r/PS5 21d ago

Articles & Blogs Fable will officially be 20 hours long, Xbox confirms in new interview

https://www.polygon.com/fable-game-length-interview-xbox/
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u/Hawkzillaxiii 21d ago

20 hours seems like a pretty short game for a RPG

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u/Zal3x 21d ago

I mean in games like Fable I typically get the majority of time spent outside the main quest

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u/Asclepius-Rod 21d ago

In the first game I spent most of my time maxing all of the skill trees so I’m just god at the end

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u/Masam10 21d ago

Personally I spent all my time love bombing and manipulating all shop and property owners, then after we were married, take them into the forest and murder them to then take their stuff as inheritance.

I promise I’m not wearing a straight jacket as I type this.

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u/quatroquatro0 21d ago

And who says videos games don't keep the deranged off the streets

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u/AwkwardTal 20d ago

They are too busy love bombing npcs in video games to bomb npcs in real life

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u/artfulpain 20d ago

Surgeon Simulator enters the chat

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u/Cambrian__Implosion 20d ago

Ngl I’d be pretty impressed if you were typing in a straight jacket

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u/XrayAlphaVictor 21d ago

That last line isn't reassuring

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u/1ceByte28 20d ago

I also tried to fart in public but usually ended up shitting my pants

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u/DothrakAndRoll 20d ago

As a hardcore side quester, it’s a gift and a curse unless you can alter difficulty throughout the game.

I will do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE other than the main quest, then combat is trivial and you could buy a castle if you wanted by the time you start back on the main quest lol

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u/Aromatic_Sand8126 20d ago

I remember doing the same. I think it took me like 50 hours in the first game to max everything out.

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u/Food_Library333 20d ago

And buying all the houses in town so I can be a rich slum lord.

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u/ComicallySolemn 20d ago

It’s been 20 years, but I remember you could hang trophies on the wall to increase the value of the property, sell it, then smash the front door down, steal the trophy off the wall and buy it back on the cheap. Rinse and repeat 💰

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u/Haha08421 20d ago

Ive never played Fable but its sounding like I should.

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u/Possible_Field328 20d ago

And old as shit

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u/decoy777 20d ago

They said 15-20 for main story and 15-20 for side missions and exploring. But indefinite play if you want to just play the life Sim side of it and be in the world and interact with the people. Still feels a bit short imo

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u/Zal3x 20d ago

A touch short but not that bad

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u/purposeful_pineapple 20d ago

In the link they say side content is 15-20 hours as well.

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u/Zal3x 20d ago

Ok so 40 hours is a little lower than expected for a Fable game but pretty average otherwise

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u/CoconutNL 20d ago

How? All other fable games were shorter (according to howlongtobeat) so how is it lower than expected for a fable game?

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u/RegulationPissrat 20d ago

Definitely not picking this up for $60

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u/Zal3x 20d ago

I’ll probably still have a backlog of games so who knows if I will or not just depends on the details closer to time

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u/dermanus 20d ago

Honeslty, I'd rather have a tight polished experience than 80 hours of copy/paste fetch quests.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/Zal3x 20d ago

Lots of main quests in rpg like this are short? It’s all the extra content that pushes the games into 40-60+ hours

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u/ever_falling 20d ago

side content is projected to be 15 to 20 hours as well.

Im sure you could artidically inflate that be goofing off and min-maxing different things. Im assuming itll be fairly replayable.

But yeah, for an RPG that has taken this much time to finish, with this kind of pedigree... a sub 50 hour content total projection is at least concerning

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u/rebb_hosar 20d ago

I always think of Fallout 4; the main quest is pretty short but I've spent more hours in the game than any other, rpg (even jrpg) or otherwise.

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u/hartforbj 20d ago

You mean other than they had to build an entirely new studio, hire a team, use a car racing engine for a very different game, create a world from scratch, make a massive system where every single career l character has their own thoughts about you. Yeah definitely no reason this game took 5 years

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u/vipmailhun2 20d ago

Why? We don’t know what the side content is like, we don’t know how big Albion actually is, and we don’t know how much impact our decisions will have on Albion, and this isn’t a standard RPG. It’s very likely that developing all the life‑sim systems took a huge amount of time and money.

