By Jim Rossignol on September 23rd, 2009 at 9:23 pm.
Bah: The PC version of Borderlands has been delayed until October 26th in the US and October 30th in the rest of the world. Why WHY? “Optimization”, that’s why. Perhaps even optimisation. Stupid PCs and their different cogs.
Hurrah: While talking to MTV Gearbox creative director Mikey Neumann said it took him a rather long time to get through the game. “It took me about 100 hours. More the second time, actually, and that was to find every single little mission. I wanted to do everything.” (How long until the 20-minute speedrun, eh?)
We’re probably going to get to play the game before release, and “preview” it. Soon thereafter: judgement.
If I don’t notice an extra six days of optimisation, ooh, I’ll be so cross I’ll literally grumble a bit.
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Meh. This looks just like Diablo with guns.
Wait… what?
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Oh boy :l
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Judgement? Hurrah indeed! Just don’t “wot” it up.
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My reviewcopy arrives today…
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100 hours…that’s either a big assed game, or Mikey Neumann sucks as a gamer. I’m both pleased and slightly daunted at the prospect of 100+ hours. Yay for loads of content, boo for the fact it’s highly probable I’ll never finish the bugger…..
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Still looking forward to this, I can wait till the 30th.
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Well the 100 hours of gameplay is great to hear, I was afraid the missions would be too short and they would just rely on the weapons for replay value.
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Eh. I much rather have a dev. take an extra bit of time to make sure it’s well made. Yay them, hopefully.
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Disappointing that I have to wait longer to finally play it, but I guess optimisation is a good thing… probably
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Already played the game on the 360, and it’s very good in my opinion. Plays smoothely, even with a controller. Too bad I haven’t had a chance yet to test the coop aspect of the game (no other press members online).
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Must be fun to work without an NDA on previews like that.
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Preview’s already online…
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Personally I think 100 hours is too much for a single player game. I agree with value for money and everything but playing the same game for a month just bores me :(
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It’s not a single-player game.
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But you can play it alone
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@ TotalBiscuit : There is a single player campaign, how is it not a single player game less than Diablo?
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I think he meant “It’s not single player only“. World of difference.
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If you don’t want to play this and only this for a month, don’t. Why would you want to make the game shorter when you’re fully capable of playing other things if you get bored with it, then coming back to it?
The people complaining that the game has “too much content” defy any and all sense. There are plenty of painfully short games out there, if you’re afraid of a game that actually provides a lot of content you’re free to go play one of the ones that doesn’t.
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Just spend the six days being mesmerised by the gratuitous cleavage shot, pathetic male gamers that you are, core demographic.
According to the signage, you are looking at “Skag Gully”. Interesting nickname.
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Uh, what?
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he’s referring to the pic at the top of this item?
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You totally forgot the Ass shot that is the other big image for the game. For Shame!
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If they’re “optimizing”, I guess that’s why they still haven’t released system requirements for it yet? I haven’t been able to find them, if someone knows what they are please point me in the right direction.
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Looks like this half-year-or-more dry spell is about to end. Don’t know about you lot, but I have had trouble finding proper games. Last full price games i got were <> Sims 3, Fuel and Prototype. God! it’s actually worse than i thought! Really looking forward to this one though, and more releases coming up soon. Oh and a new Windows to play with aswell. Good times ahead by the looks of it.
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Batman:AA & Red Faction Guerilla are both worthwhile investments tbh dude.
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I agree with Kadayi, those games can both probably hold you over until Borderlands comes out.
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Batman: AA is good, but short as hell and little to no replay value. Completed in just a couple of sittings. Red Faction on the other hand is GOTY for me. Check it out!
