Llyranor

If there is wasted dev time, and it was spread across 40 hrs, then it would just have been the same lacking content diluted throughout a longer time. I don't see the point.

Regardless of whether the game is 5 or 80 hrs long.

Yeah, only 20 hrs has a lot more room for leeway than 45 min. How much content or breadth do you think you can pack into 20 hrs? Unless they cut dev time way down (and IIRC, NWN2 dev time is more or less similar to BG2), then all that design work goes into that time. Would Fallout have been more satisfying if it was 40 hrs long and had a lot of random dungeons throughout that provided little more than more opportunities for combat? Filler comes in many sizes and shapes. That's when game length and development time intertwine. Let's recap here: 1) Dev time similar to BG2; 2) Story and writing are ALREADY complete. You mentioned Call of Duty. That game got me more involved emotionally in less than 10 hrs than BG ever managed in 150+ hrs. Did length play a part? BG wouldn't have got me involved if it was 20 hrs or 300.

New 'Making Of' video, featuring combat. http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=mov&id=10175 Yay! MoCap!

Heh, unless NWN2 doesn't actually *work* or something, it's already virtually guaranteed more playability than every other RPG I've ever played (probably combined). I love modding, and the features they're adding on the end are frankly very cool. Lasting value isn't even an issue in this case. People argue that 20 hrs isn't enough to have emotions conveyed in order to feel satisfied with the product. How many movies can you fit into that? How many novels? You can throw in complete TV series within that timeframe. I've seen many fully satisfying Wuxia or anime series that would have been too long had they been extended over 20 hrs. Were they more satisfying than BG2? NWN1's OC? You bet. There was more story packed into them in lesser time, and the stories were complete and more satisfying. 'lol different mediums you suck i mean YOU SUCK' Needing 'longer times' to convey those emotions and provide completeness of story is a crutch. "Hmm, the story isn't long enough. I know, let's add another chapter where you fight off MORE time-travelling lizards! We'll add a few lines of text here and there to involve the player more! Brilliant!" Maybe you guys are satisfied with the current gaming conventions, but I'm not. It doesn't matter if the game is 20 hrs or 60, if those conventions still apply. The relative lack of emotional portrayal is there, replaced instead by REPETITIVE gameplay, rather than gameplay that would be rarer, yet more unique and actually RELEVANT. I don't feel any satisfaction in wiping out an ENTIRE building of every living piece of crap in there, just for the principle of 'more gameplay'. Look at those longer games. BG2 was a linear romp. NWN1, linear romp. Morrowind, Oblivion, linear story. Arcanum, linear quest. KOTORs, linear. Having the 'choice' of choosing your planet isn't really a meaningful choice. Choice implies consequence. So much for the roleplaying greats. You can create an illusion of nonlinearity by having 'lots of things to do with the world', but you're still a pawn of linearity. If 20 hrs means that more design development time is spent on increasing the breadth in the INTERACTIVE storytelling/roleplaying experience, all the better. If not, too bad, it would still fall victim to the current genre conventions - in which case, it would stop mattering how long the game would be, anyway. The point is one of completeness of experience, and if the design team is unable to convey that in 20 hrs, they wouldn't have been able to do it in 60 hrs either. Some people complain about JE being too short to be able to do that. I didn't play it yet, but BG1+2 didn't manage to really involve me in emotionally, either, and I clocked in 150+ hrs for those. Sucky design is still sucky design. If you like the illusion of having a 'deeper' experience because it's longer, I guess that's fine too.

I'm not associating with you dorks.

Basically, is the story going to feel complete? This isn't something you can arbitrary tag to a game without knowing anything about its story design.

What about if you break or lose your CDs?

And that's the bottom line, only it goes both ways. The correlation is minimal. A short game that sucks most likely does so because of sucky design. Lots of long games suck. PoR2 is 60-hrs long. Sucky suck suck. Is my optimism in NWN2 founded on its length, or on my views on the developers' consistent level of quality? Many people also did not enjoy Oblivion. I doubt its length had anything to do with it.

Here's the thing for me: BG2 isn't well-remembered, anyway. What you consider good content, I saw mostly as just stuff to do. I didn't feel the game being longer made it any better. Enjoyment of the game had little to do with its length to me. Quality is key. As a dungeon romp, the game consisted mainly of combat. Enjoyable, yes, but many of those encounters were just repetitions of previous encounters ('with a twist'). If the game was half as long but the design team spent that time making each confrontation more unique and memorable, I'd probably have enjoyed it more. There's a difference between halving game time and halving development time. Second, cutting any story right in the middle is a lame example. A half-complete product is still a half-complete product, even if it's 200 hrs long. The same applies for the converse. Take IWD and throw in 20 hrs of additional combat (eg. same encounters over and over once again), spread across the same dungeons (or many even some new areas, but with no additional associated story). Still fun? How about making the PCs twice as slow? Lame design? Isn't IWD walking pace considerably faster than BG already, anyway?

