Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic won't be a sprawling RPG that takes you more than 100 hours to finish. That's been confirmed by none other than the game's director, Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic veteran Casey Hudson.
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg, Hudson explained that he believes a game going for 100+ hours of playtime just to finish it can be a detriment to drumming up hype. "Bigger isn't necessarily better. If I'm excited about a game and then I find out that it's 200 hours long — even if I have no ambition to actually finish it — I wonder, if I put 20 hours in, will I even be out of act one? A lot of players just want to play something and finish it," Hudson said.
This doesn't mean that you just get one 20-hour campaign and you're done, though, as Hudson said that if you want to replay FOTOR, you can and discover different storylines, much like in the old BioWare classics. Hudson also wants to break another industry trend by not taking too long to make Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. "Making games that take five or seven years — none of us want to do that," he said. He did promise previously that the game would be available before 2030.
We do see a lot of appreciation when a game doesn't want to consume our entire lives for hundreds of hours just to reach the credits. But, at the same time you also hear a very loud part of the internet bashing a new AAA release when it only offers 20 hours of play for a $70 price tag. It seems there's no way of winning, but I'd usually fall on the side of Hudson's argument, as someone who can commit to maybe one 100-hour game a year.
