There have been a whole host of reports regarding The Order: 1886 over the weekend. A handful of stories claimed that the game could be finished in three hours, before a full YouTube upload pegged it at a slightly more reasonable five-and-a-half hours. Speaking with Eurogamer.net, creative director Ru Weerasuriya refused to pin down the exact length of the title – but claimed that the industry is diverse enough to support campaigns of all different sizes.
"Every game has to take its own time to tell its story," he said. "Some games can be short. Some games can be long. I still remember the first time that I picked up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare; I finished the campaign in about three-and-a-half or four hours. And it was fun because they made that campaign work for that because they had something else."
He continued: "Any of these games need to pack in what it needs to to deliver the experience that you were hoping it to deliver when you first tackled it. For us that meant, it's not going to be a short game, it's going to be something that rewards you as you play through, that there is a storyline, that you have information there, and then also it opens the door to a lot of questions that you might be able to answer either by what you find in the game, or hopefully by what you will find out in the future."
Weerasuriya concluded that there's no set template that a certain title should follow. "Our industry is diverse enough that we need different games. We have to allow for different genres and single player games like we do, multiplayer games, co-op games, and social games – whatever it is."
The comments do come across a little defensive, but we actually think that the developer's got a point: we shouldn't necessarily attach value to length. Alien: Isolation, for example, would have been a better experience if it was half its size, while Journey was absolutely perfectly paced at a couple of hours. The bigger question right now is whether The Order: 1886 will pack enough quality into its running time to make it worth your investment. We'll have the answer later this week.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 41
But when you're paying £50-£60 for a game that only has a 3-5 hour campaign with no multiplayer to keep you coming back you're going to feel a little short changed no matter how good it was.
Infamous first light was around 4 hours but that was priced accordingly.
Look at the reaction people gave when they found out Metal Gear Solid Ground Zero could be finished in less than two hours and that game was sold at £25. If The Order 1886 really is that short I will not be paying full price for it. In fact I'll wait for a cheap pre owned copy.
That might be true about the short length of COD4 and a game should be about quality and not quantity but let's not forget COD4 had a great online mode to back it up whereas the order doesn't, I sense bargain bin prices for this game soon, having said that I would rather no multilayer then something tacked on like the Tomb Raider multiplayer
I'm so done with these "rewarding" 5 hour games... It just doesn't make much sense to spend so much money on them.
It's a really tricky one. I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, I totally understand why people don't want to pay full-price for a game that can be completed in five to ten hours. On the other hand, do we want every game to be a vapid open world experience stuffed with collectibles for the sake of it just to pad out its length? Do we want every game to have a cruddy multiplayer component just to pad out its length?
I'm not sure where the answer lies.
Games can be all kinds of length, and all kinds of prices according to their length or amount of content too.
Yes, we need different types of games.
Key word: GAMES
Normally i wait a few months & buy a game cheaper(£50 for a game?! Er F-that. 'NO' game is worth that) but the more hate the internet tries to give this game the more i want to support it So i will buy it Friday(luckily tho i have some Argos Vouchers so i won't have to really pay full price for it thank god)
I think he has a point about length, but the price should be a match for the game, like Nintendo made with Captain Toad and Kirby, $40 should be more than enough.
100% agree we need different types of games other then FPS. But games should be priced fairly, as it is PlayStation4 games are overpriced at £49.99. A short game is not worth the same as a game with a campaign mode, multiplayer & a survival mode, but I guess we wouldn't be seeing games like The Order 1886 otherwise. Other than that I want to play the game myself before I can say a game is sort, as I don't just speedrun games.
@Carl-G There are plenty of games worth £50 imo. I love games like Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and the upcoming Witcher 3 as not only do I get anywhere between 40-100 hrs of play time from each one but I have a tonne of fun playing them. You can pay around £10 to watch a movie at the cinema these days and thats usually only a couple hours whereas a game like The Witcher 3 will last me weeks if not months. Money well spent I think
@WARDIE Sure, but only if those 100 hours are of a high quality. It would probably take you 50 hours to complete Assassin's Creed Unity and The Crew to anywhere close to 100 per cent, but both games are padded out with the most boring content imaginable.
In those cases, I'd rather the game was 10 hours to finish, and they'd invested all of their remaining effort into crafting a fantastic 10 hours, rather than a boring 50 hours.