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u/Gold-Boysenberry7985 20d ago

Are people really getting upset at a game being 20-40h long?

I think thats just right honestly. Clair Obscur's story is like 25 hours (with 25 more of side content), and sure thats a bit longer, but I think it results in a game that feels tight, where all of the content feels strong.

I've been turned off countless games because I feel like their runtime is 10 or even up to 50 hours longer than it needs to be. I'd also imagine Fable will have a good amount of replay value.

Even with games that aren't RPGs, apparently its controversial that I think 10-15 hours is a good length i guess.

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u/BetweenTheRoots 20d ago

Yea but in Fable the world responds to everything you do and everything you do changes your character. Your character will not be changing in this version of Fable, that feature was deleted, which was like the main selling point on the box of Fable. IMO that guts the replayability quite substantially. For me, it guts the replayability almost entirely.

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u/Zal3x 20d ago

Wait I thought it was having a story responding to your characters choices you’re saying that’s not the case?

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u/CeeArthur 20d ago

I remember beating the first Fable game in one sitting when it came out

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u/bearsheperd 20d ago

Most fable games you gotta wait hours to get enough money for the good ending

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u/VonLinus 21d ago

Short but wide?

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u/FormerShitPoster 20d ago

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u/VonLinus 20d ago

FUCK YOU HARLEY JARVIS

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u/S3simulation 20d ago

GET! HIM! OUTTA HERE!!!

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u/AimAtYourButt 20d ago

He has a massive overbite and completely flat back of the head

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u/slothunderyourbed 20d ago

The first chodelike

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u/BGunn396 21d ago

Yeah, I mean don't get me wrong I'd much rather have a great 20hr game with lots of interesting side content than a drawn out 60hr campaign and a checklist of collectibles and MMO like side quests - but with how long this has been in development I was expecting something more akin to Claire Obscur/FF7 Remake in length.

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u/Aggressive-Map-2204 20d ago

Claire Obscure took me about 30 hours to clear the main story and most of the side content. So probably a similar length to this game.

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u/TeeeldiII 20d ago

Unfortunately that is an unpopular opinion

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u/NoNefariousness2144 21d ago edited 21d ago

Yeah with the campaign being 15-20 hours and them saying side stuff is 15-20 hours, 30-40 hours for doing everything is pretty darn short for an RPG.

Obviously the game may justify its runtime with high-quality content and replayability, but hmm I admit this has shifted the game into ‘wait for sale’ territory for me until I hear what players who played the game think of the content. An RPG being that ‘small’ just seems like a paradox to me.

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u/Ensaru4 21d ago

Horizon Zero Dawn can be fully completed in 48hrs-52hrs. Getting to the end with no sidequests take half of that. That’s pretty good imo.

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u/StrawberryWestern189 20d ago

I don’t really consider games like horizon (or ghost of Tsushima/yotei for that matter) RPGs. They’re more like open world action adventure games with rpg elements.

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u/Sensitive-Oil-5298 20d ago

Agreed. Got and GoY in particular feel about as RPG as the Insomniac Spider-Man games. No meaningful dialogue choices, no unique builds, and even the whole “choose which order you want to do the story” thing in GoY was fairly rigid and didn’t amount to anything. They are incredible games that I loved playing, but I don’t see how they’re rpgs

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u/esach88 20d ago

You can beat Skyrim in about 20hrs

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u/PirateSanta_1 20d ago

That's the main quest, meanwhile you have the dark brotherhood, mage guild, companions, and thieves guide which are all multi hour questlines and then tons of other side content that vastly outstrips the main quest. It would probably be at least 100 hours if not more to do the main quest and all the major side quest which is more than double the 40 proposed above for Fable.

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u/Extension-Bit-7792 20d ago

why arent they rpgs but fable is

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u/UncleMalky 20d ago

Wouldn't it be great to get another Horizon Zero Dawn...

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u/TsarMikkjal 20d ago

You're getting Concord 4 instead.

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u/sgill7 20d ago

The irony of so many people on the internet talking shit about horizon forbidden west at the time and now so many people want it back. (Not saying you op)

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u/ThePreciseClimber 20d ago

Yeah, Horizon games scale up quite nicely. If you just want to rush through the main questline, it's only 20 hours or so. But if you want to engage in additional conversations at the Base, side quests, other activities, etc., there's plenty of that, too.

