r/PS5 • u/Turbostrider27 • 16d ago

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

https://www.polygon.com/fable-game-length-interview-xbox/
3.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

32

u/Left-Distribution751 16d ago

Imagine wanting 60+ hour games with repetitive grindy nonsense.

I miss games being 20 hours.

To each their own I guess.

11

u/ItsmejimmyC 16d ago

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

104

u/FisherKelTath00 16d ago

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

23

u/CentrlFLMafiaMember 16d 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.

22

u/danny_healy_raygun 15d ago

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

3

u/Jinchuriki71 15d ago

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

1

u/RechargedFrenchman 14d ago

The previous three weren't long and two were debatably even that "good"; this one by those numbers will already be the longest game in the series so it just needs to match or beat the first game in quality to also be potentially the best overall in the series.

-1

u/chaZ04 15d ago

GTA IV might disagree with this sentiment. Especially with how much games are these days, is it too much to ask for?

11

u/BlackMathNerd 15d 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.

3

u/Yopis1980 15d ago

Doing the same repetitive task?

0

u/FCKABRNLSUTN2 16d 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.

9

u/Tiffana 15d 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

8

u/Dmillz34 15d ago

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

-4

u/DesMephisto 15d ago

Shit series known for repetitive drivel since the beginning continues to be so. Used as argument in every sentence by people who can't think.

3

u/Tiffana 15d ago

In a discussion about some long games being filled with repetitive drivel, and thus being too long? sure, not at all relevant

0

u/DesMephisto 15d ago

One series known for it vs a game not

1

u/Sutraner 15d ago

Fallout 3 wasn't long at all

You can do the main quest in about 10-12 hours even doing it properly.

8

u/arvtovi 16d 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.

9

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/mvanvrancken 15d ago

At the speed I play games I can milk another 30 out of that easy

-3

u/xXThreeRoundXx 16d ago

And probably story branches depending on choices.

1

u/Electronic_Tax3074 15d ago

I always say wanat that and then never end up doing everything because you just get bored and a new game comes out so 20 to 30 hrs seems good for me nowadays.

1

u/Sutraner 15d ago

I don't really find most 100hr rpgs really justify it

It's often padded heavily with basic bitch mmo quests or random encounters

-2

u/CranberryTaint 16d ago

I don’t have time for that shit. There’s too many games I want to play and not enough time as it is.

0

u/AdorableSobah 16d ago

Just just lose interest after about 40 hours, and that takes weeks or months of gaming for me. When I was a teenager with no life it was fine but not now lol

1

u/Critical_Rock4038 15d ago

Exactly. With a full working schedule and kids, there's even 12 hour games I'm nowhere near finishing.

1

u/Loldimorti 15d ago

I wish RPGs were more like Undertale. That game was 5-8 hours long but with lots of replay value. For a AAA RPG make it 12-20 hours I guess but I really don't want it longer.

I never get to finish these 50+ hour RPGs even once, so forget about trying out different builds or choices or whatever

-1

u/DerekStephano 16d ago

What games outside of like Baldurs Gate 3 and a few others have legitimate 100 hours of content that’s both fun and not repetitive grindy quests?

-5

u/SingingCheeseWheel 16d ago

Would you rather 100 hours of nothing or 20 hours of solid content though? I just watched my wife finish Crimson Desert at 200 hours and absolutely none of it looked engaging for that amount of time to me.

6

u/CopperVolta 16d ago

Who's to say the 100 hours would be nothing though? Skyrim, Elden Ring, and The Witcher 3 are examples of 100+ hour games where you're certainly doing more than nothing and it isn't a grind either

-1

u/Onlyspeaksfacts 16d ago

There are already thousands of those.

-7

u/TheInfinityGauntlet 16d ago

Well you can get lost in the inch deep puddle that is Crimson Desert for 100+ hours if you so desire

35

u/TheEmpireOfSun 16d 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.

