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A good RPG cannot be short

Urthor

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Tyranny has shitty gameplay where any tactical dimensions is pretty much taken away by stupidly enormous health bars, but the reactivity and general not shittyness is pretty above Pillars in most ways. Pillar's area design was also a lot worse than the expansions or Tranny so I put it down to Pillars being the beta run for the genre, the optimistic view is that Pillars 2 is the Baldur's gate 2 of the series and much better after the studio has gotten the practice run under their belt
 

Trashos

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I will agree with the prestigious posters who insist that both quality (nobody disagrees here) and quantity are essential. In RPGs we are invited to take part in a fictional world, and in a sense discover ourselves within its context by taking an active part in it. If said world is gone in the blink of an eye, there is no time to get invested in and attached to it.

Combat-wise, if there is a decent combat system to play with, I want plenty of good encounters to enjoy it as much as possible.

AoD was short and excellent, but it's the rare RPG that in a single playthrough you have seen almost nothing. I consider it as a very special exception. So exceptions are possible, but they really have to be of exceptional (not just "very good") quality and personality in order to cut it.

That said, I understand that developers are often struggling with development costs, and are looking into ways to make their games shorter. But I have enjoyed some fucking long quality RPGs (FO2, FNV, BG2 etc), and if they want to compare favorably, they have to keep up.
 

ilitarist

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i wouldn't consider FO1 a legitimate short RPG because it's obviously not intended to be won in 15 minutes same as Morrowind wasn't inteded to be won via potions and shit without ever leaving 1st village and it is obvious to anyone with common sense that both games i'm using here as examples have enough content for 20 hours and more for a 1st playthrough.

I'd call Fallout 1 a best example of a short game. It's relatively big yet short. It doesn't have that usual roadtrip RPGs have (such as Fallout 2), you quickly get to the biggest town in the game and if you play in a natural way - doing only what seems right instead of trying to complete everything - you may very well finish the game in a day which I'd considered short. And it's great. You don't get bogged down. You feel the consequences of your actions. You never feel like you're going through the motions. Every battle is unique. If, say, Divinity Original Sin 2 was just the first act, maybe a little more variety - it'd still be a great game. Even though I quite liked it I was feeling some fatique later into the game, especially with limited challenge in late game fights.

I didn't like Age of Decadence at all but it's probably similar in that regard. West of Loathing is a precious little short gem where everything is where it's supposed to be.

I like short games. Every game is shitty in some way and it's good when this shit doesn't become unbearable. The other thing I like are infinite games - the one you can put down and return to later. Yes, even Skyrim is beautiful in some ways: in a game that big I'm in peace with lack of choice & consequence or balance. Meanwhile Nethack-like roguelikes and short RPGs like Fallout can have brevity and elegance to their stories. Even Mass Effect 1 has this sort of elegance. You know that your playthrough is your own because the game is much bigger than your path through it, the magic doesn't have the time to wear off. Meanwhile in epics like Baldur's Gate you inevitably see through the matrix and see the script behind an adventure.
 

Theldaran

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Mass Effect? Well, if only they condensed the 3 parts into one. But that would have prevented them from milking it.

Baldur's Gate and the like are filled with trash combat (more noticeable in first part since it's low level), but you have to grind some to level your party, so.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
BG's main quest is pretty short if you rush through it. Candlekeep -> Nashkel Mines -> Bandit Camp -> Cloakwood -> Everything you do in the city, which isn't all that much -> Return to Candlekeep -> Stopping the assassination, Thieves' Maze and the Cathedral, done. If you only go on the critical path, killing everything (i.e. not just rush without doing anything), then I'd say it's pretty short and can be done in like 10ish hours. I haven't tried doing this, however, so I don't know if it's going to be impossible due to the lower level of the party. With SCS, the final Sarevok fight is insane and probably almost impossible if you aren't level-cap or cheesing.
 

