[quote]I've been playing through BG1 lately. Never finished it properly back in the day. Never even made it to Baldur's Gate, for that matter.
Good god is this game a time drainer. I've been hacking at it for four weeks straight and only today have I reached Baldur's Gate.
As much as we see "too short" as a complaint now-a-days, I am firmly of the opinion that games in the old days were too long.
RPGs tend to be a bit of a different beast in terms of game length vs. things like FPSs and TPSs and other games...
So for example the Witcher was pretty huge (~50hrs+). Oblivion (100+ easy). Fallout 3 (~30hrs). Vampire the Masq: Bloodlines (~40hrs). Gothic 3 (~100hrs+)
None of that is too different to older RPGs. E.g. Baldur's gate, icewind dale, gothic, planescape: torment, fallout, daggerfall, kotor etc.
Also older FPSs and TPSs weren't that long. I guess a big question would be what is considered "old". Is thief an "old" TPS? Are we talking Half-life, System Shock, Deus Ex, American McGee's Alice? Or are we talking about Wolfenstein, Doom, etc. era?
NB: please note all times quoted are in reference to my own experience and may not represent your own experience, as it highly depends on how you play the game.
But yeah... i think i might just be posting for the sake of posting...
But i totally understand that a short, sweet, high quality experience is better than a dreadfully long, boring and painful one. But there are quite a few games that are very very long and very very good. Not that these things are related or always inclusive of one another... I just think some games suffer from a lack of content (e.g. Mass Effect, not that i'm saying ME is crap, because it is not, it was HIGHLY enjoyable. But it could have been insane and much more memorable if there was more to do, but i also understand that that might just be unreasonable and not economically sensible to do today with current engines and game develoment strategies.)