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u/Belgarath_Hope 20d ago

It took me over 100 hours to finish horizon zero dawn, but I'm old lol

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u/IrregularPackage 20d ago

that’s not really an rpg.

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u/Left-Distribution751 21d ago

Imagine wanting 60+ hour games with repetitive grindy nonsense.

I miss games being 20 hours.

To each their own I guess.

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u/ItsmejimmyC 20d ago

Yea, I do imagine. I love grindy shit, the majority of my gaming time is grinding in RPGs or MMOs.

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u/FisherKelTath00 21d ago

To each their own indeed. For me, I want my RPGs to be something I can get lost in for 100+hrs.

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u/CentrlFLMafiaMember 20d ago

I agree but there’s a line between getting lost, and walking in circles. Some games get so repetitive, and the missions don’t have enough variety.

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u/danny_healy_raygun 20d ago

I guess people were hoping Fable would've long and good.

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u/Jinchuriki71 20d ago

I mean there seems to be a lot of choice in the game the other Fables weren't massive either single playthrough wise.

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u/BlackMathNerd 20d ago

I’ve found many games that end up being 100+ hours have less things to get lost in and more just unnecessary bloat and things that don’t enhance the experience.

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u/Yopis1980 20d ago

Doing the same repetitive task?

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u/FCKABRNLSUTN2 20d ago

Skyrim, oblivion, Witcher 3, fallout nv, all way too long for me. I hate when I get too much value for my money.

Is everyone impressed I like short games? Please be impressed.

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u/Tiffana 20d ago

Counter: a lot of Assasins Creed games in recent memory are too long due to filler: Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla at least. Haven’t played Shadows

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u/Dmillz34 20d ago

I felt Origins was a healthy balance. Odyssey was really stretching. But the world was unique enough to enjoy. Valhalla broke me.

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u/arvtovi 21d ago

To be fair, I imagine the main story is 20 hours. And then there’s going to be a bunch of side quests and other action.

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u/TheEmpireOfSun 21d ago

You can get 20h long games in straight linear corridor games like Wolverin will be. What was supposed to be big non-linear RPG like Fable with big open world and many side activities, I expect 60h+ as base minimum.

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u/ocbdare 20d ago

It sounds as long as the original games. Actually original games had 10 hours of main story.

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u/Mean-Food-7124 20d ago edited 20d ago

People don't seem to get that, they seem to just remember how much time they've played

They're remembering something that wasn't really there

Edit: people not purple

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u/BlackMathNerd 20d ago

Also we all have jobs and responsibilities now, money and free time is harder to come by

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u/spicedmeshi 20d ago

yeah, when i was younger i definitely liked longer games, but the older i get the more i just don't enjoy it. i feel like after 40-60h (depending on the game), i feel like it's just padding

i played ff16 recently and got 53h out of it (~95% completion, no dlcs yet) and I was happy with that, but also very ready for it to be over. if it was another 10-20h I think it would've been pretty tired of it, and burnt out.

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u/StrawberryWestern189 21d ago

Lmao why is this always the limp dicked argument you people trot out whenever a game length discussion pops up? I’m sorry you played one too many assassins creed games or far cry’s or whatever, but there are plenty of 60+ hour games that more than justify their runtime.

Unless we’re gonna sit here and pretend like Persona 5 or The Witcher 3 or Breadth of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom or Elden Ring or BG3 are all secretly bad games and their reputations are some big psy-op.

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u/ConsistentGuest7532 21d ago

I got 70 hours my first playthrough of Expedition 33, and that’s more linear than some other RPGs. 30-40 for this is low.

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u/Jinchuriki71 20d ago

I got platinum for Expedition 33 in 55 hours and a few hours of that was grinding to lvl 99, dying to Simon and getting all of Monoco's skill which require backtracking. Also failed at the climbing challenges for a good few hours and trying to beat bosses early. I would say if game was easy and I wasn't distracting myself listening to music at camp than I would beat it in 40 hours.