Theldaran

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BG's main quest is pretty short if you rush through it. Candlekeep -> Nashkel Mines -> Bandit Camp -> Cloakwood -> Everything you do in the city, which isn't all that much -> Return to Candlekeep -> Stopping the assassination, Thieves' Maze and the Cathedral, done. If you only go on the critical path, killing everything (i.e. not just rush without doing anything), then I'd say it's pretty short and can be done in like 10ish hours. I haven't tried doing this, however, so I don't know if it's going to be impossible due to the lower level of the party. With SCS, the final Sarevok fight is insane and probably almost impossible if you aren't level-cap or cheesing.

A guy cleared the game with a solo Halfling Rogue, stealing all the necessary documents and passing every screen in the shadows. The regular experience for advancing the plot apparently was enough to stab Sarevok away.
 

ilitarist

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Mass Effect? Well, if only they condensed the 3 parts into one. But that would have prevented them from milking it.

Baldur's Gate and the like are filled with trash combat (more noticeable in first part since it's low level), but you have to grind some to level your party, so.

I liked ME1 more than other games in the series.

It was this sort of short but big game. Meanwhile ME3 was long but small game. Not talking pejoratively, it was enforced by the theme. ME1 had given you big galaxy in peace, you could fly wherever and it felt like there were lots of planets to drop on, lots of people to meet, lots of inventory to buy, lots of secrets to find. It also had this nice thing of allowing you to physically walk out of your ship giving you a sense of a world being interconnected. I know that ME3 probably had three times as much lines as ME1 but that game was about fighting a war with very specific linear structure and few sidequests. Decisions you made in ME1 felt monumental and interesting, the stories were classic sci-fi. By ME3 it turned into a circlejerking over the characters people loved right up the Citadel which was fucking fanfiction with a developer approval.

ME1 was nice because of its brevity. It was like a season of Star Trek, later games had chewed things for a long time and all the problems became evident. You can spend only so much time with a team of heartbroken smartasses before they all start look the same. You can think a race of warring warriors who like to fight is an OK concept but not if they're talking about their warriness for third game in a row.

One of the reasons I liked Andromeda is they've brought back the feeling of vastness of the universe and you're only seeing a small part of it. You won't finish all the sidequests and you're not supposed to, even if you want golden ending you only need to do a fraction of sidequests. It was, of course, far too long and outstayed its welcome.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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In fact, the start of PoE was maybe enjoyable, maybe more than the rest.

Too bad there's a huge disconnection between the different acts. Dyrwood has bad consistence.

Yup. I can't even count how many times I had a gaming buddy of mine start PoE, and immediately start talking about how "Baldurs Gate is back" and " I'm in my childhood again", only to give up shortly after Act 1, never to return. The variation in quality after you leave Cad Nua is mind boggling.
 

Trashos

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A short game and a game with a short main quest are two different things. Long games with a short main quest are perfectly fine, afaic.
 

ilitarist

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Yup. I can't even count how many times I had a gaming buddy of mine start PoE, and immediately start talking about how "Baldurs Gate is back" and " I'm in my childhood again", only to give up shortly after Act 1, never to return. The variation in quality after you leave Cad Nua is mind boggling.

I remember thinking that I'd get to that city and it will be big and magical like Athcatla. Maybe it'd be better if you'd never got into the city. One more point for short games!

(still like PoE though)
 

Theldaran

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For me, it's just that each piece that makes Dyrwood combines horribly with the rest. And the city is a bore and a disappointment.

PoE doesn't have a whole, unifying feel, and the plot could happen in just any place, it doesn't make the game world special. Whereas the Bhaalspawn saga is decidedly Forgotten Realms, even though it could be ported to other settings as well.

It felt like a lyric from Nirvana, curious ideas thrown together to make an uneven whole.
 
Last edited:

Blaine

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
Thank goodness this off-topic discussion has been pruned from the Deadfire thread.

Oh right, the actual development team prompted the discussion. That's Infinitron for you: If you aren't gobbling the developers' cocks for at least 40% of every thread page, it's off-topic and must be moved.

