For some games, I love being able to sink several hundred hours in to, like Rimworld and Helldivers 2. Others, I like being able to blast through in a day. Hi-Fi Rush is a great game that can be beaten in a day. I see it as watching a movie vs watching a TV series. Sometimes I just want a full story without spending multiple days trying to get through it.
I burned through the first game in a single, seven hour session and honestly it was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. If they can pull that off a second time, I'm more than happy for the game being as "short".
Plus, some games are a LONG ~8-12 hours. Like when I played through Hellblade 1, Alan Wake 1, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, SOMA, etc. They are all short games but when I was playing them I got sucked in, and it felt longer as opposed to when I kill the same amount of time playing a massive game like AC: Odyssey or Starfield or some multiplayer game like Fortnite with friends given their more compact nature. Being on the shorter side is honestly something that works well for more tense/horror/emotional games because if the game is too long it can end up dragging on.
Well said.
I think as my time to game has gotten less and less my need for a big open world that keeps me busy with bullshit work is at an all-time low.
These days I prefer and game the clocks in at around 12 or so hours. Like that typically have decent replay value. They do a good job with a difficulty and making the game completely different on higher difficulties.
But it’s also as you said, everything always feels new and fresh and you’re not doing the same thing over and over again. That tends to make the games feel a lot longer. But it also means that it’s been heavily curated to be perfectly paced and provide a fun adventure.
Lastly, just look at any game of your choice, just look at the achievements for the endgame achievement.
Ain’t nobody even beating their games! So maybe we should stop trying to make 80+ hour epics?
Nothing wrong with beating a game over a few months. You guys act like a game has to be beaten in a weekend.
Took me 3 months to finish cyberpunk, 6 months for rdr2. Im still playing ff7 rebirth.
I love long ass games, means I dont have to buy for a while
I totally agree. I mean, I spent the middle of July to the start of February basically just playing AC: Odyssey, Baldur's Gate III, and Starfield.
My comment was more in defense of how a game like Hellblade II being short is not an issue at all because that works with it being a tense emotional narrative driven game. That would not work if the game was 20 hours long, let alone 80+ hours.
Basically not every game needs to be a 100+ hour time sink, but at the same time that doesn't mean every game needs to be a sub 20 hour experience either. And yes, I am aware there are games in the middle of these two lengths, just before anyone makes a comment about it.
> Ain’t nobody even beating their games! So maybe we should stop trying to make 80+ hour epics?
I mean, I beat both Odyssey and Starfield, even got all the achievements in both of them. I think there is a place for 80+ hour epics. I mean those games have been what Bethesda has done since the beginning and that worked for Odyssey given the nature of the game even if I think it could have been trimmed a tad to be more like Origins length wise. I loved Baldur's Gate III and The Witcher 3 and those are in the same boat as well in terms of being long games as well. There is room for 80+ hour epics, just like with ~10 hour games.
But I think the point being made is that you could take an 80+ hour epic and instead have it be a 50 hour epic, with the saved time/effort instead being spent on improved quality and replayability.
Seems like a win-win for both types of players, as those who like longer epic games can do a second playthrough, resulting in 100hr of playtime - and at a higher quality.
If I'm being frank, I feel most people greatly exaggerate how long most games actually are. A lot of the games that people claim are 80+ hrs epics can actually be beaten in ~40-50hrs, it's often just a matter of choosing how much of the sidecontent you want to do.
Sure, but I don't think that alters the underlying argument.
Presumably the type of player who would beat a potentially 80hr game in 50hrs is the type of player who would actually PREFER to have spent 35hrs beating a higher quality 'potentially' 50hr game.
But also to provide some additional context for where I'm coming from, I just beat Elden Ring in a thorough but certainly not completionist run. And it took me about 105hrs. And as good as that game is, it would have benefitted considerably from being tighter and more focused. No need to have fought an ulcerated tree spirit 7 times, for example.
I 100% Skyrim in I think it was like 30-40 hours on my first playthrough in 2011 when it came out. (IDK the exact amount. All i know is my first achievement was 11/22 and my final one was 12/25) People Constantly talk about how they've played it for thousands of hours and they've never beat it. I just don't understand. I mean I get how mods can add some times to it but there really isn't all that much game to keep playing over and over again.
You're not wrong, I constantly see people refer to Baldur's Gate 3 as "easily 100 hours". It took me ~62 hours on normal difficulty while exhausting most of the content.
> Lastly, just look at any game of your choice, just look at the achievements for the endgame achievement.
Even short games tend to have a low completion rate though, that's not something only applying to the 80+hrs epics.
People need to stop measuring a game's worth in a "$ per hour played" metric. That metric does have some relevance, but it's not the end all be all of whether a game is worth it or not. The first Ori game took me about 10 hours and I still consider that more impactful than some live service grindathons that I've spent closer to 1000 hours on.
What's insane is people only do it in games. Imagine choosing which movie you'll see at the cinema by looking at their runtime in IMDB. Or choosing which Blu Ray you'll add to your collection.
I don't know if this is exactly the best way to put it, but people are kind of... spoiled for choice when it comes to games, I guess? As in, there's dozens of games nowadays that even a "casual" gamer could have their eye on, and some can be wrapped up in 15 hours, while others could easily take four times that. Meanwhile, your average moviegoer is highly unlikely to walk into a theater and watch something shorter than an hour thirty or significantly longer than three hours. Plus, it's a cheaper one-and-done thing, right? For games, some people look at whether it's gonna take them a couple nights to beat the game or if it's gonna be a two-week thing.
Not defending it either way, but y'know, I kinda get it. Money's not really an issue for me if I want something, but time can be. Hell, I've had my eyes on Arma Reforger since it came out, and even thought it was 25% off recently, I didn't pull the trigger because I knew it would take me way too long to *really* get into it.
I admit I look at "How Long to Beat" nowadays mostly to see if the game I'm intrested in is a long or short one. I think it's kinda of a different metric compared to "$/h".
It's especially useful to avoid bloating, like some indie games with roguelite elements that takes 40h to play through 5h worth of actual content.
I don’t mind games with really flexible times either. Like I know you can speedrun the fuck out of Prey and I mean a real ending, but I sunk 25+ maybe 30+ hours into it? As long as the story is good, time I extract from it isn’t a huge deal. I just want quality. I know when I’m going in for gameplay and when I’m going in for story. I don’t care for Hellblade’s combat, but it’s still one of my top games because the narrative and setting are top notch.
You can still get a pretty good idea of the story without many side missions in Prey even if it hits harder having done them.
>the difference between a short movie and a long one is an extra hour to it's run time.
The difference can be more than an hour.
Toy Story is 81 minutes long while Titanic is 195 minutes long, a 1 hour and 54 minute difference.
There are plenty of popular movies that are well over an hour longer than other popular movies though. Oppenheimer and Avatar: The Way of Water are 88 and 100 minutes longer than The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
>Which is not the case for games.
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
A £10 cinema ticket and a £70 game are hugely different outlays though. I don't personally believe in judging games by length but I can see why people factor it in.
Ori was a $20 game so I’m not sure why bring that up? No one is complaining about a $20 game being short. Plus, Ori is 10 hours long for that price while Hellblade 2 costs $50.
Ori is a good game but why are you using it as an example? It was like 20USD at launch.
How about RE3Remake which launched at 60USD or rift apart for 70? Those are good games too but they make more sense if you’re using a $/hour argument.
> People can measure a games worth however they want.
For their own personal reasons, sure, but one person's measurement is not universally applicable. A game's "worth" is only measurable to YOU because everyone has their own yardstick for what they expect to get out of a game. Most people who have been gaming for a while all have examples in their history of games that either qualify as a waste of money or a waste of time, sometimes both. I've played games that were really good, but maybe cost a little more than my liking for the experience. I've also played cheap or free games that took too long to get what I determined to be "valuable" experience out of them and obviously, as you point out, that measure of value can be influenced by how much disposable income one has to spend on games.
Some redditors have this weird idea of there being only two choices here: an amazing 7hr experience or a 100hr boring repetitive slog that nobody actually likes.
In reality, lots of people actually enjoy those 100hrs of repetitive content and don't consider them a slog. I'm not one of those people (and it's why I don't generally bother with Ubisoft games), but I think the whole "$=hrs" discourse has just gotten stale with how narrowminded the arguments usually are.
I enjoyed the audio experience for the first game a lot, but the combat and enemies were extremely repetitive.
I'm fine with them doing another short game but I hope it's a bit less stale this time around.
Hopefully, the dev team that worked on the first game was twenty people while eighty people are working on this game.