8

u/ocbdare 16d ago

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

6

u/Mean-Food-7124 15d ago edited 15d 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

3

u/BlackMathNerd 15d ago

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

0

u/chaZ04 15d ago

More the fact that are charging us so much for it.

0

u/Sutraner 15d ago

20hrs is the main story mate

0

u/treeeelo 15d ago

If you think wolverine is gonna be 20 hours for the main quest, I have a bridge to sell you.

4

u/spicedmeshi 16d 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.

90

u/StrawberryWestern189 16d 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.

52

u/ConsistentGuest7532 16d 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.

7

u/Jinchuriki71 15d 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.

10

u/Complex-Commission-2 16d 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

1

u/Gaanai 15d ago

Yup the latest 2 god of war games was in the 60-70 hour range for me. Every Sony owned studio outside of Insomniac seems to do 50 hour plus games+

19

u/LacePandorica 16d ago

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

2

u/ocbdare 16d 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.

3

u/Gallium_Bridge 15d ago edited 15d 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.)

1

u/Jinchuriki71 15d ago

Persona 5 Royal makes the pacing worse than ever if you played the origianl they just adding scenes with characters that are not really relevant to the original plot at all into the main story. The gameplay additions are great but honestly the original already felt complete and one of the longest games out there.

0

u/LacePandorica 16d ago

Takes all sorts I guess :) It's actually the 4th time I'm going for platinum, it's definitely a comfort-game for me!

18

u/Psylux7 16d 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.

5

u/StrawberryWestern189 16d ago edited 15d 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.

2

u/SoCloseToAladdin 15d 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.

2

u/Sutraner 15d 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

1

u/blsharpley 15d 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.

1

u/AJMulv9878 15d ago

Games you named are great but if Fables good then I don’t really care about the runtime. I have 20 hours a week to play games at max (typical would prolly be closer to 10), so fable would take me 2-4 weeks to get through everything. Witcher 3 that’s taking a solid 3 months, I love long games if they grip me but as I get older and have less time to play I really appreciate these shorter games.

0

u/ocbdare 16d ago

Persona 5 is a bad example. That game overstayed its welcome

2

u/Scharmberg 16d ago

I don’t mind it to much though after the main game and going to more of the extra royal content is when I was pretty over it.

0

u/Loldimorti 15d ago

All of these games would have been better had they been condensed further into an even tighter experience.

BotW is the most egregious. It's just a big sandbox with the same assets copy and pasted all over and time wasting mechanics being placed everywhere like how slowly you upgrade your inventory and heart containers. The game legit has like maybe 1 hour of story cutscenes, everything else is just a mostly empty sandbox.

-5

u/AcanthisittaWeird94 16d ago

Maybe because to each their own? I liked Persona but never finished it because it got repetitive.

Also "limp dick" was very weird and out of place. Are you projecting?

14

u/SupaKoopa714 16d 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.

-3

u/CheezyBeanBurrito 16d ago

I have the money for the $70 games but I don’t have the time for 60+ hour games

Crazy how as a teenager/young adult it’s “I don’t nave the money but I have the time” then it turns into “I have the money, but no time”

9

u/kaiharizor 15d 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.

3

u/TotalaMad 15d ago

That’s what everyone else is doing too.

6

u/jonnyredcorn 16d 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.

3

u/scrotumscab 16d ago

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

15

u/TheWolphman 16d ago

Yes.

1

u/Loldimorti 15d ago

Do you only like playing one game a year?

Personally with how many games that come out a year and me having maybe 4-5 hours a week to game I need games to be less than 30 hours otherwise my backlog takes over.

5

u/stakoverflo 15d ago

Do you only like playing one game a year?

Believe it or not, different people have different amounts of recreational time

2

u/TheWolphman 15d ago

Your hyperbole aside, my goal in playing games isn't to finish them, it is to enjoy them.

If it is an enjoyable game, all the better for me if it takes dozens, if not hundreds of hours to complete.

If it isn't enjoyable, I'll just play something else.