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Red Faction is a 3 trick pony, either “go destroy that building”, “go kill some soldiers” and “go drive this car somewhere”
no variation, completely repetitive, annoying as hell friendly AI, enemy AI with better sight and aim than Far Cry dudes (which forced the devs to make weapons seriously underpowered, and they dont get any better when you grab them), no ability to carry more than 2 bullets per weapon, you can only carry 3 guns (which means you can only carry 1 because then other 2 WILL be the demo charges and the nano rifle and it will always be one carried by the enemy so you can get ammo in the field making all the special weapons you can unlock useless), cars flip over easier than in Crysis, the story sucks, the morale and control mechanics are criminally underused, the physics are complete fail, you could destroy every single wall and column in a building and it will keep standing there supported by a few strings of wall (1mm in diameter) you didnt destroy beacuse it uses a shitty “health bar” system to know when the building should go down, enemies respawn right in your face (you can actually see them teleport in)
about the game’s lenght, its really really short (maybe 10 main story missions padded out by the control system, less than 15 mins each if you dont die, youll and half of it will be spent “driving” to the mission) but by the end i was so annoyed and tired of it (and the last level lack of checkpoints didnt help) that i just wanted to finish it to uninstall it (not a good sign)
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is that in besthda time?
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Words like “100 hours” put me off these days. I’d rather have a tight 8-12 hour game these days. If a game is to keep my attention for longer it has to be bloody exceptional.
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I feel like Cartman waiting for the Wii.
C’mooooon.
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I really can’t be looking more forward to this game. 100 hours sounds good, but what about 1000s of hours with friends? Or just me grinding like I did in SP D2 year after year (while having a blast, I’ll have you know). Here’s to hoping it’s everything I thought Hellgate would be…
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God, don’t say that. You’ll jinx it. Anything that is ever compared to Diablo with some new addition thrown is inevitably fated to blandsville. I mean, Hellgate: London : Need I say more?
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This sounds better and better every time you bring it up. I’ve no business buying any games this fall, but I sincerely doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from this when the time comes.
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That was directed at Meat Circus (2nd comment)
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Hmm, Optimisation or just “let people buy the 360 rather than pirating the PC”?
Anyway. looking foward to this, sounds like just the right game for me and my friends. Hope it isn’t too shallow (already know it will be mostly, so the core gameplay had better hold up).
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word is that it’s been on torrent sites for days. (haven’t checked myself).
If they are holding back the PC version to encourage console sales (and if the leaked version is complete, they might be) then it’ll just shoot them in the foot.
Or maybe they intentionally leaked a broken/rigged version? Oh now it’s all getting to paranoid…
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Hmmm, six days for optimisation. Smells of get the console version out first to me. Not an accusation but this seems to happen a little to often on PC versions. The game is looking good though and I remain excited
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100 hours of mission-based gameplay sounds awful to me. Worst case, it’ll be hugely boring and repetitive; best case, if it’s the best game ever made, I still don’t have that kind of time to put into one thing. Too much of ANYTHING, no matter how good, will diminish it.
Did I misread the person above that seemed to be equating 100 hours of gameplay with 1 month? Because that is truly scary.
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Christ, damned if you do, damned if you don’t with gamers.
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Hmm…
Witcher supposedly had 80 hours of gameplay. Baldurs Gate even more.
Never heard anyone call those boring.
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I could potentially agree with this. I’m not sure how a game that is predominantly a FPS could stay interesting for 100 hours. I was very much enjoying Far Cry 2, but by the time I reached the second map I was incredibly bored by. I’m not sure how long that was, but it certainly wasn’t anywhere near 100 hours.
The combat is going to have to be really good and missions varied to keep things interesting.
Of course, it could only take about 20 hours to finish of the main missions. He is including all the side missions there too and there is always a bit added for developer hyperbole.
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@Lobotomist
The Witcher is great, but as someone with a job & responsibilities it took me about 6-8 weeks to finish (though I did finish it). If they’d cut 15 – 20 hours off it I wouldn’t have objected. If a games got more than a couple of weeks fun in it, or is shorter but possesses great re-playability then generally I’m thinking I’ve gotten my moneys worth. 100 hours, that’s like committing to watching all 5 series of The Wire twice. Sure we all like The Wire (aside from John & Jim), but all 5 series twice in a row without dipping into a bit of House, or Fringe, Lost, or something else is a bit much to ask….
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If the game play is fun, more of it is better. If the game play sucks, it doesn’t matter how long or short it is. Open worlds are never well served to be small.
