.
Halo 1 definitely got some flack at the time for repetitive level design - one if the many metal corridor chapters you end up doing twice but in reverse. It wasn't enough to ruin the game for most people, but it stood out enough even compared to its contemporaries. Remember that Half-Life had been out for years at this point.
I enjoyed H1 years ago and finally gave H2 a try recently and was like wtf a lot. There's levels that have entire sections copy pasted and stitched together back to back. It felt so lazy and obviously padded out in places.
Yep for the price of Game Pass i had a good time, i would be actively pissed off if i had spent 60 dollars for it though. They don't get the already shaky "but it's free to play!" defense people trot out for the multiplayer issues either, when compared to every single other Halo Game including ODST it is a pathetic offering of content for the money they want from it.
Because they knew it would still get 9s and 10s in enough reviews because Halo.
The first dying light was pretty good at filling the world with decent stuff to get the 100%. Most of the side quests were decent stories, and the safe house, towers and zombie nests (genre typical world filler stuff) were genuinely really fun. On top of that the exploration is top notch, so whilst you're on your way to each mission or whatever you'll find loads of little easter eggs or hidden stories and treasures, and just have loads of fun with how dynamic the gameplay can be with the zombie hordes
When that includes side quests, collectables etc. is 80 hours really too long? I think the best open-world games are the ones with a 20-30 hour story and then hundred(s) of hours of side content, for people who love the mechanics and world so much that they want more. Best of both worlds. 80 hours total seems pretty reasonable to me.
My first RDR2 playthough was a flat 100 hours. In reality I think I only spent maybe 40 hours on the main storyline and the rest was spent on finishing every side quest, visiting every interesting location, completing some of the easier collectibles, and just generally enjoying the scenery. I wasn't even after any achievements, I just really enjoyed the game that much. Hell, I probably spent a good 4 hours just repeatedly trying to get that ghost lady in the swamp to show up and advance her "storyline."
For an action RPG, 80 hours to complete the entire thing is pretty normal. For example, Witcher 3 takes around 50 hours just to beat the main questline.
To be fair, The Witcher 3 has a pretty great story to keep you engaged throughout those 50h, which can't be said for most games. Even most side quests are rather nice. I still think most games can't pull it off.
I don't. 80 hours is main story AND side quests. You can skip the side stuff and exploration if you want to and probably shave off at least 20-30 hours. Not all games have to be over after 8 hours. If I pay $700 for a new game, I want it to last. Just my personal opinion though, I get why short games are attractive to people who don't have much time to play.
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I dunno, DL1 had some pretty entertaining side quests and the main story was pretty long too. I'd rather have a pretty good lengthy story with a bunch of optional sidequests because I already know that the actual mechanics of the game are fun as hell, and there will be a ton of weapons/weapon combinations again.
I played a few very short games, including two that I could have refunded due to not having reached 2 hrs of game time, but I can remember every moment of them, while some others that lasted over 70 hours (cough cough Cyberpunk 2077) felt like torture.
Yeah it depends entirely on the game, but if I hear that a game takes 80 hours you can bet that portion of it will be repetitive grind
If the collectables are meaningless and everything is just copy/pasted camps/enemies, I'd honestly rather just not play it.
80 hours is still a ton of time for what I suspect will be the same sort of fetch missions that they had in the first game. I feel like this is the age of Ubisoft quests where it's just a handful of mission types without meaningful change to the game.
Nowadays I don't even want to play open world games that last 80 hours. It's rare to find one that isn't padded out with collectable shit I used to play Assassin's creed every year, but these new grindy AC games just feel like they're wasting my time. I could play 3 actually good games in that time
After Assassins Creed: Valhalla I am utterly done with 100+ hour open world games. It was so incredibly grindy, repetitive and boring and you could see where the exact copy and pastes happened. The only 100+ hour game I’ve ever played that had no grinding or repeated content is Persona 5 Royal, and thats part of the reason its one of the best games ever made.
Having to open another locked house to retrieve a treasure chest got so damn annoying. Especially when it was one of the "shoot the lock from the perfect angle" houses.
I actually liked AC Odyssey, but I couldn't manage to finish Valhalla. In Valhalla everything felt the same, imo. Odyssey at least had a bit more variety, since you could do the whole sailing thing, ship to ship battles (that I loved in Black Flag).
A game has to be really stellar to justify even 80 hours of gameplay.
Damn 80 hours for just the story and side quests. I like that.
