Games Are Too Big

[Kim]

So there's this thing of marketing games on their scale. Their length, their square footage, how long it takes to get from one end to another, how many hours of content, etc.

I fucking hate it.

Devs prioritize size and the rest of the game suffers because of it.

Dark Souls II is much bigger than Dark Souls. So many more bosses! So many more areas! 80 hours of content!

When I got to Drangleic Castle, fatigue had already set in. "Thank god I'm finally here, cuz I need this game to end."

So many more bosses. Like the time it has you fight TWO Dragon Riders instead of the ONE Dragon Rider it had you fight earlier. It's not like many of the other bosses are especially interesting. As Mick puts it, "Circle strafe, wait for a three hit combo, run up to attack a few times, repeat."

Plus, there are all sorts of little things in that game that feel like they didn't get enough time and attention. Black Gulch or whatever causes the weird AI bugs where enemies aggro inconsistently.

Demon's Souls has tons of flaws, but it's a lot smaller, and for its scale we got a much more interesting world, MUCH more interesting boss fights, just genuinely something I would actually feel like playing again.

But who cares, cuz Dark Souls II is BIGGER.

Watch Dogs is SO BIG! I mean, they forgot to put collision detection in some places and they outright lied about what the final game would be. And tons of repetitive side missions for that Forty Hours of Content!!!! But hey, it's big!

Lots of games have really blatant filler just to fill time for their hours of content marketing.

LA Noire made a BIG HUGE EPIC CITY but you couldn't actually do anything in it. But hey it was a BIG HUGE EPIC CITY and that's what sells copies.

GTAV is the biggest yet!

Look at the SIZE of Red Dead Redemption!

BIG BIG BIG BIG THROBBING HARD MAPS TO SQUIRT HOURS AND HOURS OF CONTENT ALL OVER YOUR EAGER FACE

Anyway... I'm really tired of it. I don't care about size. If you market your game on size, I will assume you are neglecting much more important details in the name of a BIGGER HARDER MAP and you will have a much harder time convincing me to buy your product.

I'd rather take an attractive, reasonably sized game than a massive, bulging game any day of the week.

[Bells]

Witcher 3 is suppose to be huge, but i'm kinda ok with that because Cd Projekt Red actually manages to get some life in their world...

I also don't really give two squats about how big a map is... i like Just Cause 2 because that gave me a sense of openness that i enjoyed. Same with Far Cry 3... although less so, but still good. Even Skyrim...

I mean, people asked for huge open games but they also complaint if you don't give them Fast Travel... so what's the point? Anybody here actually played Skyrim to go Jogging in the woods?

Mass Effect 2 felt really big... you have a whole unniverse to explore! But it was concise. The areas you had access to felt alive, and made you wish there were MORE areas to explore and play in... i think that's the right balance. Never fully deliver what your player wants... because they get bored without a sense of diretion and don't knwo what to do with that.... always give them good bits that make them want more. leaving the table just a little bit hungry still...

[Flarecobra]

It's one thing if it's a sandbox-style game, but if it's a more linier one... then it might just be shoehorning in stuff I imagine.

[Ryong]

It's all about pacing. Excuse me while I talk about some of the longest games I've played.

Dark Souls 2 builds up to Drangleic Castle and then you get there and find out you're only halfway through. Sure, Anor Londo has a lot of building up to it, but it's nowhere close to Drangleic Castle and it pulls off NOW THE REAL DARK SOULS BEGINS pretty well.

Skyrim gives you too many places to go to filled with uninteresting stories concerning one-dimensional characters and a wonky combat.

Titan Quest throws a gigantic first at you which comprises half of the game and you don't even have anything very interesting to do because you're barely starting out your character, then you get a second act that feels like a short intermission and then you get another long act that is, at least, smaller than the first...And hey, you probably have a decent character by now. Then there's the expansion, which is as long as that final act.

FF12 is 80+ hours long and does have some pacing issues in the middle of the game - ALRIGHT LET'S GET YOUR MAGIC HEIRLOOM SWORD SHIT THIS ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH LET'S GO FIND A NEW ONE IN THIS PLACE ACROSS THE WORLD - but doesn't feel unnecessarily long, somehow.

Meanwhile I have 7 hours of Dead Space and I feel it's too long already.