100 hours in a month is about 23 hours per week, or a little over 3 hours a day. That’s more time than I have now (usually), but certainly wouldn’t have been out of the question back in college. Hell, I’m quite certain I had several Morrowind binges that far exceeded that.
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Nobody’s saying you have to play it all at once.
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@Agamo
With a RPG you tend to loose the thread if you put it down for any length of time in my experience
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‘Lose the thread’ yes, but that’s assuming there’s a plot there too lose. This is essentially a dungeon crawler remember…
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@Optimaximal
There’s still going to be a plot to it. If all it is is just go here, kill that rinse repeat ala Farcry 2 then I suspect it will be a very dull game indeed regardless of how nice the cel shading is or however many bazillion gun combos there are. Personally I’m hoping it’s going to be in some way compelling.
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CMaster! Great minds think alike!
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Want.
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Every dev says their game is 100 hours long.
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100 hours, huh? Bet it only takes one decimal before it shows its limitations.
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Do devs have some weird version of an hour when saying how long a game is?
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Can someone please answer the following questions for me:
1) Are there item drops other than weapons (ie. Armor, etc)?
2) Is there character customization in terms of changing appearances?
3) If you join a game are you forced to play whatever characters are not chosen already, L4D style?
4) Is the world more like Oblivion where it’s seamless and open or like STALKER and it’s broken into “zones”?
5) Am I cute?
Normally I’d investigate these things myself but for some reason I’ve never been able to find a definitive answer to any of these questions, especially number 5.
Thanks amigos.
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You slacker :)
1) Are there item drops other than weapons (ie. Armor, etc)?
Yep, as far as I can gather, you also get special shields, grenades and some sort of ‘artefact’ drop.
2) Is there character customization in terms of changing appearances?
Nope, only colours. So 4 players can play as the same character, and you can tell them apart.
3) If you join a game are you forced to play whatever characters are not chosen already, L4D style?
You can have 4 of the same character playing if you want.
4) Is the world more like Oblivion where it’s seamless and open or like STALKER and it’s broken into “zones”?
It seems like it is, but I haven’t seen this confirmed or denied anywhere.
5) Am I cute?
No comment.
Try the Wiki here :
http://borderlandsguide.com/wiki/borderlands
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Could you all do a 4 way Co-op preview if possible please Jim?
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Hooray! Delayed until after October Payday. That way I can play it at release, and not feel like some Johnny-come-lately. ;-)
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Yay, now Borderlands will be coming out even closer to Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age.
Why do they do this to me?
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DA, Alpha Protocol and Borderlands were all going to be out on the 23rd until they started announcing delays last month. Though at least it means I can probably get Tropico 3 next month. Unless they delay that until November too.
Sucks for me though, I had a holiday scheduled for the last week in October :(
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I wonder how many initial sales this will lose them, given that it’s now arriving only a week before what’ll probably end up as the biggest game of the year. I know I’ll be playing lots of MW2 with my gaming group once it lands, and it’s tempting to look at Borderlands and say “Hmm, maybe I’ll just wait for a sale…”
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Well, atleast i know i wont be late for my wedding now. oct 24 is the big day, so i wont be busy playing it while i should be getting married.
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“Optimization” huh? Is that the new code word for “we’re holding back the PC version because it’s easy to pirate and console owners who also have a gaming PC and want the game as soon as it’s released will have to buy it as opposed to just pirate the PC version”.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand it but jeez, drop the act
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I think that’d be a rubbish anti-piracy measure. For a start, a significant proportion of people who have both a console and a PC capable of running Borderlands would go for the PC version, given its FPSness and how much better a PC is for menu systems and all.
Fair to say that playing games like this on the 360 and on the PC does not lead to identical experiences. See also: Left4Dead.
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I would be their “optimization” really deals with getting all their digital distributors releasing at once. That’s my gut feeling anyway.
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Wonder how long it takes to get all the discs printed off for a game and shipped to the wholesalers then retailers.
Wonder if discs for the console platforms in a multi-platform release get printed first, leading to a several day delay.
I wonder about a lot of things sometimes.