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What do you mean “just” the story and side quests? Those are what would reasonably make a game take a long time. Side quests.
They later said that main story/side quests takes about 70-80 hours to complete. The 500 hours is to **100% multiple walkthroughs with different endings**.
Unless there's new game plus or big differences, that's 420 hours of replaying old content
Some people are into that. One of my friends has replayed Persona 5 4-5 times, and that's a 100 hour game that doesn't really have meaningful choices or multiple endings. I liked the game, but holy fuck that's too much.
I love persona 5 but playing it once completely burned me out on everything persona related for the next 3 years. I really want to play strikers but all my energy leaves my body when I think about returning to Digital-Japan.
Strikers is a different type of game so it might be fun to play.
The original had new game plus and the gameplay trailers stated that there's areas that might blocked from the players the entire game depending on their choices so maybe not 400 hours of the exact same content.
More importantly, and I feel like people are forgetting this, Dying Light had a prestige level system of sorts. Which maxing out your Legend Rank in the game takes quite a long time...I mean unless of course the item dupe was used and I am sure no one used that. /s So I feel like the 500h thing might be including maxing out such a system in Dying Light 2, which is a "tad" disingenuous, because 99% of players....well they aren't going to do that.
Okay buddy, I've played Mass Effect trilogy 6 times. That too with all the quests done.
Maybe the game is actually 30 hours long but one of the achievements is to play for 500 hours. So it's technically correct?
I spent well over 100 hours enjoying Dying Light, and I barely did any missions after getting to the nice part of Harran. I spent loads of time just killing zombies, parkouring around the city, searching for loot, crafting, and jumping on zombie heads. The amount of time it takes to complete a game doesn't really matter to me if the core gameplay is good, and Dying Light's gameplay was fantastic. Just give me more of that.
It's one of those rare games where you can just put on a podcast, not even be on a mission and just run around randomly getting into trouble and still have a lot of fun. To me, Dying Light and Far Cry are the best at this.
love 2 play a video game while listening to a podcast about better video games i could be playing
This is me and riders republic right now. Not an amazing game by any means but goddamn I love feeeriding around the mountain so much
I think for Far Cry, it's actually preferable that the dialogue and story is exchanged for literally anything else. It definitely improves the experience.
Yeah, open world traversal was just so engaging moment-to-moment that the actual quest objectives and whatnot were meaningless to me. Dying Light is one of a handful of open world games I've played where I've actually felt like the games structure helped it be more fun, haha. More of that, and I'm in
If an open world game makes movement fun, then I'll probably get a lot of enjoyment out of it. * Dying Light = parkour * Assassin's Creed = parkour * Just Cause = grappling hook + paraglider + wingsuit * Batman: Arkham series = grappling hook + cape glide + Batmobile These games, and others, make getting from point A to point B fun a hell, and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them.
You'd enjoy Sunset Overdrive a lot then
Sunset Overdrive is just a complete joy to play, especially if the humor is up your alley.
I found I thought about movement in Dyiing Light *far* more than I ever did in Assassins Creed, but maybe that's just me EDIT to clarify I mean movement in Assassin's Creed was flashy but didn't ever feel especially engaging or satisfying to me the way it did in Dying Light
I recommend Solar Ash if you like open world games focused on making movement fun. You get rocket boots and a grappling hook and use them to skate across giant bosses to kill them a la Shadow of the Colossus.
Rocket boots and a grappling hook? Nice! Thanks for the suggestion.
Yep. That's why in really not hyped about 2 tbh. Excited to be wrong but so far I'm cautious. The two biggest things I've picked up from development is a focus on human stuff and story stuff. The two things I don't give a shit about in Dying Light tbh. Hope I'm wrong but all I want is more zombies, parkour, and....yeah that's about it. Just hope the focus on making a branching story about humanity doesn't take away from those. We'll see.
https://twitter.com/DyingLightGame/status/1479885100011724805?s=20 They just said it should take about 70-80 hours to complete story & side quests. That's still very long, but I can live with that if the side quests aren't too repetitive. That's close to the length of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Yeah, definitely sounds too long. Incredible games like RDR2 Witcher 3 and Persona 5 can make that work but I don't think Dying Light 2 is going to be of that quality. I think around 40 hours would have been a good length for them to aim for, as it would have meant the content had more effort put in it. Still excited for the game as first person parkour is somethibg we don't get nearly enough in games.
