i'm sure with the 'chapter-length' expansions they have in the works, TW2 will end up plenty long.

remember, these are the same guys who later improved TW1 so much that they released an Enhanced Edition.

good things are on the way. ;)

Can you sit there and honestly say that chapter three was every bit as good as the first two chapters? Go to post #41 and tell me which of my points are wrong.

You fail at simple logic. Just because act 3 is rushed does not mean that 35 hours is short for a game of this quality.

Act 3 could be more developed and the game still clock around the same time (say, by acts 1 and 2 being shorter).

Rushed does not refer to the total length of the game, it refers to how uneven it feels compared to the other 2 chapters. It has never been a question of it lasting 35 hours or not.

35 hours is short. Plain and simple. Anything less than 50 hours is short. Maybe you disagree with that fundamental assertion. But all cRPG's strive for at least 50 hours of basic gameplay. Not counting replays etc.

Once you understand that 35 hours is short and that there are no excuses for a cRPG to be under 50 hours we can get to the next point on how WE2 could have easily been 50 hours. Most of the time would have been in doing chapter 3 the right way. Having a chapter three at the same quality level of the other two chapters gets you close to 50 hours. Now just add a quest or two, increase a map size, or add a few more areas to explore and you have 50+ hours.

This is your personal opinion, why do you expect anyone to "understand" that 35 hours is short? I thought it was perfect, what are you going to do about that? Talk how ~other games~ are 50 hours long as a norm? The Witcher games were never here to follow unwritten cRPG rules, after all.

Yes, Act 3 felt very rushed and it could've been written better or made longer or whatever, but there is no point in making a game longer for the sake of sticking to some imaginary norm.

Perfect for what? Then let me continue this. What if the game was 10 hours long? Would that be too short? But I can counter that with someone saying that 10 hours seemed perfect to them.

I'm basing my 50+hours on what the industry has strived to achieve over the years for cRPG games. I didn't come up with 50 hours. The industry and consumers of cRPG's did. So your 35 hours are perfect is really YOUR opinion. My 50 hours is based on the history of the cRPG industry.

Thanks for repeating exactly what I said. 50 hours is perfect for you, 35 is perfect for me. I just don't understand why you're trying to make people think the game should be longer because it's a "historical standard". There are no written rules, some chose to artificially prolong their games with fetch quests and pointless grinding, CDPR chose to give us a game that has to be played twice, both replays offering you something fresh and new. If you reloaded the save from when you have to make your path decision (instead of playing Prologue + Ch1 all over again - that is, roughly, 10 extra hours), you would've gotten the 50 hours of gameplay you long for so much.

I am actually more used to games that are 10-15 hours long - those games say everything they have to say in those 10 hours and I wouldn't ask for them to be longer. TW2 did the same with its 35 hours, although leaving some room for future DLCs and expansions.

Actually there are some unwritten rules for cRPG games. Do a search and learn. 50+ hours is the goal that cRPG games strive to reach, especailly on a PC.

If you want to add things this way then the norm should be 75+ hours. it's 100% bogus to say that a second play through gets you the 50 hours when additional play throughs are not part of the calculation. And as I've proved all decent cRPG's have more than one playthrough. Now if you choose not to play it that is YOUR choice. But they offer the same things that WE2 does. DAO as just one example did this with different opennings instead of a different chapter 2.

Ahh, this explains everything. You are a console junkie and don't play cRPG's. If you claim otherwise name me a couple of good PC based cRPGs that are only 10 hours long. You can't because I don't think any even exist.

So you want to force a PC based cRPG genre into a console based action/shooter time span. No wonder you thought 35 hours is fine. But for those of us who play and love our PC based cRPG's this trend in shorter games is NOT welcomed.

Don't insult me. I don't own a single console, never have, aside from Nintendo DSi that I use for sketching/painting rather than playing games. I mainly play point and click adventures (surprise, susprise, we're on GOG.com) and they are simply not very long games, if you exclude The Longest Journey and a few others. I cannot play shooters because I have motion sickness; besides, most shooters don't have a decent story/characters and that is what I look for in video games.

I don't see why you think gaming genre is divided to RPGs and console-based shooters (judging by you jumping at me and accusing me of being a 'console junkie'), there are plenty of wonderful action-adventures, point-and-click games, even indie games that don't fall under any pre-defined genre that aren't very long, yet they will leave you feeling you got the most out of your money, if not more.

You arguing about the length of the game all over this forum makes me think your dissatisfaction with the game lies elsewhere. Does the hour count matter that much to you?

(That said, I do have a two year long Morrowind savegame on my disc - I don't know if I can check the total number of hours played, though. Just because I don't usually play longer games doesn't mean I don't play them at all.)

to me, replay value is more important than overall story length.

i've got 300+ hours clocked in EACH mass effect game, because they're highly replayable. TW2 also offers high replay value, so that more than offsets a shorter-than-most third chapter.

dead space 2 is around 12-15 hours long, and i've spent over 80 hours playing that.

hell, i've got close to 900 hours in borderlands, and that's a damn long FPS/RPG.

One of the BEST games I have ever played was Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Also THE scariest!

Clocks in at about 12 hrs.

Why are you guys trying to get cRPG's to fit adventrue games? cRPG's are known to be much longer than an adventure game. Amnesia is an adventure game.

I asked for a cRPG that was 10-15 hours and none were provided. I know it will be hard to find one if any even exist.

I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy WE2. I played it twice to get both paths. I'm simply stating that it was too short. Just like a RTS game is known for having certain elemnets (like resouce gathering etc) and shooters have certain elements so do cRPG's. And one of those elements is 50+ hours of game play through ONE, REPEAT ONE playing.

Every single half decent cRPG in the last 30 years (yes going all the way back to Wizardy 1 in 1981) had more than 50 hours of game play. So WE2 is breaking this tradition. That is a BAD thing and creates a bad precedent. What if the next one was 25 hours? Then 10?

I want CPD to know that I for one am not happy with this direction.

50 hours of gameplay is not a gameplay element, but instead, a function of gameplay elements.

if a cRPG advertises 75 hours of gameplay, but it's a snoozefest, then guess what? i'm not playing it for 75 hours. better to focus on making the game good, polishing as much content as possible, and let the length take care of itself.

i mean, 20 hours of main story and 30 hours of meaningless fetch quests to reach the 50 hour mark is not a quality experience.

I cant help but laugh to the fact that this guy is trying to impose an arbitrary lenght as the objective norm that every game must follow.

I mean its obviously reasonable to think the game was too short for you, but to basically say that everyone should think the game was too short is pretty ridiculous.

well i can understand his concern. he doesn't want short RPGs and neither do i.

but the point is that a 50+ hour length is a result of classic RPGs being quality games, not that having 50+ hours is the cause of them being quality games.