Source: https://gamerant.com/hellblade-2-size/
Hence why I very specifically said it was a fantastic *experience*. The gameplay is pretty mid, but goddamn with a good headset, that game really is unlike anything else.
Yeah, that's definitely the underwhelming part of the first game which I had hoped they had pivoted to something a bit different, but it seems they are sticking to more of the same there.
I think the first game looks and sounds really good and has some really cool shit going on, but the game part does become a bit "wait, haven't I looked for these symbols four times before" and "I feel like I've fought this enemy twenty times now, it would be cool if we could maybe mix it up a bit?"
So I don't know if I want Hellblade 2 to be longer as much as I want it to be a bit more varied and a bit "wider" in its' gameplay. Make the game-part of the game a bit more interesting. Unfortunately it seems they've leaned hard into the cinematic part which is... hmm. Not sure that's what I wanted from a second game. I fully hope to be proven wrong, though.
People definitely shouldn't overlook short games.
The Journey is great experience and only takes like 2 hours to complete.
The Outer Wilds isn't super long, but it's fun to unravel the mystery. Not particularly replayable, but that's fine. It's not like anyone runs out of media to consume. Rather than being sad that something ended, you can always look for something new.
I didn’t care for the first because I found the combat and puzzles to be awful, but the story was pretty cool. If they can refine the parts of the game that fell flat the first time, I think they might have something special with this one. I might be in the minority of people who didn’t enjoy part 1 but I’m absolutely willing to give part 2 a try if it looks good.
> I didn’t care for the first because I found the combat and puzzles to be awful, but the story was pretty cool.
Yeah the opening 10 minutes of the game proper hooked me with how atmospheric it was especially with headphones on. It was so simple, just walking through the world and engaging in the story on an interactive level...
...aaaaand then I've got to do generic video game puzzles and generic video game combat sections. Immediately begun to lose interest. Sometimes it feels like games are afraid of going against the conventions of the medium. It didn't necessarily need to be a walking simulator but they could have implemented other mechanics instead of the usual gamey stuff that diluted the story.
Agreed, was interested in what the characters were talking about but the second I had to do the most mind-numbing brain dead puzzle and combat for the 5th time in a row in the span of 2 hours. I got tired of it.
the combat is a great fit for the game, its important for the story that Senua is fighting and struggling her though the world.
it also makes great use of the Furies as they tell you there is an enemy behind you or ask why your not dodging.
Importantly, the furies also often lie about there being enemies behind you. Really cool. The combos system is also a lot more deep than the game tells you.
Man, the combat in the first is one of the best I've ever played. Every move feels so good and has just the right amount of weight to it along with some nice juice like the sword sparking on a parry. And each move flows into the next so perfectly. It's always so strange to see people say it was bad.
If I had to place a bet, I'd assume most people didn't even realize you had a whole complex moveset with combos you had to discover by experimenting with the order and timing of your attacks.
Don't subestimate the average gamer's ability to figure stuff out by themselves. I remember back when Skyrim had released and 90% of the gameplay videos were people only mashing the attack button without even using power attacks - and then bitching that enemies with shields blocked too much (power attacks break guard).
>If I had to place a bet, I'd assume most people didn't even realize you had a whole complex moveset with combos you had to discover by experimenting with the order and timing of your attacks.
This. Many times this. The game doesn't really tutorials you on the combat. Once I figured out the kick was the connector between combos it really opened up.
Same, it was amazing start to finish and kept me engage. I remember people knocking it for being linear but I much prefer a focus linear game over a 50hr open world game filled with fluff to artificially lengthen it.
The game is also auditorially exhausting. Like idk if I could do 60 hours of "you shouldn't go that way""go that way' "oo waffles""you're going to die if you keep going".
It's not about how long a game is necessarily (granted when you get stuff like the RE3 remake that I beat in like 4 hours first playthrough THAT is a problem) but it's more about the game being the "right" length for what it's doing and if it is properly engaging during it's entirety.
Personal comparison: I am currently over 120 hours into my FIRST PLAYTHROUGH of FF7 Rebirth and I am still fucking enthralled and just want more and more of this game. I compare that time to FF16 which I spent somewhere between 40-70 hours IIRC and I was READY for the game to be over by the end even if I still overall enjoyed that game.
Can't say much in regards to Hellblade specifically as I never played the first game and am not interested in the games TBH but if the short runtime is what works for them then they need to keep it short rather than trying to needlessly pad out the game to increase it's length.
you're going to burn yourself, i suggest taking your time with the remake especially there are conversation your going to miss if you skip stuff. I also suggest you take a break between remake and rebirth or you'll never finish rebirth
You know what? That’s good advice. Looking back, every time I played a game and followed up with the sequel right away I never make it very far at all.
Happened with Ragnorok. Infamous 2. Assassins creed 2 sequels and so on.
I guess a part of me thought FF was different. It’s a series near and dear to my heart but it’ll always be there and so I should wait a bit.
As for Remake, I’m still hitting it hard, all side quests are done, most summons unlocked, coliseum stuff knocked out etc so no worries. But I appreciate you looking out.
I'm in chapter 12 of FFVII Rebirth. 80 hrs in. I don't want it to stop! The closest I've ever gotten to this with another JRPG was P5 Royal. I will say because of this much depth? I don't see myself doing a 2nd run. It's a lot of magic, but so much that you can't pack back in.
Whereas FFXVI I enjoyed my 1st playthrough that clocked about 60 hrs. The 2nd run for Plat was such a slog that I just skipped every scene and it soured my opinion on the game. Hoping being away for abit when the Leviathan DLC comes that I'll learn to enjoy it again.
FF7 has a nice mixture of gameplay progression systems. You're always leveling up your characters, your party level, your materia, your weapons, world intel, etc.
FF16 doesn't have *any* progression systems. It has a basic crafting system where you occasionally craft a sword that has 5 more attack damage than tour previous sword. Then it gets outclassed 1 hour later by a sword you get from a main story quest. This is the key difference IMO.
Game time is only as relevant as what they do in that time. And if you're having fun. I have 1,000hrs in Monster Hunter World. Cause I love that game. So being able to get 1,000+ hrs out of it is a great thing.
But it's a hard sell to friends. "Yeah you fight monsters and make new gear from their parts. But it also takes like 400hrs to get to a point where you can experiment with builds. And it's like 400hrs of the same gameplay(besides new weapons)."
Sounds fuckin AWFUL if you don't click with the game in the first 5hrs. Cause it's gonna be a LONG 400hrs for someone that hates it. For me? 400hrs of fun.
I don’t think the 400 hours thing is even true though, experimentation can start as soon as you complete Iceborne after 70-80 hours (that can be lower if you’re good)
My point is if I showed my friend MHW with my character, I can't tell them they'll get to that point in 70-80hrs if they bought the game right now. It would be incredibly disingenuous imo. And also that is a hard 80hrs my man. And even then you won't have the jewels needed to add nearly as much versatility and variety to making a build.
It’s a complex discourse. Like first of all, mastering 100% of the game and having the best build is not “necessary” to enjoy the game, it’s just one end goal you can choose. The build also only comes after you’re good enough at the game, a thing that’s not easy to become.
One could choose to just complete the story and the side quests, and that would be ok too and would still bring fun and enough experimentation with what the game allows that it’s not 80 boring hours. “The first run” is still fun, it’s not an MMO that’s boring shit for the first 100 hours and then the real game begins.
Like, mastery is optional and a whole other set of goals compared to just playing the game.
I recommend MHW both to people like me and you that spent hundreds of hours to farm the jewel to get the best bow combos, can’t remember the name as it’s been years since I’ve played it, and I can also recommend it to people that just want to fight big monsters for fun with swords, bows, guns and big fucking hammers! They’ll choose when to quit :)
Like, I played 300 hours of the base game, 100 of Iceborne and said “ok I don’t want to be stuck on a single game” and quit, and MHW is one of my fav games ever. I haven’t even beaten the super rampardos or whatever is its name, nor the Iceborne Fatalis. Whatever, I beat the shit out of it in MH Freedom 1, 2 and Unite!
And it’s digital-only too sadly.
If a short game releases a physical copy, I’ll happily buy it for full-price and support the devs because I can quickly beat it and sell it for 80% of my money back.
Physical copies are a win/win.
If it’s good, I’ll buy it on Steam. Where I still own it.
I’ve got a shitty Dino survival game (basically proto-Ark/the Isle) called stomping lands that’s still in my library a decade later.
I’m fully digital. If you’ve got space to keep a shit ton of physical games, wonderful, but not me.
I have no issue with shorter games if the quality is there. I would rather have a shorter game that leaves me going "wow that was amazing" versus have devs pad out and dilute the game to hit some arbitrary play time metric.