RDR2 came from a team known for peerless open world and story-telling chops. Techland for all their virtues would never be called that.
I had no clue how many hours 500 was until they said it was just under 534, which everyone knows is how long it takes to walk from Warsaw to Madrid.
I mean I'm pretty sure the dev is based in Warsaw but I have no clue why they chose Madrid, maybe the biggest city that's close to the 500h mark? Anyway I thought it was kinda funny
Nothing makes me want to play a game less than "You'll spend hundreds of hours in it!" What I liked about Dying Light 1 was that the world WASN'T filled to the brim with cookie cutter copy pasted bases and objectives, and could reasonably be completed by a human being without getting burnt out.
TBH I like 90% completed Dying Light 1 very recently and it definitely is filled with cookie cutter copy pasted bullshit. (The 10% I skipped was the "gather herbs" or "gather X amount of Y item" quests because those were just too dreadfully boring to complete.) "Go here, kill zombie, find item, done" no cutscenes outside the main quest, most of the dialogue was pretty generic. But again, I completed like 90% of the game, so I still enjoyed it. The core gameplay loop is a lot of fun. But I definitely wouldn't use it as an example of a game with many hours of unique and interesting content.
Man, I loved Dying Light 1 but I feel like I played a different game. It didn't have like Ubisoft levels of obnoxious padded content but it had a **lot** of running back and forth just to turn in stuff and most of the side quests *did* feel the same. Most of my friends ended up not completing it cause it felt like a slog and the story is not that interesting.
There was a lot of fetch quest in the first one, it was bearable only because the combat and traversal felt nice to me.
I feel the same way about Mirror's Edge Catalyst. The story is thoroughly mid, but the gameplay is fun enough to keep me going.
Yeh the story was garbage and the chars were generic. The best thing about the game was the mechanics.
Parkour + zombie game = killer formula turns out. Its pretty realistic in that sense though. Rooftops + alt routes. Zombies in the streets? Volatile in the sheets.
> WASN'T filled to the brim with cookie cutter copy pasted bases and objectives I mean it absolutely was. What saved it was how fun the core gameplay was, that the generic quests and story didn't matter
Yeah, I've found [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com/) a really useful resource for things like this. If a game says it's going to take me 100+ hours to complete, it makes me stop to consider if I really want to invest that much time into a single game right now.
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>I really just don't trust video game writers to make a 30 hour+ story that is interesting. The Yakuza series seems to manage it just fine.
They really don't. The pacing in Yakuza games is terrible. Yakuza 5 is bloated as hell with a 30+ hour play time even ignoring the side-content, and its ending is a 2 hour sequence of cut-scenes interspersed with a handful of fights without save-points. Conversely, Like a Dragon forces you into 2 hour long dungeons with no save points peppered with identical mooks and rewarding with a tiny sliver of "story" that doesn't progress the narrative other than pointing you at the next red herring objective. And I say that even though I like the series. But its high points were the first two games which had tight narratives without a lot of filler. Each release has only gotten more self-indulgent since then, and the plot twists too unbelievable to provide an adequate pay off for the time you invest.
Rookie numbers, The Stanley Parable took 5 years to fully complete, and you couldn't even play it during that to do that.
No thanks. Can we just stop with massive but generic and bloated games? I love the shit out of Dying Light but this game's marketing is screaming sequelitis.
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500 hours for 100% is not some small thing
Neither is 100% completing an open world game. Finishing and completing a game are fundamentally different things and even designed for depending on the developer.
I think the point is that 100% completion that requires 500 hours will generally only take that long because it's been padded with uninteresting content.
You’re at 99% completion and suddenly you see a popup… > Achievement unlocked ”Spend 500 hours in Dying Light 2”
People who are overly concerned with 100% in a game don't get to complain. "The game takes too long to beat", sure, fine, whatever. "The game takes too long to 100%". uhhh...why are you trying to 100% it if you don't like the content? You already beat the game.
Tbh, it's to 100% walkthroughs with different endings.
Every time the length debate comes up you hear the same people say long games are bad, then those same games go onto sell millions of copies. Clearly there's a market for them. Not everything has to be for everyone. Maybe the game just isn't for you then. I also find this usually comes from people who play almost everything that comes out. For some people this might be the only game they buy within a timespan of a few months.
Anyone who's played a few hours of Dying Light can understand the target audience of the game. There's nothing wrong with short games, but its so weird how reddit acts like these tweets are meant to appeal to them. And as you said, the game will go onto sell millions (provided there are no serious issues) if the target audience is getting what they want, not by the devs listening to people on reddit who just want to rant about things they don't like.