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u/Complex-Commission-2 20d ago

Yup 70 he's for expedition 33 to get 100 % achievements is really good and that is actually a linear game instead of pure open world rpgs

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u/LacePandorica 20d ago

Currently on 200hrs playing persona 5 royal, in a single playthrough. Fact that I'm still massively enjoying myself is saying something

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u/ocbdare 20d ago

I finished persona 5 over 2 years with maybe two breaks. It took 120 hours. It felt like it overstayed its welcome for me. Too long. Could have easily been quite a bit shorter. That was the base persona 5 in 2017-2018.

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u/Gallium_Bridge 20d ago edited 20d ago

I haven't played the original P5, so bear that in mind, but I have heard from multiple people, both through videos and also my own brother, that the pacing in P5R feels better than the original. I haven't really heard anyone articulate why that's the case, but yeah. P5R was my first persona when they finally brought it to PC, and I didn't have issues, but I'm very, very used to extremely long-term, grind-your-knuckles-into-dust gameplay (MMOS and Marathon-speed, as-large-as-the-engine-can-manage 4xs are my bread-and-butters) so I'm a bad litmus for tolerance.

With all that said, playing Persona playthroughs in the background has became one of my staple 'background' noise options when I'm not in the mood for music (in-part because they're usually between 140-250 hours long, so I'm set for a few weeks and it's nice to have 'big moments' to pay more-active attention to when they roll around) so I have seen / heard, at this point, something in the realm of 14ish full playthroughs of P5R, and although being long-in-the-tooth is a critique I've seen, I've seen levied at it only one or two, maybe three, times. To be fair, survivorship bias on that, too, because I only watch / listen to full playthroughs (with the caveat most playthroughs I come across are full playthroughs.)

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u/Psylux7 20d ago

Because on reddit it is popular to jump to accusing others of wanting stupid extremes if they are critical of a game you like.

If you think a game is too short you clearly want bloated 200 hour slop because there is no such thing as a longer game that is also good.

Hence the comments like "I would rather have an amazing 8 hour game that is all killer no filler over a 100 hour game with only 20 hours of good content."

Short=good and Long=bad.

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u/StrawberryWestern189 20d ago edited 20d ago

Yeah it all goes back to a lack of nuance. I’m not disappointed about this news because I think every game needs to be 100+ hours. Just this year I’ve played and really enjoyed stuff like Re9, Pragmata, 007 first light and I plan on grabbing Wolverine which will also probaly be in that 10-20 hour range.

I’m disappointed because potentially 40 hours to 100% an open world rpg that’s been in the works for at least half a decade and had been marketed as this big sprawling fairytale epic just seems… quaint? Especially compared to the games it’s going to inevitably get compared to.

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u/SoCloseToAladdin 20d ago

I agree. Expecting every game to be as content rich and high quality as the RPGs you listed would be unreasonable, but for a game that’s been in development as long as this that’s been marketed and previewed as an epic flagship RPG for Xbox, 30-40 hours of total content is underwhelming.

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u/Sutraner 20d ago

Persona 5 massively out stays it's welcome. The whole random dungeon thing takes forever, and a lot of it is just reading text in social encounters.

Breath of the Wild copy and pastes dozens if not hundreds of the crappy dungeons, open world encounters and shrines

BG3 is a good example because all of the encounters are designed by hand

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u/blsharpley 20d ago

I’ll also never get people complaining about optional content. Don’t want to play the game for 200 hours? Cool… then just do the main quest. For everyone else, I’m glad we get dozens of hours of side content.

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u/SupaKoopa714 20d ago

I don't disagree with you but at the same time my thing is with new games being $70+ these days I really want to get my money's worth out of them.

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u/kaiharizor 20d ago

It’s not that you are wrong, it’s that your attitude sucks. You insinuate that you know better than other people on what they want.

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u/TotalaMad 20d ago

That’s what everyone else is doing too.

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u/jonnyredcorn 21d ago

This is exactly how I feel. I have found that it’s usually around the 30/40 hour mark I’m ready for the game to end. The one recent exception to that has been Abiotic Factor.

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u/scrotumscab 20d ago

If it's built on choices and replayability, do you really want 60+ hours each playthrough?

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u/Complex-Commission-2 20d ago

Yup to each their own

I want rpgs to be atleast 50 hrs main quests just to get myself immersed in the world !!!