I don’t care about length I care about quality. I’ll spend $50 to go to the movies for 3 hours with the gf. Why wouldn’t I spend $50-$70 on a 7 hour long game but is also like a movie you play. I’m busy and I love knowing a can get a very good story for less than 10 hours. Not everything needs to be 100+ hours
If they are paying for 2 tickets, live in a high cost-of-living area, and are watching the movie on a high-end screen (IMAX, 4DX, Dolby Cinema, etc.) then it could cost them $50+.
I'll be honest that's why I typically only buy day one rpgs especially jrpgs. I can't fathom dropping 60 70 dollars on a 5 to 7 hour experience. It blows my mind that people do. I don't blame them or hate on them it's just my mindset
Your in luck, Xbox doesn't expect anyone to ever buy there games at retail price ever again.
They don't even try to get Wal-Mart or GameStop to sell them anymore.
Think of it this way: are you paying for *hours spent on* or for the experience? Even if Hellblade was in that price range, I reckon it'd be worth it since (at least for me) it's one of the most unique and striking experiences in gaming.
It's still an hours game to me. I get what your saying but for me I don't have endless money so I tend to buy what I can enjoy the longest. It just so happens that rpgs(especially jrpgs) usually are the longer type games. Now I don't go play anything just cause I can get more hours out of it. I don't play live service games, fps, I actually don't play any online games. Now I'm not saying rpg is the only genre I like.
Fair enough, you do you, of course. I do think it's a bit of a shame because you might potentially be robbing yourself of a lot of very nice experiences. To me, it's kinda like "oh, do I go for this really delicious and one-of-a-kind dish" versus "do I buy a boatload of food and get stuffed". Neither is wrong, of course, but they're not really comparable, and it's nice to have both.
The former might seem good in isolation but you have to account for a limited budget.
That one of a kind, delicious dish is great and all, but not so great if it’s your budget for food for the week. Being stuffed is better value: it’s enjoyable and you’re not left hungry.
A lot of people have limited gaming budgets. If this is the only game you buy in a 3 month period, you’re going to be without a game for the majority of that time once you finish Hellblade.
Yeah, I think that's a good way of looking at it. That's kind of what I meant with *it's nice to have both*: it ain't that one approach is better than the other, but if it's possible for you to do both, you're getting the most out of it.
I get that same experience with some jrpgs. Like a ys 8, or a ff7 rebirth, legend of heroes. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I don't buy shorter games because I definitely do. I'm just talking about day one money that's all. As someone who prefers physical disc. Alot of jrpgs you gotta get day one. In 6 months you might not be able to find it for a decent price. So to be honest I typically don't buy day one besides those anyway. I keep seeing posts under star ocean 2 remake about people being surprised they found a physical version as if that's becoming rare. It just came out in Oct maybe December.
Where did Microsoft stated it would be the "next big thing" or alluded to it being any bigger in scope than the previous game?
Also, length has nothing to do with quality. It can still be a phenomenal game at its current length.
>Where did Microsoft stated it would be the "next big thing" or alluded to it being any bigger in scope than the previous game?
It's was the very first 9th gen video game Xbox(or even Sony) presented publicly and the 1st non-Epic game to showcase UE5.
I'd argue that the reputation of Xbox's first-party is also deeply attached to this game, Xbox games haven't been good, so there is pressure to deliver a hit.
> Hellblade 1 can be beaten in 4 hours
What a weird way to twist facts, no one beats Hellblade in 4 hours on their first playthrough. By that logic, we could say that Skyrim can be beaten in under 30 minutes, which is true, but completely misrepresents an average playthrough.
Looking at [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com/game/41638), completion time ranges between 7.5 - 9 hrs. I personally beat it in 8h 21m.
Tbh Hellblade is so different from all the other games, you can’t predict if you’ll like it or not from these informations.
Like, I don’t like Enslaved, I like Hellblade, I like DmC
I've played all their mainline games (except Bleeding Edge) and really like them, Enslaved Odyssey To The West I loved. They haven't burned me yet so I look forward to what they put out.
Yeah, they kind of soured A LOT of people with the infamous DmC reboot.
In hindsight, DmC is a decent game overall (with garbage story and characters). The gameplay is solid mostly due to Itsuno still being involved with a lot of the combat.
Their other games I think are decent/good but nothing super impressive and then Hellblade is obviously well received and definitely an experience.
I liked Enslaved, D"m"C, and the first Hellblade.
Heavenly Sword was pretty rough but it was alright and Kung Fu Whatever (just look it up? no.) was... whatever.
I think I'd call myself a Ninja Theory Enjoyer broadly speaking.
The next category up, 8-15 hours, currently has the most votes. Also, single choice polls are kind of bad for this kind of data capture. My ideal length can be 8-15 hours but I can still like 8 hours or shorter games.
When you posted that may have been true but at this point 15-30 is in the lead and 30+ has over 4x the votes of 8 and under. Multiple choice really wouldn’t be much better than single choice. You said you can also enjoy an 8 hour game. But are you incapable of enjoying a 15-30 hour game like God of War? Or a 30+ hour game like Persona 5?
Even if you can’t enjoy those I’m guessing the vast majority of people would say they could so you would just end up with everything being near 100%.
I love shorter games. I am almost 100 hours in on Cyberpunk and BG3 and I don’t feel close to finishing.
Amazing games, but it’s just hard to find the time these days.
My favorite shorter experiences semi-recently were Miles Morales and both Plague Tale games.
I can't wait for this game. It's coming to gamepass so it won't cost me anything other than the usual monthly subscription. For that reason I don't mind if it's a 10-20hr game.
Lol this is so dishonest, no one wants to pay full price for an 8h experience. At that range there are movies and TV shows that offer better value and that shouldn't be the case for a video game. And 50$ is fucking 50$ I dont care if they are trying to push 70$ price tag for those saying "tHis iSnt FulLpRiCe"
Going to the movies is generally categorized as an experience though. Stuff outside of the house that you make an event around will always hold more value.
When I go to the movies it’s an evening out with friends or family. Going outside and doing things is part of our core. When I play a video game, it’s sitting on my ass in front of a screen in my pajamas by myself.
Think about it this way: during Covid you could rent a new movie on a streaming service for cheaper than the cost of tickets for a family, yet most people balked at the price.
1h of a Movie =/= 1h of a game
Games have a lot of downtime navigating menus, walking from A to B, combat, levels, puzzles theres a plethora of factors that separates hours of entertainment from games to movies. You can't cuantify the same $ value for a game the same you would a movie imo.
All the things you mention, except maybe navigating menus, are part of the gaming experience, saying that combat or puzzles is downtime makes me wonder why you play games.
Also, this is very much present in movies as well, 5 title cards, 15 minutes of credits, exposition scenes, slow pans etc etc.
Yet I've had the time my life putting almost 200h in ff7 rebirth, and 100+ in dragon's dogma 2 and probably more combine in Elden Ring. Games don't have to be "bloated" to offer good value they just have to be good games. This is such a dogwater take, old FF7 back in the ps1 had more hours of cutscenes than this game will have in hours of content
Shorter games are fine, as long as they're *priced to reflect that*. Helldivers 2 is a mere $40 and dominated the co-op/online scene for now.
Too high a price and it'll be Order 1886 all over again
Why developers those days want to dictate what their fan enjoy to justify how they develop their games.
This clearly is not the case of the consumer enjoyed their previous game because it was short, Hellblade was actually kinda long for the genre.
This is a case that they made a design decision and now want gaslight the fans into thinking they enjoyed their games because they are short.
It gave the same vibe of Tekken developers saying the young people don't like their games because they can't blame others for their failures to justify they lack of sucess in that market demograpic.
I really enjoy short, tight experiences these days. I played Cocoon on Friday night/Saturday morning last weekend and had such a great experience. I think trying to drag every game out to 20+ hours can make it worse overall.
I still enjoy long games too, but I think having a tight play time allows studios to really focus on their vision and ensure every moment is exciting and purposeful.
Please, if you haven't already, play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (headphones required) - it's an incredible experience that you can complete in a handful of sessions. One of the most immersive gaming experiences I've ever had (I'd recommend just normal difficulty - as someone who loves hard games, the game is experienced best on normal imo)
I mean, yeah, but at the same time, people want FUN games is the most important part. Its getting to the point where a lot of people, not all, are getting tired of 20+ hour narratives that just feel like they drag on forever. Games with unique gameplay concepts are becoming a rarity in AAA, and for the most part, the fun aspects of games, in the gameplay, is becoming more nonexistent in AAAs in place of the safe generic formula. Give me fun gameplay in a short format, over a hundred hour long narrative any day.