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Neumann as in von Neumann Cycle… Sorry, somehow that is what was still going on in my brain after reader this.
If the reviews are good, I’ll buy this, or maybe get a demo(or in case there is none, a pirated copy or play it somewhere else) first. It sounds like a good game, I hope it is.
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100 hours gameplay? Presumably that means SP gameplay? Cool – I was thinking this game was likely to be MP only, or with a very lite SP mode.
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It’s a full length SP game that happens to be playable in co-op as well, which is basically what I wish every RPG was.
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Anyone who doubts that any shitty RPG can be vastly improved by co-op should check out LotR:The Third Age. It’s a totally linear, LotRified JRPG with a “plot” that consists of following the Fellowship around for the duration of the trilogy. It does have pretty solid combat and nice visual upgrades for the armour and weapons. It’s one stand-out feature is a co-op mode, which isn’t even particularly well executed (one person gets to do the running around, but the six playable characters are divided between two people during battles.) Somehow, the experience of playing the game with another person beside you, chatting about tactics and character builds transforms a truly mediocre game into a great one.
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@Vinraith: be careful what you wish for, Resident Evil 5 proved how blindly forcing the coop in with a sledgehammer can kill a game, it does not work for every game and babysitting AI placeholders during SP can really really suck (i still dont know if you can play borderlands solo or they force an AI partner on you)
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100 hours gameplay.
It just better not be, “For the kingdom, bring us 40 pristine zombie rectums.” Diablo 2 managed to skip that shit for its single-player campaign (never mind the requisite grinding for higher difficulty modes; that’s repetitive, yet open-ended by nature). I’d rather have 20 hours of solid, fresh campaign material followed by unadulterated free grinding that happens to take about 80 hours than 20 hours of real material that’s spaced out with 80 hours of semi-obligatory “we require more raider codpieces.”
That said, I’m still highly likely to buy it. The world’s been waiting for a good Diablo 2 clone for nearly a decade now, and it would be a shame if Titan’s Quest is the best we see before Diablo 3 arrives.
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Let me just say that, if a game ever comes out in which you need to collect zombie rectums, I shall be the first to purchase it.
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You say that now, but you’d feel an arse. Repeatedly.
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Reading the article it seems that when they say 100 hours they mean to get to the level cap which requires not one but two play throughs. So it’s probably a more reasonable 50 hours of content.
Of course if they wanted to be really silly they could claim that to get the most from the game you’d need to do a separate play through with each of the classes, so blam 400 hours of gameplay.
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A month? six days more likely, with just a few hours of sleep (between load screens)
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Wait… that’s awesome!
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Above was a reply to Meat Circus – and this is a reply to my comment above, but the reply button doesn’t seem to work. Yes, I clicked it, and it took me to the comment box. Perhaps it’ll work this time?
Borderlands sounds great. Here’s hoping it really is, and that it’s not too consolised to enjoy fully on PC.
@ Spitfires on 100hrs = too long:
I completely agree with Vinraith’s reply. Please go play another game if you get bored, 100hrs sounds great to me. “I want less content.” – wtf. No thanks.
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Quality>Quantity
Do you think Shadow of the shadow of the Colossus would have been so great, if it was 20 hours longer?
I’m not saying a long game can’t be great, but sometime less=more
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Quantity without quality is irrelevant (as no one’s going to play a game for a hundred hours if it’s not fun) so your point is rather moot. Given a game that’s fun over a long period of time, it’s good to be able to PLAY said game over a long period of time. The number of good, short games that could stand to be longer vastly outweighs the number of good, long games that could stand to be shorter.
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And if it turns out you think it’s a bad game, don’t play it, don’t whinge about it being too long for you – you don’t even like it! Let the people who do enjoy it play it for 100+ hours. I’ve played L4D for hundreds and hundreds of hours and still enjoy it, but do wish there was more content!
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… As stated by other above, the delay is to off-set the impact of the perceived cannibalisation of console sales by the PC release… Don’t really give a shit myself. This game is not really on my radar.
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So… Wait a minute. People want those 6 hour games these days??? People get bored of short games like Far Cry? Is this the MTV generation posting here? I’m beginning to feel really old.