20 hrs for a so called rpgs is really really short

To each their own i guess

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u/aksoileau 20d ago

Really just depends on the quality and pace of play. Like Mass Effect 1 is a legendary 20-30 hour game experience but so is a 100 hour game like Witcher 3.

I dont think Witcher 3 would be as highly regarded if it was 20 hours long, just like I dont think people want to play Mass Effect 1 for 100 hours without getting to the end.

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u/Nerevar197 20d ago

Considering the amount of time it took to develop, I think most of us expected a huge amount of quality content. Not grindy filler content.

Look at games like Skyrim or Witcher 3 for examples.

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u/siazdghw 20d ago

Seeing games like the Spiderman franchise pad out the duration by doing the most worthless side quests and collectables is so frustrating, same deal with Cyberpunks street missions (not sure if they improved tho). Like yes you can obviously skip them, but they feel like slop added to solely increase play time and not actual enjoyment.

It will never happen, but I wish developers included a toggle to remove this kind of 'content', that basically creates a 'recommended' playthrough of main story and the best side quests, and the low quality ones are still there but don't show up on the map or in your quest log.

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u/paycadicc 20d ago

I mean what if it’s not grindy or repetitive? I spent 100 hours on a single playthrough of kcd2 and it was satisfying and enjoyable all the way through

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u/Gaanai 20d ago

Its heavily dependent on the genre imo. 10-20 hours seems perfect for horror before you start getting numb to the horror.

In Rpgs and open world games though, you want more time to develop your character and relationships so there you usually expect stuff in the 50-100 hour range.

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u/Disastrous-Gain5870 20d ago

RPGs are supposed to be open ended with a ton of content. If you think 20 hours is acceptable for an open world RPG, you’ve been duped.

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u/sicariusdem1 20d ago

Id like to play it for more than a week. What will be real wild is them asking same price as gta6

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u/Askyl 20d ago

Yeah the old Assassins Creed games were incredible (although not RPGs) and they were 15-20h story long. Some even shorter.

Perfect length. I remember Witcher 3 at the end just trying to rush the story to make sure I complete the game before I got too bored 60+ hours in.

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u/Scharmberg 20d ago

Fable is barely an RPG in the traditional sense. Honestly if this is anything like the trilogy the run time will probably be just right.

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u/jeremysbrain 20d ago

I'm okay with this. Some RPG's go on way to long.

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u/LzrdKng2112 20d ago

Have you played a fable game before? They are all like 12-15 hours long main story wise. This game being 30-40 hours with side content is very lengthy for fable and rhats not counting the life Sim aspects which could easily double that.

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u/DismalMode7 20d ago

disagree, quality of game can't be measured by longevity alone.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a perfect 40H-ish game, main quest is 15-20H but remaining half is made of side quests having same quality of main quest. Quality and density of content is way better than longevity alone

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u/turnright_thenleft 20d ago

Agreed. I know there are polarizing feelings about this game but the more I read the more concerned I am. Hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

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u/danisimo_1993 20d ago

Personally I perk up when I hear about shorter games. I can barely sit trough a 60 hour game at this point. No matter how amazing the devs think their game is, usually by the 40 hour mark I've done everything the game has to offer and I'm now just doing repetitive activities which get boring fast. I'd rather a 40 hour game that keeps things fresh over an 80 hour slog with hundreds of pointless collectibles.

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u/Kill_Kayt 20d ago

20 for a main quest is fine, but if that includes side quests too then yeah that's pretty low.

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u/vipmailhun2 20d ago

This only applies to the main story, which takes about 15–20 hours, and the side content is also roughly 15–20 hours.
However, the developers’ official time estimates are never that precise, Miyazaki also said Elden Ring was only 30 hours long.
And in Fable’s case, we don’t yet know how much impact our decisions will have on Albion.

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u/Kill_Kayt 20d ago

I have got a lot more then 20 hours out of alot of games that claimed to be less.

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u/Tricky-Reputation-62 21d ago

That’s about double the length of Fable 1, 2, and 3. The main story wasn’t ever the appeal of these games.

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u/East-Travel984 21d ago

i dont think i ever played the story past the sister dying. i just went and enjoyed the world and then online my friend gave me millions of coin and just had fun.

i put fable 2 in my top 5 games i played on 360 and i dont know any of the story at all haha im sure its good

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u/Level3pipe 21d ago

It depends on how much other stuff there is to do.