Did you find those longer games more enjoyable and memorable (and particularly BECAUSE of their length)? I sure didn't.

Ahahahahaha. HELL NO. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ..... What?

Again, design vs length. The design problem is still the same regardless of the game's length. It's a compromise, if you will. I'll take a shortened game if it means more actually pointful content is packed into it. Or it would be, if a longer game actually resulted in a more memorable story or more compelling gameplay. My enjoyment of CRPGs has nothing to do with their length.

Suspect? Perhaps. Then again, I don't remember any of the CRPGs have '40-60 hrs' worth of story, or having so much memorable gameplay to fill up that much time. Like I pointed out before, the issue wouldn't be with the 20-hrs in and of itself. It just has to do with game design and whether the format would just be a direct projection of past longer titles in the genre. As mentioned, NWN2 probably won't revolutionize genre conventions, nor does it seem to be aiming to. So, my comments as a whole *probably* don't apply to NWN2 (which, frankly, doesn't bother me that much, given that my main interest lies in the toolset). Still, design vs length. As Dhruin mentioned, I don't remember Fallout being more than 20 hrs, either.

Not when the excellent story and compelling gameplay aren't directly associated with the 40-hrs. There've ALWAYS been sections (sometimes quite large ones, too) I didn't enjoy in all CRPGs I've played, and I would have happily seen them cut; that kind of fluff actually gets in the way of 'excellent story and compelling gameplay'. In fact, I *am* fine with 20 hrs, if that meant the elimination of filler content. Of course, then comes the slippery slope of simply making games shorter without actually getting rid of the filler. That's a design issue, not one of length.

Well, given how the awesome info is coming from an ambiguous quote translated from German, I'm not drawing any early conclusions yet. In any case, I'm probably more open-minded about this "announcement" because I'm actually in favor of shorter, more condensed games. I don't want a 60-hr game with 75% spent in dungeons fighting mobs of morons. An inherent problem, I guess, is that I don't really see NWN2 as aiming to turn the CRPG design conventions upside-down, so it probably won't be all pure content awesomeness, either. Now THAT is a concern.

For the record, I finished Oblivion's main quest in under 20 hrs. What a short game!!! Bethesda lied!

How much of BG1/2's 'hundreds of hours' wasn't spent in dungeons and killing critters, or exploring empty landscapes? How much of Morrowind's 500 hrs wasn't spent doing pointless crap? I'd easily cut out half those games' length if it meant better condensed gameplay. If I knew I wouldn't have to go through some of PST's mindless combat zones, it'd actually have more replay value. The majority of CRPGs I've played would have been more enjoyable if they were shorter and if the devs didn't bother artificially pumping up their length with useless crap. It wastes my time. Length alone means squat. What matters is completeness (or its perception) of the content and the following sense of satisfaction. The only worrisome thing would be if the devs simply cut off actual content for the sake of a slam dunk, and whether they've kept the genre's standard proportion of crap-to-content. THAT's a valid concern, which would apply to a game regardless of its estimated length. A 80-hr game with a half-finished story is just as bad. Cut content is cut content. Length in and of itself has nothing to do with it.

I'd rather play a 20-hr game than a 40-hr game that only has enough real content for a 20-hr one.

Fahrenheit is around that time (maybe a bit shorter) and also didn't have a finished ending... DX:IW has around that time, and look what became of it... Sometimes (meaning often) a longer game (DX) will make more people buy another game (IW) than that shorter game will... Edited in quote...this topic goes fast <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In any case, NWN2 is technically done as far as story and writing are concerned, so I'm not worried about that bit, be it 20 or 40 or 6045 hrs.

Or, if it's a '20-hr' game with a properly implemented story and ending, then they'd actually finish it and feel as though they played through a complete product.

Well, if someone can't even be bothered to finish the game, they're less likely to be willing to invest in future titles. But then, if the title isn't compelling enough to finish in the first place, does it really matter if it's 2 or 10 or 40 hrs long? Ultimately, I guess it depends on what the actual content of the game actually comprises of. They could add random dungeons with useless combat in it to appease losers. Or they could cripple the player's walking speed. Win-win!

Since when is the objective length of time it took a specific person to finish a game an 'opinion'?

Though it does sound like 20 hrs would be 'rushing speed', that in and of itself wouldn't necessarily be bad, either. It just depends what proportion of that time would be spend on mindless drivel. People sometimes overemphasize quantity to the detriment of quality. Of course, if both are lacking, bah.

Where from the Codex?