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Don’t worry, they’re just being contrary for the sake of it. If anyone actually believes a game having a long lifespan is inherently bad then I will push them down a well.
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You better push me down a well then TotalBiscuit, because I very much believe a game shouldn’t out stay it’s welcome. You wouldn’t find it strange if someone said that a film could do with having some scenes cut would you? So, why is it any different for a game?
If the 100 hours of gameplay means that they have an abundance of grinding quests, then I would rather they left them out and shorten the game to just the more interesting and varied missions. If the world and story are interesting then I want to see them to the end, but I probably won’t do that if the game actually does take 100 hours to complete.
There is nothing wrong with a 6 hour game that is perfect throughout (my favourite games are probably Max Payne and Portal, both exceptionally short games,) and I would take one of those over a heavily padded out game any day of the week.
@jti – my comment was about Far Cry 2, not Far Cry. I had clocked up over 20 hours before reaching the second map, so in total I probably played for about 24-25 hours. That is probably about three times the length of most modern shooters. The vast majority of that, however, was spend driving around a landscape that wasn’t very varied, and engaging in a lot of quite similar battles – padding. The open world allowed you to attack from different angles and the various weapons did allow for some experimentation that is non-existent in most FPSs, but it wasn’t enough to keep interest sustained for that length of time.
I’m one of the few that actually liked Far Cry 2, but it was certainly far to long.
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Push me down as well. Things are improving but for the most part games are still too damn long. I would rather have a short, wonderfully paced game that leaves me aching for more rather then one that drags on forever and forces me through dull missions, backtracking or grinding just to improve their length. “100 hours long” to me sounds like “this game will get boring and tedious before you come close to beating it” to me.
This is a common opinion, by the way, so I wouldn’t call it “contrary” at all. Several developers have already said that while people on forums always complain that games are too short, both internal focus testing and statistics of their games on online services show them that once a game exceeds 8 hours, the number of people who finish the game drops drastically. Not surprising to me. I’ve had several people go on a rant a couple years back over how games like Portal or COD4 are “too short”, only to look at me slack-jawed and speechless when I ask them to name a game other then those two that they actually completed recently.
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If you want short games, please feel free to go play the unbelievable wealth of 6 hour long $50 titles out there. I’m certainly not, so someone might as well.
For my part, an open world RPG had better have a hell of a big world and a hell of a lot of comment to fill that world, that’s a mark of QUALITY. As long as the game is fun to play, that assures I’ll be playing it for a long time. If the game isn’t fun to play (as in, say, terribly grindy), it wouldn’t matter if it was 5 hours long, it’d still end up unfinished collecting dust on a shelf.
The notion of people complaining about too much content is so completely deranged I’m not entirely sure I’m awake. Do you honestly believe that long games are inherently worse than short games? Is this just the world’s most massive personality difference? Because my list of “all time greats” are invariably games that I played for hundreds of hours and enjoyed the whole time. Tightly paced, original, fun short games are fine, but I’ve yet to play one that can touch a really engrossing epic title.
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Of course you are right that constantly delivering 100 hours of a good quality game isn’t worse than a good quality 6 hour game (I wouldn’t say it was better neither,) but the chances of maintaining that quality is going to be much harder across all that time. It is far more likely that most of the time will be made up of filler.
From what I’ve seen so far of Borderlands, I was expecting it to be an FPS with RPG elements. It doesn’t look like there is that much character development (either plot-wise or stat based, outside of some powers), the gameplay shown so far has just been shooting and there doesn’t seem to be any NPC interaction. Of course, I could have this all wrong and there is in fact a lot of depth to the game, but so far I haven’t seen it. The gameplay shown in trailers doesn’t look like it will be worth putting that much investment in, even if it is well done. Also, it being an open world game, the chances of a lot of that time being due to travelling around the map are pretty high.
Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to this. I do doubt I’ll be putting that much time into it though.
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“100 hours of a good quality game isn’t worse than a good quality 6 hour game (I wouldn’t say it was better neither,)”
I honestly have nothing to say to that, it establishes firmly that we have no common frame of reference on this issue.