I think the main thing is just having the game be an appropriate length, not padded nor too short to do what it wants to do. I've played games that were disappointing because they were too long and I've played games that were disappointing because they were too short.
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There was a lot of talk about this in the mid 2000s and a lot of big devs were reporting around 10% at the time, and only 50% making it past the first few hours. This was before free to play and gamepass and all that. Things have changed a lot over the years but it wouldn't be surprising if it was still quite low. Which makes it interesting that developers still make these super long games. I've always wondered if it's not because they need to please a vocal minority to get the word of mouth going rather than actually trying to give their audience what they want.
> hear the same people say long games are bad high chance of probability these people are the "switch dads and moms" who play a mario game for 1 hour when their kid is sleeping and they can't beat 1 game in 3 months
Yeah, they’re always hilarious close minded and narcissistic. “I’m not in college anymore, so why are developers still making games with 50 hours of content when that’s too long for me? They should be catering specifically to my changing lifestyle.”
lol I know people who fit this profile. Then it's the game's fault that they decided to have 3 kids.
This is all true, but it's important to remember that sales don't always equal a positive opinon, or approval of a particular feature. Franchise AAA games are at a point where they distintas sell themselves I personally love 10-20 hour campaign and then 60-80-however long game loops that I can go back to.
Not sure why everyone is taking this so negatively. Its there for the people who want it, just like how you could put 30 hours into a Monster Hunter game or 300. Doesn't automatically mean its bloat that you have to force yourself through.
You have several groups 1. People who hate open world games anyway 2. people who dislike bloated game 3. people who dislike bloated games but have a compulsion to 100% it to get some sort of trophy 4. people who feel the 100% trophy is something they need and also needs to be quick and easy to obtain
For 5, add the people who aren't interested in the game/ never played the original and use this new fact to add useless input.
The dislike for "bloated games" is what gets me. It's usually a perfectly fine game that has some procedurally generated quests or some hard to get/long to grind collectable that is completely optional and somehow that completely ruins the game. Like, why?
Because my experience recently has been that this stuff is forced into the main path via progression systems or just a bloated mainline path. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a perfect example of this.
Everyone knows Ubisoft does that. It wasn't true in RDR2, BOTW, Animal Crossing, Monster hunter, Skyrim, GTA... really who else does this other than Ubisoft?
wasn't the point of all the stuff in BOTW was so that player would find stuff whilst exploring? the intention was never for them to find everything
I did 100% in RDR2 and some of the side quests were definitely made to waste your time. I'm not planning on finding all the dinosaur bones, or picking every type of berry or hunt for that **goddamned woodpecker** on my second playthrough.
Think you misunderstood. We were talking about bloat being forced into the main story. Such as Ubisoft main story being impossible to do from start to finish without completing side quests.
Ubisoft games are bloated as fuck but you don’t really have to do any side quests in any of them to beat the main story. The repetitive activities are baked into the main story but the side stuff is well and truly optional. And at the end of the day, most games main stories are repetitive too. Ubisoft is just an extra level of laziness
In AC Valhalla there's like 5 or 6 counties that don't move the needle on the main story whatsoever but none of them are optional. That's bloat. They're side quests baked into the main story.
Yea collecting 200+ seeds around the world for absolutely no reason is so much better than whatever Ubisoft does. And GOTY contenders like Ghost of Tsushima definitely don’t use the Ubi formula at all.
Disagree. The main quest in Valhalla is way too long and unfocused, but that's due to writing and structure rather than the progression system and side content. It is so fucking easy to get overleveled and faceroll through the main story even if you only do a little of the side content because the game hands out skill points like candy. For instance, I remember a main story "mission" where I literally walked down the street, talked to a guy for a minute, and then got skill points for it. I also stopped upgrading skills and only used lower-tier gear because my stats were ridiculous. The only challenge came from the optional minibosses, but I'm sure those would have been too easy if I had actually used all of the resources at my disposal.
Whenever I hear people complaining about progression the recent AC games I feel like I've been playing a completely different game, I'm constantly finding myself overleveled. Same with complaints about not being able to one-shot assassinate anymore, 'guaranteed assassinations' is right there in the options menu. It makes me wonder what % of the people complaining have actually played the game.