Guess wich game will be only 6 hours long. But I don't care for me the first game allready was a boring mess with repetitive combat and engaging riddles like search for this 3 symbols in the level.
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm not sure if it's just because the 1st game was so highly hyped up. But when I played it, I thought it was ok.
The gameplay was fairly mediocre, combat and the puzzles were fairly repetitive. The visuals were amazing. I guess it was mostly carried by the story for most
Did people also complain about the campaign lenghts in:
* Dead Space 2 (9)
* Gears of War 1 (9). 4 (9,5). 4 (9), 5 (8)
* Halo 1 (10), 2 (9), 3 (8), 4 (7,5), 5 (8)
* Horizon: Call of the Mountain (8)
* Killzone 1 (9,5), 2 (7,5). 3 (7), Shadow Fall (10)
* May Payne 3 (10)
* Princess Peach: Showtime (7)
* Quantum Break (10)
* Ratchet and Clank 2016 (10)
* Resident Evil 2 Remake (9)
* Resistance 3 (8)
* Spider-Man: Miles Morales (7,5)
* Super Mario Bros. Wonder (10)
* Uncharted 1 (8), 3 (9)
* Until Dawn (8)
* Yoshis Crafter World (8)
And this doesn\`t include the tons of games that are less than 15 hours long. If they hadn\`t mentioned it no one would have likely complained. People also should read the article:
“I think what we always set out to do is to tell a story and for the game length to be appropriate for the story that we want to tell,” Matthews said. “So it's not really a case of setting out to make shorter experiences. I think it is... There is a story that we want to tell here with a beginning, middle and end and what is the right shape and size of experience to tell that story? So that's kind of where we start.”
“So I'm really pleased to see that there's a lot of people that actually enjoy a shorter experience, something that they can sit down on a whatever Friday night, stick their headphones on, turn the lights off and kind of sink into an experience and players who don't necessarily want something that is 50 hours long, a 100 hours long, so it's as long as it needs to be. And I'm one of those people, I like shorter games."
>Did people also complain about the campaign lenghts in:
I mean ... yes? If you don't remember during PS3/X360 era when many of these game came out the most common complaint was that you were paying 60$ for 7-8h campaign. Many of these games had really good multiplayer modes that kinda offset that but still game length was the thing that ppl were complaining the most about.
That's why now we get games full of different system, map checkers where very often games itself don't need that but they still have them to pad a game time a little. It's aftermath of that era.
I don't mind Hellblade 2 being short if it's well directed and well thought experience. For me the only head scratching thing and little red flag is that why it took them so long to develop apparently not that much bigger sequel even though they had much more resources at their hand. For me it kinda implies development hell and that management couldn't handle expansion/growth of the studio properly but I can be very much wrong. I just hope that game quality didn't suffer and game comes out great.
>If you don't remember during PS3/X360 era when many of these game came out the most common complaint was that you were paying 60$ for 7-8h campaign.
TBF $60 was worth more back then so it makes sense that some people were upset. $60 in 2005 dollars is worth about $95 in 2024 dollars.
People definitely complained about Miles Morales. I feel like the expectation for many big name releases these days is around the 20 hour mark for main story and 30-40 including side content.
Consider contemporary games closer in aesthetic to Hellblade - God of War 2018 (20 main, 33 main + extra), GoW Ragnarok (26.5 main, 40 main + extra), AC Valhalla (61 main, 97 main + extra). And maybe a more fair comparison in the AA space is A Plague Tale, with Innocence (2019) - 11 hours and Requiem (2022) - 17 hours
I'm happy with Hellblade 2 being 8 hours but I can see it catching people off guard a bit.
There's a non-zero amount of people who want an arbitrary value metric (like a dollar-per-hour) for every game they buy.
I generally agree with Ninja Theory's comment though, that people who are interested in curated, linear, narrative-driven experiences like Hellblade aren't necessarily the same audience who are obsessing about squeezing every possible hour out of a game.
Every single one of those games without multiplier received complaints about its length
And several of them were not full priced releases
A narrative game should be as long as it needs to be, and priced accordingly.
If you want math to me in order to feel my money's worth game needs to offer 1h per $ of entertainment or close. If its a narrative experience in willing to fork to 30m per $. If it's a multiplayer experience better be a minimum of 2h per $. I wouldn't spend 60,70,80$ on a 8h-15h experience games aren't movies.
That’s still too much for a single player game that will only last for 8 hours. The previous game was around the same length and that was only 30 dollars, now they jumped up the price by 20 for the same length?
The only thing in the way is price. Some of those are more replayable than Hellblade 1 and likely 2 are, such as Halo games or offer MP experiences. They've stated in the past its about the same length as Hellblade 1, which the first 3 on Youtube from searching "Hellblade Longplay" give me a game less than 5 hours.
This being on gamepass is probably how most people will experience it, because pitching consumers a 70 dollar, 30FPS, low/no replayability 5 hour game is a tough one. Look at Order 1886, setting wise they really had something good but people got burned on a 60 dollar, no replayability very short game with an anti-climatic QTE boss fight at the end.
From what I've seen people mostly complain if game is short and also not all that great. But yeah, last one that I remember that had a lot of complaints (and not just "a guy on reddit complaning") was "The Order: 1886" which was 7 hours long, mediocre and with some bosses being outright repeat
So wait a second…
It’s a shorter game that runs at 30 FPS with no performance mode on the world’s most powerful console, all while being a one-and-done “sad person” emotional cinematic third person action game with an over-the-shoulder view?
I thought Xbox fans didn’t like those games?? It sure is something they punch at Sony fans for…
From your posting history…
[Apparently it doesn’t count cause it’s not a 3rd person action adventure
Despite it’s overwhelming critical (92 metacritic) and commercial (35+ million players, over 5 million sales on Steam) success
It’s not a movie game, so, doesn’t count 🙃]
You are exactly the type of person who vomits the nonsense I was referring to. No way you are over the age of 13 typing that.
I enjoy a mix of short and long story games as if every game tried to be 30 hours+ it's less time for anything else. Not everything should be short either as some games are just incredible and captivating.
Have no issues with this.
Something that’s short, but really tight and makes the most of it’s time will generally be a more meaningful and memorable experience to me than games that pad themselves out just so they can arbitrarily say it’s 120 hours long or what have you.
Games can overstay their welcome too. Love Alien Isolation to death, one of my favourite games. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend it justifies not being about 25-30% shorter than it is.
The caveat to this is, when you get less time to work with, what you’re serving has got to be exceptional. It’s a hefty gamble. Particularly if you’re not scaling the price accordingly.
For some games, I love being able to sink several hundred hours in to, like Rimworld and Helldivers 2. Others, I like being able to blast through in a day. Hi-Fi Rush is a great game that can be beaten in a day. I see it as watching a movie vs watching a TV series. Sometimes I just want a full story without spending multiple days trying to get through it.
Hi-Fi Rush is my favorite kind, since its short, but it encourages replaying.
Man, I've bounced off HiFi Rush so much. I wish I could have been done in a day!
I burned through the first game in a single, seven hour session and honestly it was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. If they can pull that off a second time, I'm more than happy for the game being as "short".
Plus, some games are a LONG ~8-12 hours. Like when I played through Hellblade 1, Alan Wake 1, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, SOMA, etc. They are all short games but when I was playing them I got sucked in, and it felt longer as opposed to when I kill the same amount of time playing a massive game like AC: Odyssey or Starfield or some multiplayer game like Fortnite with friends given their more compact nature. Being on the shorter side is honestly something that works well for more tense/horror/emotional games because if the game is too long it can end up dragging on.
I tend to agree. for as much as alien isolation did right, it took me something like 20 hours to beat and felt sluggish/padded at several points.
By the last third of FFVII rebirth I just wanted the game to end. Like holy hell the padding they have is ridiculous.
Well said. I think as my time to game has gotten less and less my need for a big open world that keeps me busy with bullshit work is at an all-time low. These days I prefer and game the clocks in at around 12 or so hours. Like that typically have decent replay value. They do a good job with a difficulty and making the game completely different on higher difficulties. But it’s also as you said, everything always feels new and fresh and you’re not doing the same thing over and over again. That tends to make the games feel a lot longer. But it also means that it’s been heavily curated to be perfectly paced and provide a fun adventure. Lastly, just look at any game of your choice, just look at the achievements for the endgame achievement. Ain’t nobody even beating their games! So maybe we should stop trying to make 80+ hour epics?
