I think too many people have tricked themselves/each other into thinking long games are bad because they are long. No, it’s because 95% of the time (moreso today than in the past), a high hour-to-complete time signals a game with 10 hours or content stretched out to an absurd extreme, often in support of MTX/live service type features available ay launch.

An 80 hour game can be good if it has 80 hours of actual content. A 25 hour game can be bad if it’s still just 3-4 hours of real game stretched out to 25-30.

As someone that trudged through Odyssey and has been really enjoying Valhalla despite its immense size, I welcome this change. Good Lord these games are huge.

There’s a lot of “it depends” in regards to a game that is fully completed at 25-30 hours. If Ubisoft is going to charge $70 USD for the game, along with an additional Deluxe Edition that costs an extra $30, I’m probably not going to buy it on release unless the story is phenomenal, and it’s replayable.

I’d be the first to agree that the more recent releases (especially Valhalla) have been too expansive. The only thing that kept my interest with Odyssey and Origins were the settings (I love ancient Greece and Egypt). I think a 50-60 hour game is adequate for a AAA game like Assassin’s Creed.

During what I still consider the golden age of gaming, which is 1997-2004, most single player games were aiming for 30-35 hours. That has been my sweet spot ever since but it doesn’t mean a game can’t be satisfying with less than that.

I personally don’t find anything shorter than 10 hours enough of an experience. 25-30 sounds very reasonable.

Finally! I haven’t played an Assassin’s Creed game for Years because they were too long, repetitive, and filled with boring timesinks. And I used to be a huge AC fanboy back in the day. Starting from 1, I played each release every year until Revelations + 3 burned me out. Took me years to recover enough to play AC 4 and Rogue. Never even touched Unity, barely tried Syndicate (and only because I got it for free), and all the new ultra-long ones starting with Origins I didn’t even bother starting, except for Valhalla during a free play weekend on Steam. Valhalla annoyed me enough over that weekend that I just didn’t bother buying.

I’ve been waiting for a “back to basics” game like Mirage for a while now, and the fact that it has callbacks to the gameplay and setting of AC 1 is a big plus for me. I’ll wait for reviews, but it’s the most interested I’ve been in an AC game for a long time.

I seem to have a differing opinion here but I love long games if it is actually full of good content.

I don’t play games with micro transactions and find a lot of open world games to be full of time wasters. If that’s all it is then sure cut that out.

But with games costing $70 I would feel like I wasted my money for only a 10+ hour experience like some comments are wanting. That can be done in a single day. Assassin Creed games really aren’t meant to be replayed either.

Games with lots of replayabilty are such good value and keep me entertained for hundreds or even thousands of hours. Games like Civilization, Persona 5, Zelda, Elder Scrolls, GTA, Metal Gear, old school Final Fantasy, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Xcom, Command and Conquer, Colonization, etc.

Maybe it’s more a sign of modern games being full of stuff that isn’t fun? Boring extremely limited NPC’s, lots of wandering with nothing to do but collect some useless thing. In that case I agree with all the other comments but instead of wishing for a shorter game I would wish for a better game that is fun to play for long periods of time.

For the small price of 69.99€?

Sounds promising!

I loved the setting of Origins but got burnt out doing all the tedious bits they sprinkled all over the maps that didn’t contribute to the story in ant way and was mostly the same over and over again.

And yes, I know I could skip stuff but I wanted to experience the full hame too… so… yeah.

It definitely could’ve been trimmed down a bit.