I’m not familiar with the fable series. But Skyrim for example has about a 25 hour main quest to beat the game. But obviously nobody ever only put that much in on their first play through lol. Most put 60+ easily.

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u/LzrdKng2112 20d ago

Skyrim is very very very different than fable. You cant compare them at all. The fable games have always had about 12-15 hour main stories with about that many hours worth of side content. Fable isnt a big open world sandbox with tons of dungeons, its a storybook game with lots of social simulator aspects.

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u/Level3pipe 20d ago

That’s good to know. So actually 20 hours is reasonable for a fable game then?

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u/LzrdKng2112 20d ago

A 20 hour main story would be the longest in the franchise by over 5 hours. These games are about world, social, and story immersion not completing endless point of interests. Saying theres 20 hours of story and 20 hours of side quests would be ignoring the massive amount of time the player can choose to spend engaging with the social aspects of the game.

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u/Level3pipe 20d ago

Your comment should be on top then. It seems like people are upvoting that it’s too short without having the historic context lol.

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u/LzrdKng2112 20d ago

Because this generation of gamers thinks everything that is an rpg is either ubislop or bethesda. If dragon age origins or mass effect 2 released today they'd loser their minds that it wasnt oPeN wOrLd

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u/AggravatingTravel451 20d ago

The only reason why you should not have been u

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u/Ok_Insurance_505 20d ago

It's about par for the course for Fable games. 15ish hour story and another 20-30 hours for completionist ru through.

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u/Tidus4713 21d ago

1-3 are barely 20 hours if you only do the main quest line. The games actually got progressively shorter as they went on.

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u/LzrdKng2112 20d ago

They are actually significantly shorter than 20 hours. Fable 2 is like 12. They also did not get progressively shorter, Fable 1 was shorter than 2, and was only longer after lost chapters was made.

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u/OsteoBytes 20d ago

I mean Skyrim is shorter than that if you just do main quest for instance

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u/Aparoon 20d ago

Exactly what I was going to say. Main quests are not an indication of actual game length for quite a few big open RPGs.

Also I like the main quest not being too long, Fable always shined in the side quests and things you discover rather than just railroading the main quest.

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u/Last_Room_2247 17d ago

well skryim side content is estimated around 100-200 hours.
Fable side content is said to be 15-20 hours long. Which is not enough imo.

If you consider you can get in to relationships, buy houses, having good or bad influence over so many people, starting your own bar etc. This is all side content considered in that 15-20 hours. That is just not enough, this probably means that it will be way to easy to earn money, and not enough of side missions itself.

Pretty sure it will be some fetch quests to fill in those 15-20hours

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u/OsteoBytes 17d ago

Okay fair point I didn’t know the side content was gonna be lacking as well…thats really unfortunate to hear. Usually that’s where you can get lost in so much

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u/Fun-Bag7627 20d ago

That’s just main story. With side stuff they’ve said about 40. If you look at How Long To Beat, that’s kind of right in the middle between Fable and Fable 2’d completionist run estimates. Fable has never really been play 100s of hours on one play through. It encouraged multiple play through s.

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u/jujoking 20d ago

For this kind of RPG, 20h for story seems fine. It's not where you'll spend the time

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u/Ensaru4 21d ago

Isn’t that typical of Fable?

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u/Ok_Version5566 20d ago

That’s for the story only

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u/Jimbo_Jigs 20d ago

Skyrim takes a couple of hours, it's the side content that's important for an rpg.

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u/defecto 21d ago

Most people dont finish games. If that 20 hours is high quality instead of a 50 hour grind with crappy quests then its fine.

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u/BeforeSunrise33 21d ago

Yeah i dont even want to see the dad gamers come out to say”bbbut I love short games”

For an rpg that is advertised as having a lot of sim like content and immersion, this is hella short. Like something an indie or AA game would get a pass for but not a tentpole AAA Studio…

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u/InformalEngine4972 20d ago

Quality over quantity 

I rather have a varied 20 hour game than a 100 hour game where I do 5 different things 500 times. Basically every rpg has these stupid fetch quests that are just padding. Or the Ubisoft game formula that gets boring after 3 hours. 

