The main story will take around 30 hours to finish

+
You can rush through the main story of Witcher 3 in 30-40 hours too. The numbers mean literally NOTHING.
 
but it's an end with so much balls that even if they last more or less than 30h they leave you breathless and with something of value.
I agree, but if you are just looking at the 30h and throwing it away before you even change it, most likely you aren't going to have an open enough mind to see beyond what it can physically get you.
 
Main story pacing is more important than its average length. You can have a very short or a very long game and both will suck if the story feels like it's urgent (forcing you to go-go-go) or if it ends abruptly.

If the main story is "only" 30 hours. It will still be good if the pacing is done in a way that you get an intuitive feeling for when to take a step back and just enjoy side missions and explore Night City. This way the player has control, and a feeling, for how to manipulate the game length naturally.

Some games goes too slow in the beginning, then have a short mid-section, then a race towards the end. This is in my personal opinion - the worst kind. If we can - naturally - "feel" how deep in the story we are. We have agency to control the pacing. If the pacing is already bad, in that the beginning/mid/end sections of the game are disproportionally messed up - it's a bad experience.

BIG synergetic factor is meaningful choices and many different outcomes. This shortens game length. But increases replayability drastically. If I can play through a 30 hour campaign and they are different enough to feel like different stories. That's 60 hours main story IMO. Etc.
 
The devs have stated that Cyberpunk 2077 will have a shorter critical path than TW3.

That is a HUGE Black Mark on the game if true HUGE!!!!! they should be striving to make games bigger more expansive not smaller a game where it take More hours then W3 just to finish the main quest would be awesome. There is absolutely no reason to make a game shorter other than "dev time" .

If you could compare the dev time between W3 and CP277

According to google
W3
over three-and-a-half years. The project began with 150 employees, eventually growing to over 250 in-house staff.

CP2077
The game has been in development for 7 years

So really they have had OVER DOUBLE the amount of Dev time and most likely more staff so logically the game should be much larger than W3 not shorter.
 
That is a HUGE Black Mark on the game if true HUGE!!!!! they should be striving to make games bigger more expansive not smaller a game where it take More hours then W3 just to finish the main quest would be awesome. There is absolutely no reason to make a game shorter other than "dev time" .

If you could compare the dev time between W3 and CP277

According to google
W3
over three-and-a-half years. The project began with 150 employees, eventually growing to over 250 in-house staff.

CP2077
The game has been in development for 7 years

So really they have had OVER DOUBLE the amount of Dev time and most likely more staff so logically the game should be much larger than W3 not shorter.

I think some people complained that TW3 was too long in terms of the story and everything so CDPR made a promise that this game will be shorter in terms of the story mode
 
That is a HUGE Black Mark on the game if true HUGE!!!!! they should be striving to make games bigger more expansive not smaller a game where it take More hours then W3 just to finish the main quest would be awesome. There is absolutely no reason to make a game shorter other than "dev time" .
Except that one of the largest pieces of negative feedback CDPR got from TW3 is that the main quest was too long. Lots of people didn't even finish it. Also they said it would be shorter than TW3 more than a year ago. This is not new information.

Paweł Sasko told metro that it was hard to say how long it would take to finish a play-through of the main quest, because of vertical exploration, the addition of vehicles, optional side quests, and the non-linearity in the game play. Those make the variability of play time very large. He did say CDPR received feedback that the main story in The Witcher 3 was a bit too long, so they’re trying to make CP2077 a bit tighter. However, he emphasized that this was not to say there is less content. It's going to be huge. According to Marcin Blacha all the dialogues written for the game make for a two massive books, director commentary for them another two books and all the non-voiced text probably four books.

Both of the articles referenced there are from 2019.
 
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Except that one of the largest pieces of negative feedback CDPR got from TW3 is that the main quest was too long. Lots of people didn't even finish it. Also they said it would be shorter than TW3 more than a year ago. This is not new information.

Both of the articles referenced there are from 2019.

Based on whos perspective ? If you play 8 hours a day ? if you play 1 hour a day?

If a game is 60 hours long and you play 8 hours a day the game will take you 7.5 days to complete.

If a game is 60 hours long and you play 1 hours a day the game will take you 60 days to complete.

If someone who only plays a game 1 hour a day does not want to commit 2 months to complete a game that is not the fault of the devs or the game.

Since there is no timeline on a game technically speaking on "completing" w3 any complaints on it being "too long" are probably from people who com from #2.

I found what you were talking about .

"CD Projekt, a ‘tremendous’ number of players never completed it. In a recent interview, senior quest designer Patrick Mills reveals that CD Projekt Red ‘got a lot of complaints’ about the length of The Witcher 3, lending to the decision to make Cyberpunk 2077 ‘slightly shorter’"

I'm interested to hear your opinion and why you believe that. Who is to "blame for not finishing a game because of "length" with an infinite amount of time to complete? ?

