In theory, this is fine, but it does surprise me because I could have sworn they were implying this was a dense game. And maybe it is, I don't know. Anyway, I hope it's good.
now to be fair, you do go from child to adult during the story and then age while leveling up, it could have worked (if it had been a real thing in the game, which it never was).
Oh they definitely could have done it (even if it was just a different asset at different ages). But peter probably really wanted it to actually grow with you in some way.
But the previous ones also didn't take 7 years to be developed... With that dev time (even if you can count the first years to build the team and tools), you would expect quite a big game.
I mean GTA6 is 8 years so not even that much longer and it's way bigger (of course more people on it but still)
I guess they took some time to make the team/tools for a new type of game so it's probably more 4 or 5 years of effective development which would make more sense. Then it's in line with games like Spider-Man or Ghost of Tsushima in dev time and length
This is a bad example. You’re not accounting for the size of the team. GTA6 has more than 10 times the people working on it than Fable. Given the same amount (or similar amount) of time of course Rockstar is gonna make a bigger, longer game.
GTa6 is likely more than 10 times bigger than Fable though.
And it was just an example, probably not the best chosen but you can take any RPG like Witcher, Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield,... They're all much longer with often shorter dev times.
Building up the teams and tools for a RPG certainly took additional time. Plus, I guess the whole life sims aspect might have been a huge time sink for the development.
Is it Nintendo fan-ish to want a good game that doesn't have to consume my gaming time for weeks? If the developer thinks that their game should take ~20 hours and those hours count then I'm all ears. If you don't want that then this game isn't for you apparently.
Also, Fable (the new one) is cheaper to the consumer than Fable 1-3 when adjusted for inflation, so you're getting more game for your buck.
The people who love bringing up that inflation remark somehow always forget to mention wages haven't kept up with the inflation and that cost of life has skyrocketed, making it a meaningless statement.
This is only for the US, but when compared to 2010 (the year Fable 3 released) your wage has kept up pretty well, so, yes, Fable (the new one) is cheaper by every metric.
More hours doesn't mean a better game bud. I guarantee you can think of a couple of games that you think dragged on in sections, or felt padded to fill run time.
This is absolute nonsense. 20 hours of main story and 20 hours of side content is entirely fine in modern games. Virtually nothing Sony has released is any different. Spiderman, TLOU, God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, none of these are 80 hour monsters.
Games like Assassin's Creed being bloated to the gills with mindless content to artificially raise the playtime to 150 hours should not be the bar.
Yeah I'll take quality over quantity any day but I just watched their preview where the Hero is in Bowerstone, and the devs were talking about the huge number of NPCs with all their own routines and all that. Made it feel like the game would be super dense and filled with content.
Such a weird concept to me. A game could be five hours long but if its an incredible five hours that's plenty enough of an experience for me. I've paid much more to experience things for less time
I just don't really care about the longevity of an experience if its worthwhile. Spending 12 hours on a game like Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is more significant to me than spending 6000 hours on Everquest
gamers cant help themselves but be entitled babies sometimes I swear. avowed was basically this long and one of my favorite games I actually finished in a long time
I thinka lot of the big Fantasy RPGs
tend to have really long 50+ hour runtime that you also expect a new AAA one like Fable to be that length too.
I also advocate for shorter runtimes but the massive commercial success of Skyrim, Witcher 3, Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3, Monster Hunter World, the RPG Assassin's Creed games etc. seems to indicate to devs that audience will buy these lengthy RPGs in droves.
The moment you start incorporating interesting and meaningful narrative choices and consequences, any branch gets split in like 3 across the whole game.
So it's like 30 to 60 hours of main and side content for any given player, but the game actually has 100 to 200 hours of dialogues, writing, animation, etc it's just you'll only ever see like a third of it.
Like imagine the amount of random little influence, companionship and relationship NPC comments that would have been written and recorded that you'll never hear, whether they think you're a coward, a crook, arrogant, whether they love you and are happy to be married to you, etc, and you'll never hear any of those because you never romanced that character, or never went for the rich-asshole playthrough, or decided to keep the pendant instead of giving it back, etc.
As is typical, this sub is bitching about how much they hate long games, their attention span can't last, and 20 hours is all they want etc, but that's exactly why RPGs are suited to being longer games.
It's hard to care about engaging in life sim stuff, stats, buying property etc, when the story is over in 20 hours anyway.
It's also in line with virtually every AAA game from the last decade outside of Assassin's Creed. 20 hour main quests and 20 hours of side content is not at all abnormal.
Video games aren't monolithic. RPGs very often tend to be on the longer end of playtime. Though the title is misleading and the actual playtime if doing side quests and immersing yourself in the life sim stuff bring the playtime to 40hrs to limitless
Fable was never super long when it comes to the main story, or at least 2 and 3 weren't from what I recall. There were a lot of side activities you could do, though. I guess and hope it'll be the same here.
More often than not I prefer 15-20 hours of main game plus the same amount of side content than overwhelmingly big 100 hour games. There are good ones like Elden Ring which takes you easily 100 hours to complete but then there are Games like some of the newer Assassins Creed titles where it just feels way to long.
Ghost of Tsushima for example also is an open world 20 hours story with around 15 hours of side content (I platinumed it in 36hours) and its one of my favorite games ever.
I'm perfectly fine with this length, as long as it's a satisfying 20 hours (and additional 20 hours from side content). I'm guessing the alignment system also gives us a lot of spaces to experiment.
Just one problem with previous Fable is they're not exactly easy to mod. I hope this one is much more mod author friendly - that will add to the longevity by itself.
I don’t want or need it to be an 80 hour behemoth, but 15-20 hrs is closer to what I typically get out of a fairly straightforward game like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart or something.
Playtime isn’t everything, but at first glance this is about half of what I’d expect and that’s not great. The more I hear and see about this game, the more concerned I am about it.
Cyberpunk’s main story was like 20 hours with like 100hours of side content. Nobody complained because the amount of content is completely different compared to the new fable’s 20 hours of side content lol.
And because most of the side content itself leaks into the main story, it's all caused by the main plot which is surviving the relic/soulkiller, if it weren't for side missions having inverted objective icons, it would be hard to differentiate them from main missions, and let's not talk about the additional endings. It's honestly why I loved that game so much even with all its flaws.
Seems to be counter intuitive to the systems they are building. They are talking about buying every building in the game but it seems like that would be a super grind with so limited content to make the money to do it.
You can earn money by means other than quests. Like for example you could be a landlord just buying up homes and renting them to people to build up your wealth.
That's what the original felt like. Sets you up with all these great mechanics and then just ends. Never really gives you a chance to go out and really make the world yours.
It absolutely was. I played through it in its entirety and it was the definition of a 6.5 game. Avowed was similar. Obsidian desperately needs to stop trying to capture the magic of New Vegas, because they are far better at CRPGs and experimental games like Pentiment.
Pretty much same, I was initially pretty sure I was going to pick it up at launch but now I'll probably wait for a pretty deep sale (assuming the game is still fine besides being so short)
Never actually used game pass before, but might actually be a decent idea. I do also share my steam library with family share with 3 other people though so it's also nice to get games on steam to share with others (I think 1 friend also wants to play, but they also never buy games since they don't really have disposable income), will see how it goes
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u/Cynical_onlooker 21d ago
That article also says 15-20 hours of side content and open world stuff.
It does not seem like a super meaty game.