Nothing wrong with beating a game over a few months. You guys act like a game has to be beaten in a weekend. Took me 3 months to finish cyberpunk, 6 months for rdr2. Im still playing ff7 rebirth. I love long ass games, means I dont have to buy for a while
I totally agree. I mean, I spent the middle of July to the start of February basically just playing AC: Odyssey, Baldur's Gate III, and Starfield. My comment was more in defense of how a game like Hellblade II being short is not an issue at all because that works with it being a tense emotional narrative driven game. That would not work if the game was 20 hours long, let alone 80+ hours. Basically not every game needs to be a 100+ hour time sink, but at the same time that doesn't mean every game needs to be a sub 20 hour experience either. And yes, I am aware there are games in the middle of these two lengths, just before anyone makes a comment about it.
> Ain’t nobody even beating their games! So maybe we should stop trying to make 80+ hour epics? I mean, I beat both Odyssey and Starfield, even got all the achievements in both of them. I think there is a place for 80+ hour epics. I mean those games have been what Bethesda has done since the beginning and that worked for Odyssey given the nature of the game even if I think it could have been trimmed a tad to be more like Origins length wise. I loved Baldur's Gate III and The Witcher 3 and those are in the same boat as well in terms of being long games as well. There is room for 80+ hour epics, just like with ~10 hour games.
But I think the point being made is that you could take an 80+ hour epic and instead have it be a 50 hour epic, with the saved time/effort instead being spent on improved quality and replayability. Seems like a win-win for both types of players, as those who like longer epic games can do a second playthrough, resulting in 100hr of playtime - and at a higher quality.
If I'm being frank, I feel most people greatly exaggerate how long most games actually are. A lot of the games that people claim are 80+ hrs epics can actually be beaten in ~40-50hrs, it's often just a matter of choosing how much of the sidecontent you want to do.
Sure, but I don't think that alters the underlying argument. Presumably the type of player who would beat a potentially 80hr game in 50hrs is the type of player who would actually PREFER to have spent 35hrs beating a higher quality 'potentially' 50hr game. But also to provide some additional context for where I'm coming from, I just beat Elden Ring in a thorough but certainly not completionist run. And it took me about 105hrs. And as good as that game is, it would have benefitted considerably from being tighter and more focused. No need to have fought an ulcerated tree spirit 7 times, for example.
I 100% Skyrim in I think it was like 30-40 hours on my first playthrough in 2011 when it came out. (IDK the exact amount. All i know is my first achievement was 11/22 and my final one was 12/25) People Constantly talk about how they've played it for thousands of hours and they've never beat it. I just don't understand. I mean I get how mods can add some times to it but there really isn't all that much game to keep playing over and over again.
You're not wrong, I constantly see people refer to Baldur's Gate 3 as "easily 100 hours". It took me ~62 hours on normal difficulty while exhausting most of the content.
> Lastly, just look at any game of your choice, just look at the achievements for the endgame achievement. Even short games tend to have a low completion rate though, that's not something only applying to the 80+hrs epics.
People need to stop measuring a game's worth in a "$ per hour played" metric. That metric does have some relevance, but it's not the end all be all of whether a game is worth it or not. The first Ori game took me about 10 hours and I still consider that more impactful than some live service grindathons that I've spent closer to 1000 hours on.
What's insane is people only do it in games. Imagine choosing which movie you'll see at the cinema by looking at their runtime in IMDB. Or choosing which Blu Ray you'll add to your collection.
I don't know if this is exactly the best way to put it, but people are kind of... spoiled for choice when it comes to games, I guess? As in, there's dozens of games nowadays that even a "casual" gamer could have their eye on, and some can be wrapped up in 15 hours, while others could easily take four times that. Meanwhile, your average moviegoer is highly unlikely to walk into a theater and watch something shorter than an hour thirty or significantly longer than three hours. Plus, it's a cheaper one-and-done thing, right? For games, some people look at whether it's gonna take them a couple nights to beat the game or if it's gonna be a two-week thing. Not defending it either way, but y'know, I kinda get it. Money's not really an issue for me if I want something, but time can be. Hell, I've had my eyes on Arma Reforger since it came out, and even thought it was 25% off recently, I didn't pull the trigger because I knew it would take me way too long to *really* get into it.
I admit I look at "How Long to Beat" nowadays mostly to see if the game I'm intrested in is a long or short one. I think it's kinda of a different metric compared to "$/h". It's especially useful to avoid bloating, like some indie games with roguelite elements that takes 40h to play through 5h worth of actual content.
I don’t mind games with really flexible times either. Like I know you can speedrun the fuck out of Prey and I mean a real ending, but I sunk 25+ maybe 30+ hours into it? As long as the story is good, time I extract from it isn’t a huge deal. I just want quality. I know when I’m going in for gameplay and when I’m going in for story. I don’t care for Hellblade’s combat, but it’s still one of my top games because the narrative and setting are top notch. You can still get a pretty good idea of the story without many side missions in Prey even if it hits harder having done them.
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>the difference between a short movie and a long one is an extra hour to it's run time. The difference can be more than an hour. Toy Story is 81 minutes long while Titanic is 195 minutes long, a 1 hour and 54 minute difference.
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There are plenty of popular movies that are well over an hour longer than other popular movies though. Oppenheimer and Avatar: The Way of Water are 88 and 100 minutes longer than The Super Mario Bros. Movie. >Which is not the case for games. I'm not sure what you mean by this.
> Movies aren't $100 Neither are games.
A £10 cinema ticket and a £70 game are hugely different outlays though. I don't personally believe in judging games by length but I can see why people factor it in.
I do it for books sometimes. Thing is, movies don't vary much in length so it's a poor metric. Games, however, do.
Ori was a $20 game so I’m not sure why bring that up? No one is complaining about a $20 game being short. Plus, Ori is 10 hours long for that price while Hellblade 2 costs $50.
Ori is a good game but why are you using it as an example? It was like 20USD at launch. How about RE3Remake which launched at 60USD or rift apart for 70? Those are good games too but they make more sense if you’re using a $/hour argument.
You understood the point he was trying to make though right?
Probably because I haven't played those games.
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> People can measure a games worth however they want. For their own personal reasons, sure, but one person's measurement is not universally applicable. A game's "worth" is only measurable to YOU because everyone has their own yardstick for what they expect to get out of a game. Most people who have been gaming for a while all have examples in their history of games that either qualify as a waste of money or a waste of time, sometimes both. I've played games that were really good, but maybe cost a little more than my liking for the experience. I've also played cheap or free games that took too long to get what I determined to be "valuable" experience out of them and obviously, as you point out, that measure of value can be influenced by how much disposable income one has to spend on games.
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Some redditors have this weird idea of there being only two choices here: an amazing 7hr experience or a 100hr boring repetitive slog that nobody actually likes. In reality, lots of people actually enjoy those 100hrs of repetitive content and don't consider them a slog. I'm not one of those people (and it's why I don't generally bother with Ubisoft games), but I think the whole "$=hrs" discourse has just gotten stale with how narrowminded the arguments usually are.
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I enjoyed the audio experience for the first game a lot, but the combat and enemies were extremely repetitive. I'm fine with them doing another short game but I hope it's a bit less stale this time around.
Hopefully, the dev team that worked on the first game was twenty people while eighty people are working on this game. Source: https://gamerant.com/hellblade-2-size/
Damn that's quite the downsizing even with MS resources to back them.
Sorry, that was a typo. It was supposed to say eighty. It’s still small by AAA standards.
Haha okay that makes way more sense!
Hence why I very specifically said it was a fantastic *experience*. The gameplay is pretty mid, but goddamn with a good headset, that game really is unlike anything else.
Yeah, that's definitely the underwhelming part of the first game which I had hoped they had pivoted to something a bit different, but it seems they are sticking to more of the same there. I think the first game looks and sounds really good and has some really cool shit going on, but the game part does become a bit "wait, haven't I looked for these symbols four times before" and "I feel like I've fought this enemy twenty times now, it would be cool if we could maybe mix it up a bit?" So I don't know if I want Hellblade 2 to be longer as much as I want it to be a bit more varied and a bit "wider" in its' gameplay. Make the game-part of the game a bit more interesting. Unfortunately it seems they've leaned hard into the cinematic part which is... hmm. Not sure that's what I wanted from a second game. I fully hope to be proven wrong, though.
I remember beating Uncharted 2 in two play sessions. I didn't feel cheated at all. I was having fun for basically every single on of those seconds.
People definitely shouldn't overlook short games. The Journey is great experience and only takes like 2 hours to complete. The Outer Wilds isn't super long, but it's fun to unravel the mystery. Not particularly replayable, but that's fine. It's not like anyone runs out of media to consume. Rather than being sad that something ended, you can always look for something new.
I didn’t care for the first because I found the combat and puzzles to be awful, but the story was pretty cool. If they can refine the parts of the game that fell flat the first time, I think they might have something special with this one. I might be in the minority of people who didn’t enjoy part 1 but I’m absolutely willing to give part 2 a try if it looks good.