[Solid Snake]

Lightning Returns is an interesting counterpoint because the world feels so small and condensed compared with what you could explore in FFXIII and FFXIII-2. At first this annoyed me somewhat just because I felt like I'd waltz through the same part of the Wildlands twenty times over, but then I actually began to appreciate it because it really reinforces the themes of the setting on the gamer: The world is ending, there's only a finite number of people and there's less and less of them every day, there's so few decent people to interact with, are any of them really worth saving? Like, it really puts you into Lightning's mind as you struggle with the seeming futility of it all.

[Bells]

Though Futility describes Lightning Returns pretty well...

[Solid Snake]

...It's not that bad, honestly.

At this point I just feel the XIII series' reputation precedes it.

[Azisien]

I love my games big, hard, and throbbing wet. The throbbier the better.

[synkr0nized]

So is this thread about big dicks or what's happening?

[Satan's Onion]

I love my games big, hard, and throbbing wet. The throbbier the better.

Ah, so you're a Chou Aniki man. Rare to find such refined tastes.

[synkr0nized]

Ah, so you're a Chou Aniki man. Rare to find such refined tastes.

hahaha I looked up this title. This is amazing.

[Marc v4.0]

So is this thread about big dicks or what's happening?

Only the Biggest and Dickest

[Satan's Onion]

So is this thread about big dicks or what's happening?

In a metaphorical sense, yes. I believe Kim's thesis is that quite a few major developers act as though size is the only quality (of a game) that matters, and have focused on increasing it at the expense of many other aspects of their game design.

[synkr0nized]

So anyway it seems like a lot of the listed games are sandbox world games, or at least borrow heavily from that style of world-building. Isn't the point to make the explorable space larger without requiring it all for the "actual" game-proper?

If so, that seems to me to be not too dissimilar to being upset at the vastness of exploration in an MMO that on its own does nothing for the balance, bug fixes, and lack of non-repetitive tasks.

Also, can't please everybody, etc. I recall the first Halo getting a lot of critique for being mostly a rail and tying corridors together in a direct fashion. Is that a fair example of the opposite end of the spectrum of complaints? Would an FPS even benefit from letting you explore, say, more of the Halo installation and wander around? It might be fun to go romping about, but it might also conflict with the setting's sense of emergency or pacing to allow for that. Arguably, loading up a level to shoot enemies is a repeatable thing, with difficulty increased to add more challenge and multiplayer to vary it up a bit. In a sandbox world, the exploration and additional junk could be pointed at as motivation to keep playing regardless of story progress -- I mean, that's pretty much been the draw of GTA games and their ilk.

I realize I cannot speak at length about Dark Souls or Elder Scrolls games, not being one to play them, but I had the feeling that these similarly let you choose what to do and at what extent, making an open/large world advantageous.


All that aside, though, I'm totally on board with the disappointment at how other elements of the game can suffer. Core gameplay is pretty much vital, in my opinion, and it's always unfortunate when that feels lacking and might be due to too much attention dumped onto secondary elements of the product.

[Magus]

One of the best games I played the past few months was Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which is only about six or seven hours long. In fact I think it is one of the best games I've ever played.

Definitely believe in quality over quantity.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I felt like Dark Souls II was actually shorter than the first game (I beat it in 60 hours as opposed to 70 in the first one) but I think I get the gist of what Kim is saying. Too many big name titles are far too bloated, and even though they advertise "100 hours of gameplay" for something like Skyrim, a LARGE portion of that 'gameplay' is pretty tedious and empty. I don't think I'd WANT to play it for 100 hours. This has the bad effect of conditioning players to think that length = quality too. A lot of criticisms I recall reading of Bioshock Infinite was that it was "too short", but honestly I don't know how you could stretch that game out into being THAT much longer. SOME games can made with the intent of lasting a long time, but they shouldn't ALL be that way. I'd rather pay $20 for a short game than $60 for a game that drags itself out.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Yeah, Dark Souls II is shorter I think. An experienced playthrough of the first game was about 18 hours for me. In Dark Souls II it's 12 hours. But yeah. I agree. The game did feel too big. It went on for too long and should have ended at the end of Drangleic Castle. I mean, I know it tries to be what MGS2 is to MGS1 in a way by having you go through very similar scenarios and then let you do random shit that makes sense of nothing at the end.

But yeah, despite the game actually being a little shorter it feels bigger in a bad way. Areas, enemies and bosses by comparison to the first game are mostly uninspired and what few truly great ideas there are aren't really elaborated upon. If anything I'd say the game has a bigger scale, referring to the setting, but it's not necessarily a bigger game. The first Dark Souls was huge but never felt like it was too big to me, that may be in part due to its more confined setting.