Short vs. Long Games: What's The Problem? (Topic)

Notable releases in April were two major projects that have been waiting for an equally long time and are equally important for players in principle - Resident Evil 3 Remake and Final Fantasy VII Remake. Both games proved to be more successful and both tried to present a new take on old mechanics. Another important similarity is that both games have been criticized for their size.

RE3 was dynamic, but too short. It took an average of 5-6 hours to complete it. In the subsequent passage may take you 2 hours at most. It's all about the very essence of the game, where Nemesis simply does not give you any breathing space and makes you constantly move forward.

The second game is the opposite case. FF VII Remake is too long. The story presented in the first part of the remake took 5-7 hours to complete in the original game, when in the remake it was stretched over 50 hours of gameplay. And for each interesting part of the game, there are a huge number of filler and empty quests a la chase the rat. And this is a must-have part of the main plot, not to mention the additional spineless quests.

And I'm not surprised that without all these moments [if you just remove them] the game will be much better. The problem is that they will not do this, because the fear of negative reviews makes this just a taboo. After all, players expect a scale from the FFVII remake. As a result, it turns out somehow illogical: we do not like artificial stretching of the game, but at the same time we ourselves encourage developers to do this.

It should be borne in mind that the duration of the game is not its main advantage, and this becomes especially evident when comparing games with TV shows and films. However, this fact is ignored by both the players and the developers themselves.

We get what we want and then we complain that we didn't want it

Resident Evil 3 itself was an intense action game without unnecessary preludes and fillers - a concentrated quality adventure and nothing more. Of course, with a clever design, the game can be stretched for another 5-6 hours. But it is not a fact that this will make her better. Simply inserting rat episodes would be a bad decision.

Games are very difficult to create and expensive. Often times, developers have to make many compromises when creating content. You can't argue here: spending $ 60 on the game, we want something big that will pull us in for hours. Someone that is worth the money. This is how FFVII Remake and many similar games appear: with completely empty and uninteresting quests. But stretching the game for tens of hours. Moreover, the games themselves can be good, but the amount of filler elements just negates all the interesting experience of the game.

There are, of course, exceptions, remember, for example, Yakuza with all its interesting activities and funny side quests, or Control with its remarkable collecting system. The truth is, however, that not all games need the same elements as these two examples. I cannot name Yakuza the same Yakuza without these additional stories [for that I can name games where such elements are not needed and a remake of the final is one of them]. This game was quite long and intense enough.

But let's get to the main question of our problem: is a few hours of great gameplay worth less than tens of hours of empty filler? Returning to the question of money - we are not ready to spend 60 dollars on a short game, but we are ready to spend it on a big one, which does not respect our time at all and literally wastes it. But I can’t close my eyes to the fact that at least spending such an amount for a couple of hours of play is simply insulting. Although RE3 Remake is a slightly different case.

It's just that we often forget that you don't have to buy the game at the release itself. You can wait at least a couple of months and a bunch of updates and DLC will be released. Plus, for a variety of reasons, the price of it can fall.

A storyline campaign is not a unique temporary event like in an MMO, it won't go anywhere from you. Yes, it's hard to be out of trend when everyone is talking about the game and avoiding spoilers. On the other hand, the same RE 2 Remake after a while received an additional company, and today you can find the game for half what it cost on release.

Buying games a year after the release is difficult, but quite profitable. For example, all April I witnessed an interesting trend where I could buy the largest edition of the latest Assassin's Creed games for next to nothing. I don't know why, but at the beginning of April there were large discounts for the entire series [on average 70%] at EGS, after that the same discounts were at UPlay, and at the time of this writing, a similar offer with discounts from 67% to 75% is on Steam. And throughout this time I had the opportunity to buy the same Odyssey with a 70% discount. At the moment I'm not talking about quality, I just want to show how much it is possible to save on large titles in our time. I remember times when a discount on large projects had to wait at least three or four years.

Less is sometimes better

It all boiled down to the fact that I personally got tired of artificially stretched games and learned to appreciate those that give me an excellent experience, albeit not very long. An even bigger problem is how we consume video games in a frantic stream of constant releases and premieres

.We view each game as a one-time adventure, which we mark in the list of games, we go through it as quickly as possible, but, nevertheless, at the time we do this, five, ten or even more new ones come, which are worth estimate. And the victims of this approach are games like RE 3 Remake, designed for replayability, which cannot be fully revealed in one playth from which and are less valuable.

Honestly, I cannot understand why we do not like the idea of replaying a short game, but at the same time we are ready to spend 20-30 hours spending them on the monotony or emptiness of quests in the FFVII remake, repeating the already familiar and boring game cycle. As a result, we let the developers know that we are interested in the latter. And I will not be surprised that in the next part of RE, when we get to the door behind which the boss is located, we will have to chase the rat that stole the key from this door for an hour.

The Topic of Article: Short vs. Long Games: What's The Problem?.
Author: Jake Pinkman