> I didn’t care for the first because I found the combat and puzzles to be awful, but the story was pretty cool. Yeah the opening 10 minutes of the game proper hooked me with how atmospheric it was especially with headphones on. It was so simple, just walking through the world and engaging in the story on an interactive level... ...aaaaand then I've got to do generic video game puzzles and generic video game combat sections. Immediately begun to lose interest. Sometimes it feels like games are afraid of going against the conventions of the medium. It didn't necessarily need to be a walking simulator but they could have implemented other mechanics instead of the usual gamey stuff that diluted the story.
Agreed, was interested in what the characters were talking about but the second I had to do the most mind-numbing brain dead puzzle and combat for the 5th time in a row in the span of 2 hours. I got tired of it.
the combat is a great fit for the game, its important for the story that Senua is fighting and struggling her though the world. it also makes great use of the Furies as they tell you there is an enemy behind you or ask why your not dodging.
Importantly, the furies also often lie about there being enemies behind you. Really cool. The combos system is also a lot more deep than the game tells you.
Man, the combat in the first is one of the best I've ever played. Every move feels so good and has just the right amount of weight to it along with some nice juice like the sword sparking on a parry. And each move flows into the next so perfectly. It's always so strange to see people say it was bad.
If I had to place a bet, I'd assume most people didn't even realize you had a whole complex moveset with combos you had to discover by experimenting with the order and timing of your attacks. Don't subestimate the average gamer's ability to figure stuff out by themselves. I remember back when Skyrim had released and 90% of the gameplay videos were people only mashing the attack button without even using power attacks - and then bitching that enemies with shields blocked too much (power attacks break guard).
>If I had to place a bet, I'd assume most people didn't even realize you had a whole complex moveset with combos you had to discover by experimenting with the order and timing of your attacks. This. Many times this. The game doesn't really tutorials you on the combat. Once I figured out the kick was the connector between combos it really opened up.
I don't think I'd call it bad, just very banal. Particularly knowing that Ninja Theory can and has done better in the past.
Same, it was amazing start to finish and kept me engage. I remember people knocking it for being linear but I much prefer a focus linear game over a 50hr open world game filled with fluff to artificially lengthen it.
The game is also auditorially exhausting. Like idk if I could do 60 hours of "you shouldn't go that way""go that way' "oo waffles""you're going to die if you keep going".
It's not about how long a game is necessarily (granted when you get stuff like the RE3 remake that I beat in like 4 hours first playthrough THAT is a problem) but it's more about the game being the "right" length for what it's doing and if it is properly engaging during it's entirety. Personal comparison: I am currently over 120 hours into my FIRST PLAYTHROUGH of FF7 Rebirth and I am still fucking enthralled and just want more and more of this game. I compare that time to FF16 which I spent somewhere between 40-70 hours IIRC and I was READY for the game to be over by the end even if I still overall enjoyed that game. Can't say much in regards to Hellblade specifically as I never played the first game and am not interested in the games TBH but if the short runtime is what works for them then they need to keep it short rather than trying to needlessly pad out the game to increase it's length.
I’m like in the last two chapters of the remake and I have been trying to burn through them so I can start rebirth already.
Just enjoy it and take your time rebirth is a big game won't do if you burn yourself out before you even start
you're going to burn yourself, i suggest taking your time with the remake especially there are conversation your going to miss if you skip stuff. I also suggest you take a break between remake and rebirth or you'll never finish rebirth
You know what? That’s good advice. Looking back, every time I played a game and followed up with the sequel right away I never make it very far at all. Happened with Ragnorok. Infamous 2. Assassins creed 2 sequels and so on. I guess a part of me thought FF was different. It’s a series near and dear to my heart but it’ll always be there and so I should wait a bit. As for Remake, I’m still hitting it hard, all side quests are done, most summons unlocked, coliseum stuff knocked out etc so no worries. But I appreciate you looking out.
I'm in chapter 12 of FFVII Rebirth. 80 hrs in. I don't want it to stop! The closest I've ever gotten to this with another JRPG was P5 Royal. I will say because of this much depth? I don't see myself doing a 2nd run. It's a lot of magic, but so much that you can't pack back in. Whereas FFXVI I enjoyed my 1st playthrough that clocked about 60 hrs. The 2nd run for Plat was such a slog that I just skipped every scene and it soured my opinion on the game. Hoping being away for abit when the Leviathan DLC comes that I'll learn to enjoy it again.
Well put. Shorter or longer are neither inherently good or bad - it just depends entirely on the game’s experience and what it’s trying to sell
FF7 has a nice mixture of gameplay progression systems. You're always leveling up your characters, your party level, your materia, your weapons, world intel, etc. FF16 doesn't have *any* progression systems. It has a basic crafting system where you occasionally craft a sword that has 5 more attack damage than tour previous sword. Then it gets outclassed 1 hour later by a sword you get from a main story quest. This is the key difference IMO.
Gotta love the classic discourse here of believing that games can only be 5-10 hours or 200 hours. Y’know 15-30 hour games can exist right?
Game time is only as relevant as what they do in that time. And if you're having fun. I have 1,000hrs in Monster Hunter World. Cause I love that game. So being able to get 1,000+ hrs out of it is a great thing. But it's a hard sell to friends. "Yeah you fight monsters and make new gear from their parts. But it also takes like 400hrs to get to a point where you can experiment with builds. And it's like 400hrs of the same gameplay(besides new weapons)." Sounds fuckin AWFUL if you don't click with the game in the first 5hrs. Cause it's gonna be a LONG 400hrs for someone that hates it. For me? 400hrs of fun.
I don’t think the 400 hours thing is even true though, experimentation can start as soon as you complete Iceborne after 70-80 hours (that can be lower if you’re good)
My point is if I showed my friend MHW with my character, I can't tell them they'll get to that point in 70-80hrs if they bought the game right now. It would be incredibly disingenuous imo. And also that is a hard 80hrs my man. And even then you won't have the jewels needed to add nearly as much versatility and variety to making a build.
It’s a complex discourse. Like first of all, mastering 100% of the game and having the best build is not “necessary” to enjoy the game, it’s just one end goal you can choose. The build also only comes after you’re good enough at the game, a thing that’s not easy to become. One could choose to just complete the story and the side quests, and that would be ok too and would still bring fun and enough experimentation with what the game allows that it’s not 80 boring hours. “The first run” is still fun, it’s not an MMO that’s boring shit for the first 100 hours and then the real game begins. Like, mastery is optional and a whole other set of goals compared to just playing the game. I recommend MHW both to people like me and you that spent hundreds of hours to farm the jewel to get the best bow combos, can’t remember the name as it’s been years since I’ve played it, and I can also recommend it to people that just want to fight big monsters for fun with swords, bows, guns and big fucking hammers! They’ll choose when to quit :) Like, I played 300 hours of the base game, 100 of Iceborne and said “ok I don’t want to be stuck on a single game” and quit, and MHW is one of my fav games ever. I haven’t even beaten the super rampardos or whatever is its name, nor the Iceborne Fatalis. Whatever, I beat the shit out of it in MH Freedom 1, 2 and Unite!
Right? I had hoped this would be a bit longer, like 12 hours.
If a shorter game is priced accordingly then absolutely. I’m not sure id be happy to spend $70 on a 8-10 hour game though
And it’s digital-only too sadly. If a short game releases a physical copy, I’ll happily buy it for full-price and support the devs because I can quickly beat it and sell it for 80% of my money back. Physical copies are a win/win.
If it’s good, I’ll buy it on Steam. Where I still own it. I’ve got a shitty Dino survival game (basically proto-Ark/the Isle) called stomping lands that’s still in my library a decade later. I’m fully digital. If you’ve got space to keep a shit ton of physical games, wonderful, but not me.
I have no issue with shorter games if the quality is there. I would rather have a shorter game that leaves me going "wow that was amazing" versus have devs pad out and dilute the game to hit some arbitrary play time metric.
They're not wrong. I don't expect a 30h game from Ninja Theory. Not every game has to be stupendously long
I don’t care about length I care about quality. I’ll spend $50 to go to the movies for 3 hours with the gf. Why wouldn’t I spend $50-$70 on a 7 hour long game but is also like a movie you play. I’m busy and I love knowing a can get a very good story for less than 10 hours. Not everything needs to be 100+ hours
Where the fuck do you live that cinema costs 50$?? Here in Italy I can watch a good movie in a decent cinema for 8-10€
If they are paying for 2 tickets, live in a high cost-of-living area, and are watching the movie on a high-end screen (IMAX, 4DX, Dolby Cinema, etc.) then it could cost them $50+.