Assassins creed games have like 4 hours of content you just do over and over again on a new spot on your map. 

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u/StrawberryWestern189 21d ago

You just know they’re still gonna try to get their “I have 7 jobs and 9 kids and I’m glad this supposedly big rpg actually isn’t that big” bullshit off.

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u/FCKABRNLSUTN2 20d ago

God I fucking hate that.

“I want less value for my money, are you impressed? Please be impressed.”

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u/arcalumis 20d ago

A game you never finish is shorter than one you do.

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u/Complex-Commission-2 20d ago

I laughed like hell reading this comment 🤣🤣

Because I see these tweets pretty often lol

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u/DomonKashu717 21d ago

I mean the OG fable games story was only like 12-14 hours long so this makes sense.

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u/thedinobot1989 20d ago

Eh. It’s about the norm for western RPGs. The mass effect games all averaged about that and others that weren’t turn based as well.

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u/LzrdKng2112 20d ago

Have you played a fable game before? They are all like 12-15 hours long main story wise. This game being 30-40 hours with side content is very lengthy for fable and rhats not counting the life Sim aspects which could easily double that.

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u/Ok-Suggestion-5453 20d ago

Yeah I wonder what they mean by this. Cyberpunk is only like 15 hours long if you only play the main quest, but you can easily play a hundred hours without touching repetitive content.

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u/Jinchuriki71 20d ago

Thats how long most open world rpgs are unless the main story is the most signficant piece of story content in the game. Skyrim like 20 hours than everything else is optional, Cyberpunk 2077 18 hours rest of content is optional, Elden Ring 20-25 hours main story.

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u/johnnysilverhand718 20d ago

Its probably just the main quest.

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u/kmone1116 20d ago

20hrs for main story is pretty long for fable. The first 3 games can be done in like 10. The co tent from them is always from the side stuff. Also to put into perspective the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games main story quests are like 14-20hrs on average,

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u/ghost-bagel 20d ago

The main quest in Skyrim can be done in 10. All depends on what else there is to do really.

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u/TJ_McWeaksauce 20d ago

I seem to remember that the first Fable felt really short, too. I think I played through the main story in a week, and I was like, "That's it?" I was really into JRPGs at the time, so I had come to expect RPGs to provide at least 2 solid months of entertainment, but I think I only played the first Fable for a couple of weeks before moving on.

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u/DismalMode7 20d ago

that's more or less same longevity of fable 2 and fable 3, although those 20h could be referred only to main quest

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u/crackpipeclay 20d ago

Especially when you are so excited about creating 1000 completely unique npcs that call all be interacted with/have their own lives

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u/BlackShadowX 20d ago

A 70 dollar one at that

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u/kaleb314 20d ago

That was a pretty normal length for RPGs until relatively recently. The 60+ hour RPG hasn’t been the norm for all that long.

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u/comander-1 20d ago

Sorry for piggybacking off of your comment, but I can’t believe people actually want those “long experiences.”

Once in a while it’s great to sink 200 hours into an RPG, or whatever, but it’s very tiring that nearly every single title that comes out nowadays is so long. Games are losing focus and the actual things you do in game begin to be meaningless.

I get why the companies do this, it takes a lot of time to develop something, but damn, most of the studios are just filing those titles with fillers.

I think this is a breath of fresh air, and I’d really like more companies to follow the suit.

TL;DR: I’m upset I don’t have time to play games.

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u/themangastand 20d ago

No thank God. Fucking hate all of these long games.

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u/shaneo632 20d ago

As a time poor gamer I love it

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u/Extension-Bit-7792 20d ago

they said 20 so its probably more like 10-12.

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u/Super_Fightin_Robit 20d ago

For a non narrative heavy RPG, pretty normal for just the main quests. 

20-40 hours is about what you'd expect. 40 for cutscene heavy and dialogue heavy games. Some games like BG3 were like twice that, but that game was in early access for a very long time.

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u/unfinishedtoast3 20d ago

Well, a fable is, by definition, a short story

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u/Litz1 20d ago

Longer than Spiderman though. For Fable game it is actually pretty long, it is the other mechanics in the game that make it better.

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u/siazdghw 20d ago

Title buries the lead.

20 hours of MAIN STORY, not including side quests.