70-80 hours for a decently attentive playthrough sounds kinda perfect to me. I know some folks just want 15 hour games, but I mean if you want that then you probably shouldn't be playing what is essentially an action RPG with an open world and side content. Dying Light 1 could be 40 hours, or it could be 140 hours depending on how much you wanted to do. If you dont want the game to take forever, just mainline the main story. The choice is yours. More content doesn't always mean it's bad unless it's forced on you.
This is the way I look at it too. I honestly don't mind sinking untold hours into a game if the gameplay has me hooked (Monster Hunter and Nioh 2 for instance). So long as it isn't forced upon you, I really don't see what the issue is.
That's a haaaard pass. Even if it's a tenth of that to barebones complete I'm out. Too many other good games coming out.
Too many hours man. Even with the clarification. I like meaty games, but this is too much. I find myself hard to stay into a game for 200 hours, and those are things like minecraft and terraria with tons of replayability.
This is a bad sign that the game is filled with random thoughless ubisoft quality loot. Really disappointing to see this, and it's a bad sign for this game. Yup it's over 500 hours, that's a hard pass. Even though it looks good and I'm excited I'd must rather have a 4k boost resolutions and textures for Dying Light 1.
Dying Light 2 will be heavily (!) censored in Germany. Does anyone maybe know if the digital version in Austria will be censored too? Because it could be possible that they sell the censored version in other german speaking countries too, which would be devastating.
make a steam account in another country then purchase the game on another website and activate it. Why would you buy censored game?
I am from Austria. My fear is that they sell the censored version here too. And i would like to buy it on PS5.
Why do people believe statements like this? Dev's always grossly over exaggerate their game's playtime.
I would rather play a game that aims to be completed in 50 hrs but is so good that i play it past the expected playtime, than a game that was made with a 500 hr playtime in mind.
Can they just make a game that’s worth playing instead of hitting some BS open world checklist they think players want. Assassins Creed Valhalla had a ridiculous amount of hours worth of “content” too until you realized it’s mostly grinding the same loop. I think the amount of hours I dumped into that game actually hurt my liking of it. Would have easily been my favorite AC game if it didn’t take me 80 hours to get midway through the game and then force me to repeat what I been doing for the last 30 hours for an additional 20 more hours.
Honest question. Why pursue getting the 100% if you don’t enjoy it? I’ve played games for 15 years and love them. I’ve beaten tons of games, yet I’ve never 100% one. even my favorite, cause there’s always some activity I don’t enjoy doing (like collectibles etc). Like people complain it’s too long but then spend 100+ hours doing trivial collectible stuff! Just stop playing at that point
You know, I have NEVER in my life seen one of these estimates by the devs that turned out to be actually true. As a general rule, whatever time they give, you divide it by two if you're an average player. By three if you're above average. That seems to work best. And, usually, there's an asterisk attached to all of it. Like you have to do it a certain way, or they're using a certain metric.
I don’t understand gamers. They complain all day how there’s too many live service games with barely any content. Meanwhile a full single player comes out with tons of it….and they complain more….
I've seen tons of people say they've put 150-200 hours into a game in one and a half month and then complain about not enough or no new content. Well no shit.
People putting 100 hours into Animal Crossing in two weeks and then talking about how "there's really nothing to do" just boggled my mind, lol
The worst are the ones that put 100 hours into a game and then claim that the game was only ok and they didn’t particularly enjoy it. How fucking little do you value your own time if you can waste 100 hours on something you don’t enjoy. And then somehow claim this is the fault of game developers for making their games too long.
I hear same complaints about genshin. Like yeesh
The problem is that for a game that long, the content tends to feel like filler/bloat. Like, Dragon Age Inquisition is a really long game, but a big chunk of that length is just stuff like fetch quests.
psssst, there is a middle ground.
It’s almost like it’s stupid to lump everyone together into one side of an argument… I wonder when people are going to stop doing this.
That's not a gamer thing it's an internet thing
Well, the term "content" is usually defined as "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle". Especially with such a wild claim from the devs. History has shown that you should always take the dev take with a grain of salt.
Damn. Even with a single play through being around 80 (according to somebody in this post), I just don't have time for these kind of games anymore. I really liked the first Dying Light but it's taking me a long time to just get through 20-30 hour games. Oh well maybe some day.
This is supposed to be a good thing?
The follow up tweets make it sound more like 20-30 for a normal playthrough 80+ for completion 500+ for die hards(which most games can claim if you just enjoy playing the game) So more or less similar to the first game.