Shyamalan uses plot twist!

Plot twist failed!

Knew a guy in real life that had a twist very similar. Just his nuts got twisted so bad one had to be remove lol

Called him Uni-ball for a month....it was pretty funny XD


Could not f*ckin believe I had beaten the damn DQ game like 3 times and then some more bullshit about a friggin "shadow" world....I was like, OK F*CK THIS!!!!!!! ARGG!!! NERD RAGE!!! lol XD

Some 30 hour games are "too long" while some 100 hour games I finish and I wouldn't mind if the game had more (though not a complaint that they don't, certainly.) Some games become not fun to play but aren't too long, it is simply a matter of having put too much time into it too often, and if you give yourself a break all its good/greatness comes back. I think a lot of people get burnt out on games because of their instant-gratification/inability for patience and they just have no self-control to just stop playing a game and treat it as a job rather than as enjoyment and so their perspectives are skewed.

Both BG1 and BG2 are wayyyy too frikken long with wayyyyyy too many pointless side quests and tons of repetitive/senseless combat. Still a good game with a good story, but probably, what?, 30-50 hours too long, each?!
Best to avoid everything by Shyamalan like the plague. He is THE worst.

About THIS long.

*makes parallel hands gesture in the air*

Just wanted to say... I felt the original Deus Ex was a bit longer than I had hoped for. One too many levels. It should have been around a good 20 hours, but overstayed a bit at around 25-30.

Not saying that as a bad thing, given the praise, but man, that ocean lab portion...

I don't think it is exactly length that is the problem, more engagement. I've completed Sleeping Dogs in 25 hours, and the last 3-4 were a REAL chore because of boredom and repetitiveness. If I hadn't pushed myself, I'd have been unable to finish it. Then there're games like Morrowind which I've sunk hundreds of hours into with no problem.

With Shadowrun Returns, I think the general complaint isn't about it's length, rather about how it isn't as open as people wanted it to be. It is a very linear story. I really enjoyed it, but maybe for some people that isn't what they were looking for? I got Shadowrun Returns as a gift here on gog (thanks again Melhelix! :D), and quite enjoyed it, enough to purchase Dragonfall during the sale, which is apparently much more open. I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet, though.

I don't remember finding it + the expansion pack too long, probably because the game managed to keep itself pretty interesting most of that time.

I can't say the same for the first Baldur's Gate. It was much more boring than BG2, hence I just kept wishing it to end already.

Maybe a similar question could be applied to e.g. TV-series: when is it too long (too many episodes and seasons)? Maybe never, if it manages to keep itself interesting enough all that time.

The same maybe for books. I didn't use movies as an example, as one always expects to be able to watch them in one sitting nowadays, unlike games, books or TV series (seasons).

In terms of game design, I honestly don't believe Bethesda designs their RPGs with the goal for consumer to finish them. They seem to be much more into "Just have fun, do whatever, put it away when you're bored with it" approach

Never long enough for me. It has to be around 90+ hours at least to be satisfactory for me, provided the quests / combat aren't boring.
50-70 hours long RPGs are fine as long as they're good like Dragonfall. Anything below that is way too short.

CRPGs can't be "too long" while they still have original, human-authored content. A CRPG is pretty much defined, as a representative of the genre, by the importance of character building. If it doesn't last long enough for me to get properly invested in experience gain, it fails as a CRPG (though it might be a good game, generally speaking).

Typically, if a game has as much original content as a WoW player sees casually leveling from 1 to [current max level], it's long enough.

I think 15-30 hours would be my preferred length on average for story-telling RPGs. For the longer ones it really depends; I might have put over 100 hours into Nehrim (Oblivion mod) and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I mainly played it as an open world exploration game and didn't care much for the main plot. And I'm overwhelmed by Skyrim and Amalur. I think it is possible to have an "Open World" CRPG with a tight and engaging story in theory, if the side quest are great, too, and you manage to suspend your disbelief, because it is kind of hard to reconcile these two ideas in a way that makes sense. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 of Shadowrun Dragonfall - two of my favorite RPGs - both had a good main plot and interesting side quests, but it still seemed a bit contradictory that they allowed for so much side content to leisurely explore when the main plot was claiming such urgency.

With the infinity engine games, I tend to get a little bored towards the end. It's as if they are 10ish% too long. It happened with Baldur's Gate 1, Icewind Dale 1 and Icewind Dale 2. I haven't really played BG2 yet. Interestingly, I did not run into that problem with Planescape Torment. It was fascinating from beginning to end.

It's not really a CRPG I guess, but another incredibly long game, especially with the community restoration patch, is Fallout 2. Difference is though, I didn't want the game to end at all. I couldn't get enough of it!