 

Naveen

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Really, there's no reason a good game couldn't be a relatively short D&D-like module, from level 1 to 5, with a few sidequests. Save the city, clear the megadungeon or whatever, and that's it. We just have grown used to sprawling behemoths padded out with endless fetch quests and "lore."
 

Bohrain

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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
The way I see it is that linear 40 hours structure in RPG's is an industry standard and not meeting it usually just means the game is incomplete.
But I don't really see that as a proof that a good RPG absolutely has to be long. Making a game lengthy is easy, just add a lot of filler combat and pointless travelling from point A to point B.

AoD and Undertale were short and good enough to convince me that shortness can work if it's essentially scripted interaction that meets a certain standard of quality. T:ToN also tried it, but failed the quality aspect.
 

hivemind

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Really, there's no reason a good game couldn't be a relatively short D&D-like module
yes there is
namely that D&D and anything that could be called D&D-like is absolutely and irredeemably shit

AoD and Undertale were short and good enough to convince me that shortness can work if it's essentially scripted interaction that meets a certain standard of quality.
I don't know about undertale but I'd say AoD takes a minimum of like 100 hours to beat 100%
 

hivemind

Guest
also people naming AoD as example of good "short" RPG are like completely wrong in doing so and are, dare I say, absolute brainlets

the thing that truly defines "short" rpgs is that they don't have enough content rather than the actual length of completion

for example one 10 hours AoD run might be fun and high quality on its own, but you can't say that this is proof that short(low content) RPGs can achieve such quality because the reason that the individual AoD run is so good is the presence of meaningful choice and consequence which gates relevant content

thus even though you do not play through all the content in one run its presence in the game as a choice is essential to the qualitative value of the individual run
 

Mark Richard

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AoD can legitimately (i.e. no rushing) be beaten in 10ish hours, that's probably a normal playthrough actually.
AoD is a special case because replays are required. I'd argue that finishing AoD once is a bit like only completing one of the multi-faction campaigns found in games like Warcarft 3 or Pathologic. (You ain't beaten shit!)
 

Falksi

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If a game stimulates for 200 hours fine, if it only stimulates for 30 it's better off at 30.

Most important thing is that you're often getting said stimulation via fresh & interesting elements.

The Witcher 3's main game is a great example of a game which showed you all it had to offer in a lot of respects within it's first 1/3rd, and why that game's filler&7 length were so arduous. To compare to POE, I've just finished act 1 and not once yet found a magic item which I didn't have to consider equipping a party member with, nor many battles where I wasn't engaged & having to consider different approaches; whereas in TW3 almost every item I found was useless unless it was Witcher gear, and I disgarded within seconds, plus most fights were exactly the same. Blood & Wine had the balance far better, and new enemies & suchlike came at you pretty constantly.
 

markec

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Dead State Project: Eternity Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Nah a good rpg can't be short.

This is correct.

I challenge anyone to name one short RPG that saw great success or that was remembered more than five years later, other than the Quest for Glory series, which were adventure hybrids and still pretty damned long if you were a kid without a hint book.

cRPGs take time to get acquainted with and digest properly. When an RPG ends after 8-15 hours (and fortunately I've only blindly walked into one or two of those), I suddenly understand what it's like to be a woman who's just finished coitus with a two-pump chump.


Dink Smallwood
 

Castozor

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also people naming AoD as example of good "short" RPG are like completely wrong in doing so and are, dare I say, absolute brainlets

the thing that truly defines "short" rpgs is that they don't have enough content rather than the actual length of completion

for example one 10 hours AoD run might be fun and high quality on its own, but you can't say that this is proof that short(low content) RPGs can achieve such quality because the reason that the individual AoD run is so good is the presence of meaningful choice and consequence which gates relevant content

thus even though you do not play through all the content in one run its presence in the game as a choice is essential to the qualitative value of the individual run
well we can also take Dungeon Rats as an example if you want, it's roughly as long as AoD and just as good. More importantly to your argument, you will see most of the content in a single run. So yes, an RPG can be both good and short.
 

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