In some circles of videogameland it’s common wisdom that more is better—I remember a quaint time when 30 hours was a “long” game, but today’s big budget releases have been pushing that boundary well into the triple digits. In a recent interview with IGN, though, two Star Wars Outlaws devs promise to buck that trend with a “dense” and “rich” game that doesn’t wear out its welcome.
Julian Gerighty and Navid Khaveri, the game’s creative and narrative director respectively, told IGN that they don’t want Outlaws to be “too big,” with Gerighty clarifying that the kind of game he’s referring to is one that “people don’t manage to play, enjoy, and finish.”
Gerighty went on to describe Outlaws as “a very dense, rich, open world adventure that [players] can explore at their own rhythm,” and asserted that the game “is absolutely not a 200 or 300 hour epic unfinishable RPG.” So it’s pretty clear that Ubisoft’s argument is that less can still very much be more.
“Unfinishable” is more of a problem with Ubi’s style, and not the length necessarily.
Their games are so boring and samey now that what is exciting five hours in is monotonous after 20 hours, and yet there’s still 60 hours to go.
The fact their stories aren’t exactly that great doesn’t help either.
Clear a checkpoint, climb a tower. Repeat 200 times. If this manages to avoid some version of that, hallelujah