1. the devs
2. the player


Really this type of game should be made with as much story based content ( Story > combat ) as budget and time will allow with absolutely no regard to "length" again since it does not mater. the game is not going anywhere. It may take some 1 month to finish it may take another 6 months to finish and it may even take someone 1 year to finish or more.

In my mind a game that tries to shorten a game that already has no time limit to make the 6moth or 1 year shorter because they simply don't want to put in the time necessary just plain wrong .

Really after researching this I stand behind my statement Due to the above quote and there reasoning for it MY "personal feedback" Cyberpunk 2077 has a HUGE BLACKMARK on it furthermore I am very disappointed that the game was shortened because people "just didn't want to commit the time" and for not any other reason.
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I think some people complained that TW3 was too long in terms of the story and everything so CDPR made a promise that this game will be shorter in terms of the story mode

I researched and fount this to be true and I am greatly disappointed in that fact. There can never be to much "story" content.
 
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^
To add to that... You can do all of the above. I've done speedruns on some games but it's always after having taken my time to smell the roses.

Speedruns aren't always about stroking your ego or the speed itself either. Sometimes they're quite hilarious or for a challenge. I'm looking at you Halo. Despawning the entire level trick likely responsible for hundreds of deaths from fall damage. Fun times.
Yeah.. I love trying out speedrun stats in games I replay a lot. I'm not that great at it and the most I've probably whittled a 30 hour game down to is 12 hours but it's still a fun thing to do after you've replayed a game so much that you've pretty much memorized every other route through it.
 
Based on whos perspective ? If you play 8 hours a day ? if you play 1 hour a day?
Based on the collective feedback CDPR got from gamers. I understand you may disagree, but collectively that's the feedback they got. I think a 30 hour main quest is a perfectly reasonable time. I'm confident there will be at least 50 hours of side content too. They've said (in that same article I linked above) that the total amount of content will be similar to TW3, but that the main quest itself will be shorter.

EDIT: Also, we also don't know that the OP is accurate yet. It may well end up being correct, but it's speculative at this point. It could easily be 40 hours too.
 
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Based on whos perspective ? If you play 8 hours a day ? if you play 1 hour a day?

If a game is 60 hours long and you play 8 hours a day the game will take you 7.5 days to complete.

If a game is 60 hours long and you play 1 hours a day the game will take you 60 days to complete.

If someone who only plays a game 1 hour a day does not want to commit 2 months to complete a game that is not the fault of the devs or the game.

Since there is no timeline on a game technically speaking on "completing" w3 any complaints on it being "too long" are probably from people who com from #2.

I found what you were talking about .

"CD Projekt, a ‘tremendous’ number of players never completed it. In a recent interview, senior quest designer Patrick Mills reveals that CD Projekt Red ‘got a lot of complaints’ about the length of The Witcher 3, lending to the decision to make Cyberpunk 2077 ‘slightly shorter’"

I'm interested to hear your opinion and why you believe that. Who is to "blame for not finishing a game because of "length" with an infinite amount of time to complete? ?

1. the devs
2. the player


Really this type of game should be made with as much story based content ( Story > combat ) as budget and time will allow with absolutely no regard to "length" again since it does not mater. the game is not going anywhere. It may take some 1 month to finish it may take another 6 months to finish and it may even take someone 1 year to finish or more.

In my mind a game that tries to shorten a game that already has no time limit to make the 6moth or 1 year shorter because they simply don't want to put in the time necessary just plain wrong .

Really after researching this I stand behind my statement Due to the above quote and there reasoning for it MY "personal feedback" Cyberpunk 2077 has a HUGE BLACKMARK on it furthermore I am very disappointed that the game was shortened because people "just didn't want to commit the time" and for not any other reason.
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I researched and fount this to be true and I am greatly disappointed in that fact. There can never be to much "story" content.

Trouble is now we are all in the social media age now, people tweet to the developers or company or post on forums with their moans and gripes with certain games so when it comes to the next one they change something whether its the story, a character arc, choices, etc
 
Based on whos perspective ?

I'll go out on a limb and say it's based on the same premise of this thread. Someone said something on the internet and others ran with it.

Personal opinion, I find it silly to say a game is too long. How dare CDPR have the audacity to give me too much stuff to do.... If it's too long and fails to keep you engaged because of it the fault isn't with the time component. It's with the content failing to keep the user engaged throughout.
 
Based on whos perspective ? If you play 8 hours a day ? if you play 1 hour a day?

If a game is 60 hours long and you play 8 hours a day the game will take you 7.5 days to complete.

If a game is 60 hours long and you play 1 hours a day the game will take you 60 days to complete.

If someone who only plays a game 1 hour a day does not want to commit 2 months to complete a game that is not the fault of the devs or the game.

Since there is no timeline on a game technically speaking on "completing" w3 any complaints on it being "too long" are probably from people who com from #2.