I tend to agree with most of the above statements. Elder scrolls is mainly about the exploration which takes up the time (the main story is usual about 2mins long and dull). DA:Origins, BG1+2 however can be as short or long as you like. Have played both with a party, and with solo characters. Add a ton of mods into BG and you can easily spend vast amounts of hours on it. Counter to that I played IWD2 and really couldn't be bothered to finish it, no story just goto new area and kill everything.

The answer to that question heavily depends on the type of cRPG. If it's more about combat and meaningless quests than a well-written story and characters (Divinity: OS comes to mind as a recent example) I usually get bored early. If atmosphere, writing, and characters are good I have no problem pumping 100+ hours into a game.

Open world games IMO are never as good as story-driven games, worse if the writers cannot write at all (looking at Bethesda games here, with New Vegas being the exception which was written by Not-Bethesda...).

How so? I consider Fallout 2 to be more of an RPG than any title from Bethesda, Diablo series or other so-called Action-RPGs.

Everyone is looking for something different in games, there is no universal copy-n-paste gamer mind cloned in every gamer's brain so by definition there is no universal answer to the question. While one person might prefer all RPGs are no more than 2 hours long because they like short games, another person will love an RPG like Skyrim for example that claims over 100 hours of gameplay, but which the average completionist takes 215 hours to finish and I took 650 hours to finish. It was a fun game despite being lengthy and despite me taking a lot longer than the average gamer to finish. I may even play it through again some day if they ever put the DLC on proper sale (where it is cheaper than actually re-buying the Legendary version of the game again).

So people will respond with their personal thoughts as to what is best, and disagree with others but there is no right or wrong or reason to disagree with anyone as it is purely subjective. Having said that, purely subjectively - my own preference is for games to be at least 10 hours long at a bare minimum to gain my interest and if they're an RPG then as a general rule I will expect at least 50 hours of gameplay out of them being played "completionist" style as given as an average time to complete listed on howlongtobeat.com but the more immersive and fun the game is (to my own judgment regardless of what anyone else enjoys), then the longer I'm going to hope it is. So I'd prefer them to be at least 100 hours long on average completion personally, but I have no preference for any maximum length, just minimum length. If a game is 1000 hours long to complete, that's fine by me. Play it as long as it is enjoyable to keep playing and stop playing sooner if it isn't.

Another thing worth mentioning is that some games can be completed much faster if one just wants to get it over with quick simply by only doing the bare minimum necessary to finish the game as fast as possible. In The Witcher 3 or Skyrim etc. it would mean only completing mandatory main quest lines and ignoring secondary/optional quests as if they weren't there in the first place. Makes sense to do that rather than someone dislike the game for being long and prefer the company just removed all that optional stuff instead. Being there and being optional means people who want a longer game get to enjoy that extra content and people who want a shorter game can opt out of it to get it over with more quickly. But if people want to truly get it over with quickly I have to ask whether they actually were enjoying playing it in the first place and then think if the answer is "no", then it wasn't a game made for them anyway.

Mount and Blade is an example of an essentially infinite RPG as your game technically never ends, you can keep warring with other factions essentially forever and just retire your character when you've had your fill. Technically Skyrim is infinite too as the game continues after you complete the entire main quest line so you can keep playing all the secondary and optional quests if you like, but you can just keep going infinitely because a lot of that shit respawns over and over endlessly. The Witcher 3 ending is more of a real "end" as the story is complete and the credits roll, however it too lets you come back for an after-game to complete leftover quests and explore if you wish.

So for me, no games are "too long". Either they are fun and interesting and cause me to want to keep playing them or they aren't and I might not want to keep playing them and decide to move on to another game instead, the length of the gameplay is inconsequential to me in terms of maximum length, but I feel the opposite - that some games are "too short".

Ultimately it makes no difference as there are thousands of games, so if one of them has properties that are not to my liking I simply look for another one that is more to my liking. I've got a _lot_ of time on my hands that I can allocate to gaming hobby though too, others may not have so much time. I'd recommend people that don't have their heart in long epic RPGs simply not buy them and buy games that are more precisely what they want. Indiegala and it's friends have bundles of tonnes of short games for $3ish, so I say go wild. :) Yeah, you make a important point there. The length of the game isn't as important per se as is the quality, depth and variety of content. That's one of the things that I personally thought differentiated The Witcher 3 from other RPGs I've played is that it always felt very fresh and exciting to me, very little repetition (with the exception of the smuggler's cache quests at sea which were super boring and repetitive). I found the game to be long but pleasantly long, and now that I finished it I only wish it kept going, so I'm definitely looking forward to the 30+ hour expansion packs later on. I got probably 250+ hours out of the game so far as a guess, but if they could continue the experience with the same amount of fun/enjoyment and story telling I could have just kept playing it forever really. Quality and variety definitely keep me playing games longer.