You can put hefty hours into the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect games. Epic, sweeping RPGs as they are, your playtime can easily push into three figures if you're doing all the side-quests and the like. Despite this, a veteran of those series, who's now leading Fate of the Old Republic, believes in refining the experience more.
Discussing his new studio Arcanaut Studios making a spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic duology, Casey Hudson made it clear to Bloomberg he believes less in more. "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?" he says. "A lot of players just want to play something and finish it."
That may sound contradictory given he's the man who created Mass Effect after directing the first of BioWare's RPGs from a galaxy far, far away, but when you compare those to releases such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you can start to see his point. Those are massive games that require quite a large amount of time to complete.
There's a lot to be said for scaling back to ensure every aspect of the project is wholly worthwhile. The Mass Effect trilogy is a prime example of getting the balance right between sub-plots and smaller character moments and the main story, providing consistent side-quests while also eventually pulling back toward the central goal.
"Bigger isn't necessarily better," Hudson says. He mentions that Fate of the Old Republic will offer alternate plotlines to encourage replayability. I envision an evolution of Mass Effect's sliding scale of paragon to renegade, where your choices consistently open and close various avenues.
There's no release window for the project yet, but I have faith in what they're doing. Now, if we could get a proper update on that Knights of the Old Republic remake, the force would be very strong around here indeed.
