Thoughts for Today

Migraines suck. They really do. Thankfully the worst has passed and the photo sensitivity has gone away to the point where I can at least come on here to write a bit. I just finished Dishonored last night and had some thoughts about the length of the typical action/adventure game. Dishonored was, thankfully, a breath of fresh air in this respect as it kept me busy for longer than most games in that genre.

It has become typical for games to last under 20 hours to complete the main story line which is honestly too short for me. I grew up with games that would take me a solid 40-60 hours if I wanted to play a game fully, getting all side stories and whatnot done along the way. There are even several games in my collection that I've dumped over 100 hours into, mostly of the Shin Megami Tensei variety.

New games, however, seem to lack a lot of content. We trade lengthy epic stories for new shiny graphics and I can't seem to put more than 10 hours into an average game these days. The stories told in games these days seems to be more focused on brief periods of time rather than a full duration of a war or any real significant portion of time. Dishonored being the most recent game I've played has definitely left me wanting more to the story but it also left me with a desire to replay it differently.

I do hope that we find a happy medium with this kind of thing in the games to come but I really am frustrated by how short these games are. They spend years in development to release content I can breeze through in an afternoon or two. It leaves a lot to be desired for someone like me who enjoys putting a lot of time and care into how I play through things.

I'm a lover of stories and I do feel that most games these days put the story on the back burner. Plenty of games have great characters but they're put into a setting where they don't have enough time to fully develop. The stories are simply too short. We're in a phase of gaming where most games, if compared to books, would be short stories rather than novels. I. Love. Novels. It's a frustrating shift in the gaming culture right now and I do sorely hope that it changes in the years to come.