I Would ask, however, that you please stop talking where developers can hear you. Properly lengthy games have become rare enough as it is. When game creators hear something as absurd as “six hours of good game is no different than 100 hours of good game” how many of them are going to bother to make the 100 hour game?
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“You wouldn’t find it strange if someone said that a film could do with having some scenes cut would you? So, why is it any different for a game?”
Because a game is fucking expensive. It’s a world of difference if your 9€ movie could stand to be 20 minutes shorter, and a 60€ game being 30 hours shorter.
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Oh no, it is the value for money through quantity argument again!
I think the main difference here is whether you are talking about a game in the vain of Oblivion, in which there is a large world that allows you to do various things within it and the main quest is fairly unimportant, or a game that follows a main story more closely and relies on a more structured approach. Of course, if you aren’t interested in the plot, then it is not going to bother you dropping in and out a game across many years. I’m not sure which of these Borderlands is going to follow, but if it is mostly linearly structured in an open world, then I expect it won’t be able to hold anyone’s attention for that long.
Also, are games really 60€ or is that an exaggeration?
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As entertainment media goes Games are pretty cheap tbh, given the man hours that can generally be wrung from them.
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I don’t know if the old games / movies comparison works here. Dark Knight was a brilliant film, but I think it was too long. I don’t think I’ve ever considered a game to be too long.
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@Vandelay
Yeah, games are actually 60€. That’s not an exaggeration.
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60€? That’s an insane price! You’d be far better off importing it at that price. Shopto.net ship internationally for about 5€ and they’re doing pre-orders of this for 25€ so that would be half the price.
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Also, so what if you don’t “finish” a game? If the only good thing about a game is the ending, then it’s not a good game in the first place. If the journey isn’t fun, don’t play it at all. Don’t whine about “it’s too long” and cut games short for the people who actually enjoy playing them.
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The point is that if even the people who insist they want longer games won’t even bother finishing them, what’s the motivation for making them that long anyways. I cannot think of a single FPS that lasted more then 8 hours, nor RPG that lasted over 30, that couldn’t stand to have at least part of it cut to make a more fulfilling experience.
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@DK
Not big on the whole sense of achievement/seeing a story to its conclusion thing are we? Lose often?
Yes You’re right, I’m deliciously evil
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“Not big on the whole sense of achievement/seeing a story to its conclusion thing are we? Lose often?”
You just highlighted the problem with many newer games. The gameplay itself is so incredibly shallow or boring that the only sense of achievement comes from a) seeing the credits and b) literally getting achievements. The game has to pat people on the head and say “good boy!” to make people keep playing.
Have I a ton of games I didn’t finish? Sure. Does that mean I didn’t have fun with those games? Hell no.
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@Kevlar “I cannot think of a single FPS that lasted more then 8 hours, nor RPG that lasted over 30, that couldn’t stand to have at least part of it cut to make a more fulfilling experience.”
I easily got 80 hours out of Oblivion, possibly more like 100, and I wouldn’t cut anything from it. The vast bulk of that time was spent on optional side quests, etc. If someone was bored and wanted to finish it, they could easily finish the game in a fraction of that time. Even with all that time spent, I didn’t do every dungeon and hell gate – many of those were kinda boring to me – but nothing was lost from the game by having them there for those that did enjoy them
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“I cannot think of a single FPS that lasted more then 8 hours, nor RPG that lasted over 30, that couldn’t stand to have at least part of it cut to make a more fulfilling experience.”
I can’t think of a single FPS that lasted less than 8 hours, nor RPG that lasted less than 30, that left any kind of real impression on me. I’m not even joking, those are pretty good bench marks. Good RPG’s tend to last me hundreds or thousands of hours, the same goes for good strategy games. Good FPS’s are rare creatures, but the few greats I can think of have all been longer than 8 hours (and more worthy of replay than any of the 8 hour or less FPS’s that come to mind).