I found what you were talking about .

"CD Projekt, a ‘tremendous’ number of players never completed it. In a recent interview, senior quest designer Patrick Mills reveals that CD Projekt Red ‘got a lot of complaints’ about the length of The Witcher 3, lending to the decision to make Cyberpunk 2077 ‘slightly shorter’"

I'm interested to hear your opinion and why you believe that. Who is to "blame for not finishing a game because of "length" with an infinite amount of time to complete? ?

1. the devs
2. the player


Really this type of game should be made with as much story based content ( Story > combat ) as budget and time will allow with absolutely no regard to "length" again since it does not mater. the game is not going anywhere. It may take some 1 month to finish it may take another 6 months to finish and it may even take someone 1 year to finish or more.

In my mind a game that tries to shorten a game that already has no time limit to make the 6moth or 1 year shorter because they simply don't want to put in the time necessary just plain wrong .

Really after researching this I stand behind my statement Due to the above quote and there reasoning for it MY "personal feedback" Cyberpunk 2077 has a HUGE BLACKMARK on it furthermore I am very disappointed that the game was shortened because people "just didn't want to commit the time" and for not any other reason.
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I researched and fount this to be true and I am greatly disappointed in that fact. There can never be to much "story" content.

10000% agree with you. I touched on this point to in another thread here.

relevant post

Hyper Excitement -> Pre Order -> Disapproval -> Buyers Remorse -> Cancelation -> Dread

3 Shorter Story than Witcher 3


That's like walking into a pizza shop and finding out that the large has been replaced by the medium but they are still charging the same and then justifying it because "some people can't finish a large " . So what about the people who liked their large pizza they don't count?

Really how is that reasoning fair?

Personally I would rather play an "interactive movie" as some would call it with " lots of citadel" type stuff, longer cut scenes, more romance side quests (dates conversations , repeatable character interactions , lore that took 100+ hours to get though and pay more for it than have a shorter game that is the same price and get less.

Conclusion

Due to all this I basically decided "watch" the game and read reviews and make sure I know everything to make sure that I am not going to have buyers remorse again or the same feeling after I played ME3.

I'll go out on a limb and say it's based on the same premise of this thread. Someone said something on the internet and others ran with it.

Personal opinion, I find it silly to say a game is too long. How dare CDPR have the audacity to give me too much stuff to do.... If it's too long and fails to keep you engaged because of it the fault isn't with the time component. It's with the content failing to keep the user engaged throughout.

I agree with most of your comment except after "time component" ( unless you are being sarcastic there to ) I touched on player engagement to in a post post just below the linked one.

There is also the fact that some look for different things in games:

- some just want "challenge" " mechanics" "action" "DPS" edit (combat)

- some would rather story, romance,relationship development & side quests other npc character development, companion conversations, lots of cutscenes , involvement , choices options that genuinely matter change the game path, story, interactions , environment similar more similar to an interactive movie than a " action game" ( think tabletop D&D experience)

So yes there are going to be people who react both positively and negatively.

The question remains who will be the greater proportion when the dust settles.

For the reason stated above I have a dread it may be another ME3 situation and so I am not willing to risk another disappointment and was already suffering from buyers remorse before the game was even out.
 
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Sild

Ex-moderator
Considering its an open world game with lots of side stuff to do, big and small, I expect the wverage playthrough to be much greater than 30h.

Close to 70 hours would be my guess. But the game also gives you the option to "end" V's story much earlier and in a personally satisfactory way, if you so choose. So, I think the value here shouldn't be measured in hours of playtime, rather level of meaning/satisfaction per hour played. As someone that struggles to finish games these days, it's music to my ears.
 
So, I think the value here shouldn't be measured in hours of playtime, rather level of meaning/satisfaction per hour played.

So if i understand you correctly if i sold you a medium pizza and charged you the the price of a large as long as you enjoyed every piece you wouldn't mind ?
 
For me, it's about the amount of side content and its quality. If there's as much of it as I hope (good quality stuff), then a 30 hour main campaign is fine.

As others have mentioned before, we've got a playtester implying that taking your time with the game could be 150 hours+. We've got CDPR saying they feel they're bad at judging average playtime but that they still think there's a lot of content. I've interpreted some of what they've said in the past as meaning you've got a 30 hour main campaign plus more than that again in side quests and activities.

My guess is around 80-110 hours if you try to do almost all the content - depending on playstyle, whether you spend time just seeing the sights, messing with photomode and difficulty setting, etc.

I didn't find the main campaign for W3 too long so a 40-50 hour campaign would have been fine by me but if my guess is close, then 30 hours isn't an issue or disappointment.

Enjoyable quests are enjoyable whether part of the main campaign or not and at least people who prefer smaller games can get through the 30 hours more easily. I imagine CDPR would prefer people manage to complete the main story rather than quit 40 hours into a 50 hour campaign.
 
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