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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmu1" data-source="post: 3947588" data-attributes="member: 319">Well, The Witcher might not be quite as long as the 80 hours I've seen claimed, but it's definitely a solid 40-50 hour game, so some people are still making long RPGs.Mass Effect is damn short, though - I've intentionally done as many of the side quests as possible to drag it out, and it still feels too short. The main missions are great, but even there, the cut corners show - for example, the way on Foreas [spoiler]There's a mere handful of side-quests, and they're all accomplished by going down into the tiny basement area[/spoiler] or how Noveria [spoiler]despite supposedly being a hotbed of corporate intrigue, has no quests not directly related to the main plot - just a couple of brief asides you can literally do in minutes[/spoiler].Makes you wonder where all the effort went - was it trouble with the Unreal 3 engine? Did working on all those great, expressive characters and a system allowing for cinematic in-engine cutscenes eat up such a big chunk of the art budget? Or was it the time they spent working on a more tactical combat system that was later scrapped? (anyone remember that E3 demo in which the guy playing was individually order squadmates to move to specific places? the game clearly played differently at one point, and they cut things back) Did they sink a bunch of effort into a dialogue system that really would have been revolutionary (again, anyone recall the clip they showed off as normal gameplay in which your character was able to cut Garrus off with an angry dialogue choice and grab him by the collar for emphasis?) but which they weren't able to implement properly?I really like Mass Effect, but just like with the original NWN, I look back at what was promised and what we got and I see a significant discrepancy. Not something on a Fable or Black and White scale, of course, but definitely a case of the game falling way short of the marketing. My big hope is that, with the engine in place, the sequels will end up being much stronger, since - in theory, at least - they won't have to do much additional work in that department and will be able to concentrate on the story, and that how short Mass Effect was isn't just an unavoidable consequence of the cost of developing games with high-end visuals for next-gen consoles...</blockquote>

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