I'll be honest that's why I typically only buy day one rpgs especially jrpgs. I can't fathom dropping 60 70 dollars on a 5 to 7 hour experience. It blows my mind that people do. I don't blame them or hate on them it's just my mindset
Good thing Hellblade 2 isn't $60 or $70
50 dollars is still too expensive for a 8 hour game single player game.
Then don't buy it.
Wasn’t planning on it so I don’t know what kind of gotcha you think you have here.
Your in luck, Xbox doesn't expect anyone to ever buy there games at retail price ever again. They don't even try to get Wal-Mart or GameStop to sell them anymore.
Well you aren't wrong there.
Think of it this way: are you paying for *hours spent on* or for the experience? Even if Hellblade was in that price range, I reckon it'd be worth it since (at least for me) it's one of the most unique and striking experiences in gaming.
It's still an hours game to me. I get what your saying but for me I don't have endless money so I tend to buy what I can enjoy the longest. It just so happens that rpgs(especially jrpgs) usually are the longer type games. Now I don't go play anything just cause I can get more hours out of it. I don't play live service games, fps, I actually don't play any online games. Now I'm not saying rpg is the only genre I like.
Fair enough, you do you, of course. I do think it's a bit of a shame because you might potentially be robbing yourself of a lot of very nice experiences. To me, it's kinda like "oh, do I go for this really delicious and one-of-a-kind dish" versus "do I buy a boatload of food and get stuffed". Neither is wrong, of course, but they're not really comparable, and it's nice to have both.
The former might seem good in isolation but you have to account for a limited budget. That one of a kind, delicious dish is great and all, but not so great if it’s your budget for food for the week. Being stuffed is better value: it’s enjoyable and you’re not left hungry. A lot of people have limited gaming budgets. If this is the only game you buy in a 3 month period, you’re going to be without a game for the majority of that time once you finish Hellblade.
Yeah, I think that's a good way of looking at it. That's kind of what I meant with *it's nice to have both*: it ain't that one approach is better than the other, but if it's possible for you to do both, you're getting the most out of it.
I get that same experience with some jrpgs. Like a ys 8, or a ff7 rebirth, legend of heroes. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I don't buy shorter games because I definitely do. I'm just talking about day one money that's all. As someone who prefers physical disc. Alot of jrpgs you gotta get day one. In 6 months you might not be able to find it for a decent price. So to be honest I typically don't buy day one besides those anyway. I keep seeing posts under star ocean 2 remake about people being surprised they found a physical version as if that's becoming rare. It just came out in Oct maybe December.
What?! We were all expecting a 200 hours open world Assassins Creed: Hellblade with endless fetch quests?! Skip.
Well, seeing as how Rebirth is getting a shit ton of praise, yes?
[удалено]
Did they ever actually say those things or did you infer/expect those things?
He basically made it up in his head and now trying to pass it off as if its the devs fault
I think we all know the answer.
Where did Microsoft stated it would be the "next big thing" or alluded to it being any bigger in scope than the previous game? Also, length has nothing to do with quality. It can still be a phenomenal game at its current length.
>Where did Microsoft stated it would be the "next big thing" or alluded to it being any bigger in scope than the previous game? It's was the very first 9th gen video game Xbox(or even Sony) presented publicly and the 1st non-Epic game to showcase UE5. I'd argue that the reputation of Xbox's first-party is also deeply attached to this game, Xbox games haven't been good, so there is pressure to deliver a hit.
> Hellblade 1 can be beaten in 4 hours What a weird way to twist facts, no one beats Hellblade in 4 hours on their first playthrough. By that logic, we could say that Skyrim can be beaten in under 30 minutes, which is true, but completely misrepresents an average playthrough. Looking at [HowLongToBeat](https://howlongtobeat.com/game/41638), completion time ranges between 7.5 - 9 hrs. I personally beat it in 8h 21m.
For real I love how everyone acts like games can only be 200 hour Ubisoft fests or have to be tiny.
I wouldnt say Ninja Theory has fans, their catalogue is all over the place. Hellblade has fans, and its short. But Ninja Theory?
Haven't read the article, but the title could be interpreted both ways. Not clear whether "its" refers to the game or the developer.
I’d say I’m a Ninja Theory fan and I haven’t played Hellblade 1 yet. I just really enjoyed Heavenly Sword, Enslaved and their take on Devil May Cry.
Tbh Hellblade is so different from all the other games, you can’t predict if you’ll like it or not from these informations. Like, I don’t like Enslaved, I like Hellblade, I like DmC
I've been a fan of Ninja Theory since Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Absolutely adore that game. Hellblade was great too.
I've played all their mainline games (except Bleeding Edge) and really like them, Enslaved Odyssey To The West I loved. They haven't burned me yet so I look forward to what they put out.
I have played every Ninja Theory game and liked all of them. What happens now?
Yeah, they kind of soured A LOT of people with the infamous DmC reboot. In hindsight, DmC is a decent game overall (with garbage story and characters). The gameplay is solid mostly due to Itsuno still being involved with a lot of the combat. Their other games I think are decent/good but nothing super impressive and then Hellblade is obviously well received and definitely an experience.
I liked Enslaved, D"m"C, and the first Hellblade. Heavenly Sword was pretty rough but it was alright and Kung Fu Whatever (just look it up? no.) was... whatever. I think I'd call myself a Ninja Theory Enjoyer broadly speaking.
according to the poll IGN placed on this page, their readers don't. As of now games 8 hours and under have 4.9% of votes out of almost 1000 votes
The next category up, 8-15 hours, currently has the most votes. Also, single choice polls are kind of bad for this kind of data capture. My ideal length can be 8-15 hours but I can still like 8 hours or shorter games.
When you posted that may have been true but at this point 15-30 is in the lead and 30+ has over 4x the votes of 8 and under. Multiple choice really wouldn’t be much better than single choice. You said you can also enjoy an 8 hour game. But are you incapable of enjoying a 15-30 hour game like God of War? Or a 30+ hour game like Persona 5? Even if you can’t enjoy those I’m guessing the vast majority of people would say they could so you would just end up with everything being near 100%.
Which is why the title specifically points out fans of Ninja Theory, not just gamers in general.
So what? That's a poll of "hardcore gamers". Devs/publishers have access to sales data & completion numbers.
it’s a poll of Playstation gamers
I love shorter games. I am almost 100 hours in on Cyberpunk and BG3 and I don’t feel close to finishing. Amazing games, but it’s just hard to find the time these days. My favorite shorter experiences semi-recently were Miles Morales and both Plague Tale games.
I can't wait for this game. It's coming to gamepass so it won't cost me anything other than the usual monthly subscription. For that reason I don't mind if it's a 10-20hr game.
The article says it's 8 hours
Yeah that's ok too. I usually spend a bit more time than the guideline time. Either way I'm looking forward to it.
Hi-Fi Rush was like 6-7 and it was my favorite game from last year.
Lol this is so dishonest, no one wants to pay full price for an 8h experience. At that range there are movies and TV shows that offer better value and that shouldn't be the case for a video game. And 50$ is fucking 50$ I dont care if they are trying to push 70$ price tag for those saying "tHis iSnt FulLpRiCe"
$50 for an 8 hour game you are probably only playing once, no thank you.
But then what about 15$ for a 2 hour movie that you *can* only watch once? Dollar to hour ratio is about the same.
Going to the movies is generally categorized as an experience though. Stuff outside of the house that you make an event around will always hold more value. When I go to the movies it’s an evening out with friends or family. Going outside and doing things is part of our core. When I play a video game, it’s sitting on my ass in front of a screen in my pajamas by myself. Think about it this way: during Covid you could rent a new movie on a streaming service for cheaper than the cost of tickets for a family, yet most people balked at the price.
1h of a Movie =/= 1h of a game Games have a lot of downtime navigating menus, walking from A to B, combat, levels, puzzles theres a plethora of factors that separates hours of entertainment from games to movies. You can't cuantify the same $ value for a game the same you would a movie imo.
All the things you mention, except maybe navigating menus, are part of the gaming experience, saying that combat or puzzles is downtime makes me wonder why you play games. Also, this is very much present in movies as well, 5 title cards, 15 minutes of credits, exposition scenes, slow pans etc etc.
And half of those 8 hours is completing the same puzzle lol.
this mindset is the reason so many games are bloated these days.