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DK
You clearly don’t get it (sense of achievement isn’t a reference to games alone). No one buys a book with the intention of just reading the first couple of chapters, or buys an album and only listens to the first 4 tracks, or goes to see a film to watch the first half an hour. Nor do the people who write books, record albums and make films expect their audience to do so. With any of those things the the whole is the point. Also why is it that books are a certain size? why are albums long enough to fit on a CD? and why are most mainstream films generally 1.5 – 3 hours long? Is it perhaps because those formats and sizes are comfortably digestible for most people? Do you think Harry Potter would have been as successful as it has been with children if all six books had been released as one single unabridged volume rather than easily digestible bite sized chunks?
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Literally very excited about this, I hope it stands up somewhere close to my expectations now :S
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It doesn’t have to mean it taks 100 hours to reach the end though, surely people can grasp that?
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Nick is too right.
This doesn’t mean the main quest line is 100 hours long. I sure you could finish this in 20 hours if you just powered through it (hell, that’s what I did in Fallout 3).
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This is going to be showing my age a bit, but do any other old timers remember a game called The Summoning? No, to all the young whippersnappers thinking of The Summoner, this is an Old Game from the Beforetimes when you had different boot disks for different autoexec.bat and config.sys files to really squeeze the most out of your 640k base RAM.
The Summoning was billed at 100+ hours of game play, and I swear I must have invested six or seven times that into it. And because I know you’re thinking, “Oh, you doddering old fool,” let me just point out that we replayed that game time and time again without a single whit of ‘procedurally generated content’ and despite my rather pronounced attention deficit disorder.
If Borderlands can give me 100 hours of a singleplayer experience, then by god I might just break my vows and start playing online again too. Let’s hear it for more ambitious titles and fewer premature ejaculation titles that finish before the developers figured out what the plot was supposed to be.
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Anything based on online gaming benefits from more content. Esp randomly generated content. So the game is long, but who hasnt logged hundreds of hours into multiplayer in a game. I have over 700 games played on dow 2, think 15-20 a piece ther. probably several thousand from dow and its expansions. I hate to think how many i have wasted in all kinds of other games.
i am kinda suprised about the people who doubt gearbox. Have they ever given us a reason to doubt them? They come out of no where and deliver brothers in arms series. Basically making CoD and MoH its bitch. No one came even close to delivering the intensity that BiA delivered.
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And by ‘optimization’ they clearly mean ‘getting this out to people who will buy it first before releasing it to the hordes of pirating freaks we call ‘our pc base’.
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I highly doubt that catska.
It has been proven that console piracy is just as rampant. Esp by the early pirate releases of several huge games on xbox.
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We’re probably going to get to play the game before release, and “preview” it.
I hate you. I’m not proud about this, but I still hate you.
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would baldurs gate 1 + 2, the witcher, Nwn series, mass effect and a host of other games have been as good if they were merely 6 hours long.
You are complaining about an fps game shooting shooting. well duh. They are also comparing it to diablo. What exactly did diablo do? basically you are simply clicking and casting spells, doing the same thing over a million times over, in different environments.
What is fun, is fun, regardless of how long it is. But if its fun, you would rather have 20 or more hours of varied content, rather than only 6 hours of varied content.
There is alot of stuff we havent seen for borderlands, and the skill trees are pretty varied, and they are about as complex as most mmo and rpg skill trees anymore. Not saying that is a good thing, just saying that a fps/rpg has the same depth as some pure rpgs or action/rpgs out there.
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I clicked this article because of the cleavage.
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I clicked this article because of the cleavage.
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I clicked because I’m interested in Borderlands (sorry to break the combo) but I didn’t notice how weirdly square her elbow is for ages because of the cleavage.
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I clicked because of the cleavage. And the borderlands.
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kevlar says: “The point is that if even the people who insist they want longer games won’t even bother finishing them, what’s the motivation for making them that long anyways.”
Why would that even happen? Why would people who want long games not bother to finish the game, provided they like the game? The motivation is there because long games can provide to the player a lot of play time a lot of story, battles, fun, whatever, and as long as it’s all enjoyable, where’s the loss? Nowhere, that’s where! It’s about the experience, not the idea of it or how a game/movie “should” be.