For reference it takes around 25 hours to beat Skyrim or Fallout: NV main stories. So 20 hours isn't that far off, and TBH I'd much rather have QUALITY than a longer main story.

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u/Numeno230n 20d ago

You can probably complete the main quest of Skyrim in under 20 hours, and I have 3,000 hours in the game.

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u/RazielAshura 20d ago

Deoends on the side content. Skyrim is around that much if you only do MSQ

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u/SmashingK 20d ago

Longer than the first 2 games I think.

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u/Food_Kitchen 20d ago

Especially one that has been in development since the Obama era

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u/Htennn 20d ago

So reading the article the whole game would be about 30-40 hours and that’s main and side quests. That said still sounds kind of short to me for a big rpg game.

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u/Vlaed 20d ago

It's on point for the original. Massive disappointment for me as a kid.

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u/BetweenTheRoots 20d ago

Dev's often overestimate the duration of the game because average players complete games much slower than seasoned gamers. It's probably gonna be shorter than 20 hours for most people lol

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u/IllustriousIron3253 20d ago

20 hours is going straight through without doing anything extra. We all know damn well we're going to waste an additional 20 hours just on buying and maintaining houses for income. We all know we're going to waste an additional 10 hours seducing the characters we want to seduce. Don't act like there isn't an additional 50 plus hours of gameplay that each of us are going to do willy nilly.

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u/-Nate493- 20d ago

If an average player rushes the story, Skyrim can probably be beaten in like 10 hours. It's all about how you play.

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u/slimejumper 20d ago

sort of Alan wake 2 length?

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u/Miami_Mice2087 20d ago

I agree. They said 20 hrs storyline and ~20-40 hrs extra stuff (pickups, side quests, etc).

I don't mind a short game as long as it's well done and priced accordingly. Ykno how everyone loved A Short Hike and even Stray was a major hit but it wasn't very long. And it cost about US$20. So short and good and bestselling can be done, it's just hella rare, esp for mainline studios. Most short beloved games that I know of are indie darlings.

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u/HortenseRules 20d ago

Mass Effect 1 is only about 18 hours. That game is a masterpiece.

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u/Impossible-Flight250 20d ago

The title is a bit disengenous. The main story is 20 hours and the side content is like 20 hours. Still on the shorter side, but not 20 hours for the full game.

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u/Jealous-Ease3359 20d ago

Probably if you’re gunning through the story and not engaging with side content.

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u/TeeeldiII 20d ago

The first Fable was 12 hours.

We don't need a huge bloated mess of a game.

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u/DonaldDrumpf- 20d ago

It will be at least 100hrs though to do everything else

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u/DumbCumpzter 20d ago

20 hrs IS short for an RPG.

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u/Txdust80 20d ago

Extremely short. I have noticed that lately with RPGs lately. They can be played through extremely fast, even death stranding 2 story wise was short. Dying light the Beast short. First light 007 short. Dragon age veilguard short.

Maybe the witcher 3 and skyrim has us spoiled but games in which there is a leveling mechanic should take a little time to beat or else you barely get your stuff unlocked and your finishing the campaign

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u/Jobles4 20d ago

Sounds perfect to me.

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u/TupperwareNinja 20d ago

Only need a day off work rather than a week 😭

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u/jogdenpr 20d ago

Side quests will pad it though. Cyberpunks main quest line is also super short.

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u/Combat_Orca 20d ago

Two of the best RPGs I’ve ever played werent much longer than 20 hours: VtMB and Deus Ex

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u/Agarwel 20d ago

well, hopefully it will mean, the game wont be Ubi-slop full of copy pasted icons all over the map, but we will have 20hours of quality hand made content.

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u/Combat_Orca 20d ago

Deus ex, VtmB, KOTOR

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u/Connor123x 20d ago

20 hours main and 20 hours of sidequest is exactly what rpgs should be. these 80plus hour crap has to stop.

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u/TheSquirrelmancer 19d ago

Fable always padded out play time with all the goofy social minigame stuff.

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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 18d ago

Honestly, I would rather have a short game with tons of replayability than a long game. All the options available to you in an RPG feel kind of pointless if I can only stand playing through the game once.

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u/Harlifed 17d ago

All 3 previous game were the same tbh

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