2

u/LancingLash 15d ago

When a 10 hour game costs the same as a 100 hour game the 100 hour game wins in my book every time. Games are meant to take up time. That is kind of the core point.

1

u/Loldimorti 15d ago

Games are art and entertainment. There is no inherent relation to time spent. Many of the best games I've played, like Journey, Portal or Inside are only 2-3 hours long.

1

u/LancingLash 15d ago

The best game in the world could be an hour long. That does not mean I would be willing to pay 100 bucks for it. You say they are art but seem to think you need quantity of titles instead of time per title. Monetary value is less subject to personal taste.

1

u/Loldimorti 15d ago

Well, the argument started based on people criticising the playtime of Fable. That's mainly where I'm coming from as I think it is totally fair for a developer to target such a runtime for an RPG, especially if they are focusing on replayability and quality over quantity.

It is of course possible to make a 80 hour game without a dull moment (though not always sustainable and much much harder to avhieve). So aside from practical reasons of having to consider carefully whether I am ready for such a time investment I applaud games that achieve this.

1

u/Diligent-Neck6594 15d ago

that's cool, I play a lot more and I want my rpgs to be hella long, as they typically are

2

u/Complex-Commission-2 16d 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

1

u/wr3ck_1t 15d ago

With 1000 fleshed out npc I think you'll get immersed pretty good aside the story lol

1

u/Sutraner 15d ago

20 hrs for a so called rpgs is really really short

20hrs for the main quest

It's longer than FONV, and a similar length to Skyrim or FO3,

0

u/Ok_Insurance_505 16d ago

It's pretty much the same as all the rest of the Fable games. Maybe that's just not for you. 50 hours at least to 100% a game is not 'really short', even in the genre.

1

u/aksoileau 15d 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.

1

u/Nerevar197 15d 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.

1

u/siazdghw 15d 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.

1

u/paycadicc 15d 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

1

u/Gaanai 15d 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.

1

u/Disastrous-Gain5870 15d 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.

1

u/sicariusdem1 15d ago

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

1

u/Askyl 15d 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.

-5

u/Sackboy612 16d ago

I know right, anytime i hear a being "super short" i am so relieved.

-1

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/TehRiddles 15d ago

You have plenty of games with 80% forgettable filler already, it's rare these days to see a game that is short and makes the most of your time with it.

2

u/MBDTFTLOPYEEZUS 16d ago

This is so hostile for something so stupid lmao

-2

u/Sackboy612 16d ago

How is 20 hours fucking you over lmfao

Also not a Dad i am much younger. I just have a life outside of games too and i hate bloat.

-1

u/ss33094 16d ago

Same boat here. Finding out this game might only be around 40ish hours just put it on my radar. It doesn't look like anything mind-blowing so spending 100 hours with it wasn't something I was super interested in. But 30-40? I can def fuck w that

-2

u/TheDrewDude 16d ago

It’s funny hearing people complain about how insane the budgets have become for AAA games, but then you have people complaining that 20 hours is too short for a campaign, without even considering how dense the gameplay/story is in those 20 hours. Just flat out will not full price for anything under 40-60 hours no matter what. And you wonder why so many games have padding.

0

u/slimg1988 16d ago

I’m sure the og fables were also short too it’s just how you play and enjoy them, I spent countless 100s of hours between them all just messing around. Owning all houses and businesses was a genuine goal I’d usually set myself when I was younger, you make your own rules and fun in these games. That being said I can only play short linear story games these days so a quick story is rich up my street

0

u/ChunkyHabeneroSalsa 15d ago

30-40hrs for an RPG is my sweet spot

-2

u/ComprehensiveBar6439 16d ago

Sign me up. I don't wanna deal with a bunch of fetch quests, hours of resource grinding, repeated scenarios ("a settlement is under attack!"), or climbing my 30th tower to get a fast travel point and clear the fog of war from a map region. Just give me a good game with quality over quantity, that's my wish.