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Time doesn’t even exist, anyway. Oh the futility and confusion of our posts.
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I’m on the side that says “Longer is likely better”, here. Short, tight games are lovely and all, but the goodly portion of my favorite single player games, like Mount & Blade, Deus Ex, Stalker, and Baldur’s Gate 2 are long, quality experiences. There are exceptions – Portal, the Half Life episodes, and System Shock (that one’s pushing it) – and I think the gaming world certainly has room for both long quality experiences and short quality experiences.
People keep bringing up games they’ve played for a long time which they haven’t finished, or that a 100 hour play-time is terrible because the game won’t be able to be finished. While finales have a sense of closure, why does reaching that matter? I keep picking up and placing down Planescape: Torment and I’m nowhere near its end – but does that make me think less of the game? No, it doesn’t. We don’t need to get to the ends of games – we just need to have fun.
Ben
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No ones saying that long games are less of a game or not experiences, people are merely highlighting the fact that its nice to see a game through to its conclusion, especially when you’ve invested a considerable amount of time into it, especially if you’re a gaming aficionado with a busy life. The average gamer is over 25, not a 15 year old with endless hours of free time.
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100 hr game for months?
at 8 hrs/day you only play for 13 days. :P
who needs a job, family or more than 4 hrs of sleep.
come on, quit being a slacker.
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kadayi, your examples do not make any sense.
most people dont fill an 80 minute cd. a typical cd has 10-12 songs. song lengths are 3-5 minutes. that doesnt fill a cd. I also dont think anyone has ever complained that there were to many songs on a cd they purchased.
Next up, your movies. 1 of the highest grossing movies ever, lord of the rings. It was divided because you cant expect someone to devote 10 hours at a time to a movie. Most movies are 1-3 hours because that is all that is required to tell the story.
Harry potter? really. They are written as sequels, so that one doesnt make any sense at all. Anynow, harry potter would have been popular regardless.
there is nothing wrong with having long games, and in fact you get more for your money. The great thing about games is that you can go at your own pace and experience as you see fit. You can play it for 30 minutes, or hours. You will eventually finish the game.
The idea of paying full price for a short game is kinda stupid. it is basically devs that are trying to make a quick buck. They realize they can charge an absurd amount of money for just a fraction of what it took them to make previous games.
Sure games can apply to different demographics, just like music, movies, books. Alot of games just try to go the michael bay route, all flash, no substance, and you still payed full price, and then you go play the sequel, that you also payed full price for.
Give me a good meaty game to play for a long time, rather than a Call of duty series game that i will finish in a weekend and never play it again.
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What doesn’t make sense exactly? You’ve just admitted that you wouldn’t sit through a 10 hour movie. Because 10 hours isn’t a digestible chunk of entertainment. My point exactly. You wouldn’t listen to a music track that lasted for 16 hours, nor would you read a 50,000 page book would you?
A 100 hour game isn’t a digestible length for most people with commitments and given the gamer demographic is between 25 – 35 I’d say most gamers do have commitments. Now I’m not arguing for 7 hour games, or do I give a shit about paying full price (whatever that has to do with it tbh) but 30 – 40 hours is a good median to aim for in terms of game length. For me if I’m lucky I might get 10 -15 hours gaming in a week, so if I can complete a game in 2 – 3 weeks, enjoy the experience and have the satisfaction of having finished it so I can free myself up to play even more games, guess what? I’m golden.
Also the shorter the game length generally the tighter the experience. A 100 hour game is going to rely heavily on the formulaic situations far more than a 10, 20 or 30 hour game.
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a 100 hour game is easily digestable. look how popular multiplayer games are. look how many hours people have thrown into mmos, and multiplayer shooters and rts games.
Easily easily digestable. Because they are indefinately replayable. Just like borderlands is aiming to be.
Just because it took him 100 hours, doesnt mean it will take everyone that long either. i personally like to explore every inch of a game.
Take fallout 3 for example. you can play through that game in a matter of hours, but if you go out and explore and do other stuff, that could turn into well over 100.
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Did you not read my earlier post? Or did you not quite get it?
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