Efienutyalorh wrote...
This is probably going to be very dry, but, to answer the Original Post and thread topic, it's a highly likely yes. If you do find my musings too terrible, just skip to the point where it says "My elaboration of my answer to the OP"
This will probably not be the first time it has been said, but in this article by IGN it quoted Bioware that only 50% people completed Commander Shepard's mission to stop the Collectors. From the posts before me in this thread, I get the general sentiment that some find ME2 to already be a shorter game. The inference, while may seem to be wild, highlights the fact that there is a huge change in gaming patterns.
The article by IGN highlights the thoughts and opinions of the author, who offers some pretty refreshing insight and explanations for the shifts in gaming attitude and behavior. For those of you who are older, you can and may remember older game titles that required you to devote hundreds of hours to fully experience the game.
Unfortunately, that was a time where it was (arguably) viewed that playing and interacting with a virtual scenario on a computer was a terrible dark secret that was happily linked to violence, death and destruction. I'm probably making a sweeping statement here, but for those of you who have played games almost religiously in the 80's to late 90's, you cannot forget the scorn that is generally directed towards people who dedicated hours to explore a rich virtual world that was the product of a development team's imagination.
From here on, it's mostly my personal opinion, but I feel the shift really started with the advent of Infocomm Technology, especially the Internet. Taking the world by storm, free-to-play MMOs were suddenly the rage. Following many milestones later, all of a sudden gaming was suddenly divided into 'casual', and 'hardcore'. The penny arcade has had a descendant; those who used to pass time at the arcades just for fun have suddenly taken up the keyboard, mouse and controller to play a game. For some, they play it just for the story. Others, just because it seems fun ('arcade' genres where there is no clear start or end). Both of this groups however, exhibit the same traits: they'll share their war stories, laugh a little over an obvious easter egg or major major glitch and/or bug here or there, but never really saw the need to explore the game or to take it up a notch and go online and pit their pride and skills against other players. Unfortunately, the former happened to cross back into a very very delicate genre: RPGs.
I'm going back a little, to a game I remember dedicating time to master the mechanics of it: Neverwinter Nights. This was a game that I revisited every now and then, and when the urge strike, even completed it from head to tail inclusive of 2 of it's expansions. The hours I dedicated to would probably have been better well spent on books according to everyone else but me, but I sure as hell enjoyed myself terrifically, immersing myself in Neverwinter lore and it's world.
(Un)Fortunately, casual gamers came along. They don't want to have to think to how to build a character so that it can contribute to killing something. They just need to know that pushing A means attacking the monster and pushing B means quaffing a potion. It's probably not that extreme for most cases, but the fact still remains that there is now That end of the spectrum. They are the ones who would probably complete a game, and just go, oh good story, and keep it in the collections drawer. They wouldn't be the ones who go, alright, time to up the difficulty another notch for round 2.
That is, if they ever wrapped their head around the idea that you sometimes Must pause the combat to strategise, and not only to quaff potions. ('fess up, how many of you did just that and only that on normal difficulty of DAO and DAOA?) The adventure in the Fade at the Mage Tower to me was nothing more than something terrrifically fun part of the game. In fact, on all my playthroughs, that was the part I looked forward most to. To me, the complexity was nothing more than just needing to go through paths we once took, but only after we've gained more powers to confront old challenges. (hur hur hur at the stab at life.) Unfortunately, and I probably can somewhat empathis with this notion, it was just too damned annoying to need to do such things, especially when the bonus rewards were "only a couple more stat points" for fully exploring every nook and cranny in the Fade.
My elaboration of my answer to the OP
I myself completed the game a few times through, and if I found it too long, I'll say no, but they could have scaled back a bit on the main storyline length so that it'll be 'long' and not 'too long', but only if they included more sideline goodies to keep gameplay hours about the same. However, I am probably one of the few minorities who feel that way. The reality remains that there are many players who had given up because the game was too damned long, or completed the game just for the storyline and still found it too damned long; it's the Bell Curve at work on the spectrum. (though on the forums, I think we are the majority. DAO has supposedly millions of sales. Do we see millions of forum users being active?)
To quote, "Game companies like Bioware may be tracking whether or not you complete a game for internal use, but you can be sure the accounting department couldn't care less if you saw the ending credits." - Levi Buchanan in "Why Don't We Finish More Video Games?"
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*selfish reasoning*)