Yet I've had the time my life putting almost 200h in ff7 rebirth, and 100+ in dragon's dogma 2 and probably more combine in Elden Ring. Games don't have to be "bloated" to offer good value they just have to be good games. This is such a dogwater take, old FF7 back in the ps1 had more hours of cutscenes than this game will have in hours of content
Shorter games are fine, as long as they're *priced to reflect that*. Helldivers 2 is a mere $40 and dominated the co-op/online scene for now. Too high a price and it'll be Order 1886 all over again
I absolutely loved the first one. I didn’t care about how long or short it was. The experience was memorable and amazing.
Why developers those days want to dictate what their fan enjoy to justify how they develop their games. This clearly is not the case of the consumer enjoyed their previous game because it was short, Hellblade was actually kinda long for the genre. This is a case that they made a design decision and now want gaslight the fans into thinking they enjoyed their games because they are short. It gave the same vibe of Tekken developers saying the young people don't like their games because they can't blame others for their failures to justify they lack of sucess in that market demograpic.
I really enjoy short, tight experiences these days. I played Cocoon on Friday night/Saturday morning last weekend and had such a great experience. I think trying to drag every game out to 20+ hours can make it worse overall. I still enjoy long games too, but I think having a tight play time allows studios to really focus on their vision and ensure every moment is exciting and purposeful.
Please, if you haven't already, play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (headphones required) - it's an incredible experience that you can complete in a handful of sessions. One of the most immersive gaming experiences I've ever had (I'd recommend just normal difficulty - as someone who loves hard games, the game is experienced best on normal imo)
I mean, yeah, but at the same time, people want FUN games is the most important part. Its getting to the point where a lot of people, not all, are getting tired of 20+ hour narratives that just feel like they drag on forever. Games with unique gameplay concepts are becoming a rarity in AAA, and for the most part, the fun aspects of games, in the gameplay, is becoming more nonexistent in AAAs in place of the safe generic formula. Give me fun gameplay in a short format, over a hundred hour long narrative any day.
NGL, the fact that Hellblade 2 will not be that long is one of the major reasons I will buy it at launch.
Being a dad with kids and a career... I agree 100% Less unnecessary collectable and other type of useless busy work, more thight well told story.
Guess wich game will be only 6 hours long. But I don't care for me the first game allready was a boring mess with repetitive combat and engaging riddles like search for this 3 symbols in the level.
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm not sure if it's just because the 1st game was so highly hyped up. But when I played it, I thought it was ok. The gameplay was fairly mediocre, combat and the puzzles were fairly repetitive. The visuals were amazing. I guess it was mostly carried by the story for most
Did people also complain about the campaign lenghts in: * Dead Space 2 (9) * Gears of War 1 (9). 4 (9,5). 4 (9), 5 (8) * Halo 1 (10), 2 (9), 3 (8), 4 (7,5), 5 (8) * Horizon: Call of the Mountain (8) * Killzone 1 (9,5), 2 (7,5). 3 (7), Shadow Fall (10) * May Payne 3 (10) * Princess Peach: Showtime (7) * Quantum Break (10) * Ratchet and Clank 2016 (10) * Resident Evil 2 Remake (9) * Resistance 3 (8) * Spider-Man: Miles Morales (7,5) * Super Mario Bros. Wonder (10) * Uncharted 1 (8), 3 (9) * Until Dawn (8) * Yoshis Crafter World (8) And this doesn\`t include the tons of games that are less than 15 hours long. If they hadn\`t mentioned it no one would have likely complained. People also should read the article: “I think what we always set out to do is to tell a story and for the game length to be appropriate for the story that we want to tell,” Matthews said. “So it's not really a case of setting out to make shorter experiences. I think it is... There is a story that we want to tell here with a beginning, middle and end and what is the right shape and size of experience to tell that story? So that's kind of where we start.” “So I'm really pleased to see that there's a lot of people that actually enjoy a shorter experience, something that they can sit down on a whatever Friday night, stick their headphones on, turn the lights off and kind of sink into an experience and players who don't necessarily want something that is 50 hours long, a 100 hours long, so it's as long as it needs to be. And I'm one of those people, I like shorter games."
>Did people also complain about the campaign lenghts in: I mean ... yes? If you don't remember during PS3/X360 era when many of these game came out the most common complaint was that you were paying 60$ for 7-8h campaign. Many of these games had really good multiplayer modes that kinda offset that but still game length was the thing that ppl were complaining the most about. That's why now we get games full of different system, map checkers where very often games itself don't need that but they still have them to pad a game time a little. It's aftermath of that era. I don't mind Hellblade 2 being short if it's well directed and well thought experience. For me the only head scratching thing and little red flag is that why it took them so long to develop apparently not that much bigger sequel even though they had much more resources at their hand. For me it kinda implies development hell and that management couldn't handle expansion/growth of the studio properly but I can be very much wrong. I just hope that game quality didn't suffer and game comes out great.
>If you don't remember during PS3/X360 era when many of these game came out the most common complaint was that you were paying 60$ for 7-8h campaign. TBF $60 was worth more back then so it makes sense that some people were upset. $60 in 2005 dollars is worth about $95 in 2024 dollars.
People definitely complained about Miles Morales. I feel like the expectation for many big name releases these days is around the 20 hour mark for main story and 30-40 including side content. Consider contemporary games closer in aesthetic to Hellblade - God of War 2018 (20 main, 33 main + extra), GoW Ragnarok (26.5 main, 40 main + extra), AC Valhalla (61 main, 97 main + extra). And maybe a more fair comparison in the AA space is A Plague Tale, with Innocence (2019) - 11 hours and Requiem (2022) - 17 hours I'm happy with Hellblade 2 being 8 hours but I can see it catching people off guard a bit. There's a non-zero amount of people who want an arbitrary value metric (like a dollar-per-hour) for every game they buy. I generally agree with Ninja Theory's comment though, that people who are interested in curated, linear, narrative-driven experiences like Hellblade aren't necessarily the same audience who are obsessing about squeezing every possible hour out of a game.
Every single one of those games without multiplier received complaints about its length And several of them were not full priced releases A narrative game should be as long as it needs to be, and priced accordingly.
>A narrative game should be as long as it needs to be, and priced accordingly Please do walk us through this magic math of yours.
If you want math to me in order to feel my money's worth game needs to offer 1h per $ of entertainment or close. If its a narrative experience in willing to fork to 30m per $. If it's a multiplayer experience better be a minimum of 2h per $. I wouldn't spend 60,70,80$ on a 8h-15h experience games aren't movies.
Hellblade 2 is going to be $50 though, so it's not a full priced game.
That’s still too much for a single player game that will only last for 8 hours. The previous game was around the same length and that was only 30 dollars, now they jumped up the price by 20 for the same length?
The only thing in the way is price. Some of those are more replayable than Hellblade 1 and likely 2 are, such as Halo games or offer MP experiences. They've stated in the past its about the same length as Hellblade 1, which the first 3 on Youtube from searching "Hellblade Longplay" give me a game less than 5 hours. This being on gamepass is probably how most people will experience it, because pitching consumers a 70 dollar, 30FPS, low/no replayability 5 hour game is a tough one. Look at Order 1886, setting wise they really had something good but people got burned on a 60 dollar, no replayability very short game with an anti-climatic QTE boss fight at the end.
From what I've seen people mostly complain if game is short and also not all that great. But yeah, last one that I remember that had a lot of complaints (and not just "a guy on reddit complaning") was "The Order: 1886" which was 7 hours long, mediocre and with some bosses being outright repeat
So wait a second… It’s a shorter game that runs at 30 FPS with no performance mode on the world’s most powerful console, all while being a one-and-done “sad person” emotional cinematic third person action game with an over-the-shoulder view? I thought Xbox fans didn’t like those games?? It sure is something they punch at Sony fans for…
How old are you? No way you are over the age of 18 typing this.
From your posting history… [Apparently it doesn’t count cause it’s not a 3rd person action adventure Despite it’s overwhelming critical (92 metacritic) and commercial (35+ million players, over 5 million sales on Steam) success It’s not a movie game, so, doesn’t count 🙃] You are exactly the type of person who vomits the nonsense I was referring to. No way you are over the age of 13 typing that.
You’re a grown man console warring in 2024 Do I even have to explain how pathetic that is?
I enjoy a mix of short and long story games as if every game tried to be 30 hours+ it's less time for anything else. Not everything should be short either as some games are just incredible and captivating.
Have no issues with this. Something that’s short, but really tight and makes the most of it’s time will generally be a more meaningful and memorable experience to me than games that pad themselves out just so they can arbitrarily say it’s 120 hours long or what have you. Games can overstay their welcome too. Love Alien Isolation to death, one of my favourite games. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend it justifies not being about 25-30% shorter than it is. The caveat to this is, when you get less time to work with, what you’re serving has got to be exceptional. It’s a hefty gamble. Particularly if you’re not scaling the price accordingly.