It's a really tricky balancing act, and only a few games get it right.
I knew it! No way is a 5 hour game worth 55-60. No more than 20 if that. Pegged it from the start a pretty game with a short lifespan
People buy cod for the multiplayer, I personally smashed through the campaign and hated the multiplayer after a few rounds and got rid. I don't think the order has any right to compare itself as its £50 and has no multiplayer.
Just rent it for 3 bucks thats what they want, 5 hours game play is not worth 70€
If the cutscenes are part of that 5 hours, then for a game like this, 5 hours isn't enough. If the gameplays good, then 3-3 1/2 hours won't be enough. I can understand wanting to tell a good story and taking the time for that, but when story is the only mode, I think it's a lack of talent keeping the game from being long enough. Not saying a dev isn't good, just that they should have done better.
I got the game early yesterday and started playing somewhere around mignight.....
I was Ready at Dawn...
I'll be skipping this for the time being. I've said before that a single player focused game with little to no replayability should clock in at around eight hours. Otherwise it's simply not worth 50 quid.
I'm sure that the order is a lot of fun, but when you stack that next to say, Wolfenstein it falls a bit flat. Wolfenstein had a good 12 hours or so in its campaign, no tacked on multiplayer, no dlc and managed to be a superb game. I bought it day one at full price and was completely satisfied with it.
Last week I got round to finally playing Dark Souls. It cost me a tenner and I've already put around 9 hours in, it's superb.
Not all games have to be long, but a minimum play time should be 8 hours at full price. That includes extra modes etc. If you can see everything in 3 hours then I'm not paying 50 quid for it.
So the guy who made that YouTube vid speed-run through the game on "Easy" and "skipped all the skippable sections" in 5.5hrs, many AAA games can be finished in a few hours on easy skipping everything you can. I thought it was played on normal at least with nothing skipped at all, the embargo should be lifted soon anyway & then you'll have the real info to judge off.
I forgot to add I finished The Evil Within in under 5 hours but that doesn't mean its only 5 hours long, my first play-through was over 15 hours long.
I'll be waiting till I can pick it up cheap, I only pay full price for games that last me longer than a week. Just picked up Last of Us for £20 finished in a couple of days, just running through hard now then I should get at least £15 back on Ebay Good game, not worth £50 though.
All this negative press over this game is unfortunate. The title was "the walking dead" the moment they announced it was single player. I'm keeping my preorder and I'm going to make my own decision, of it's that bad/short, I'll make good use of gamestops trade in policy then and put it towards my bloodborne preorder. If I like the experience, I'll simply keep it in my collection to revisit the game every once in a while. That you tuber that posted the play through has single handedly given every negative nancy something to grasp at. I'm sure the order haters feel greatly satisfied with the events this weekend. Prepare for the ps4 has no games argument to continue. Greatness awaits.....still.
I've never really got the argument here. The average film is what a hour and a half. You £10-15 or more depending on format. No one complains about the price there even if they wished the movie was longer, the price is never brought into question. I for one don't mind how long a game is. As long as it's good and entertains me then it's fine.
If it has a fantastic experience, lots of "wow" moments and has a strong story that keeps my attention, I'll pay full retail. There are too many cookie cutter/rehashed games on all consoles right now, so cost won't deter me from a potentially great game....that said, I hate being duped by a game that ends up being a turd.
@get2sammyb I totally agree. There are to many games that get you doing boring fetch quests just to up the play time. The games I mentioned were some of my favourite games but I admit there were a few boring side missions in them. @Carl-G Said that no game is worth £50 and my personal opinion was, there're games worth the £50 price tag and I used the ones mentioned because I really felt as though I got my moneys worth and then some.
I do have to admit that some of the best and most enjoyable games I've played were the shorter ones. I loved iNFAMOUS SS and finished it twice in a couple of days. It also gave me my first platinum trophy lol. I also really enjoyed iNFAMOUS First Light which took around 4 hrs to finish.
My point though is I don't want to have to pay the full retail price of a game that has less than 10 hrs of story and no replay value.
Quality over quantity is important...having both is better is possible tho. If what has been shown and said of the games length is true then I just can't justify paying such a high price for so little content....other AAA games like CoD or destiny may have short campaigns but they have the multiplayer element....I've played some short but wonderful single player games but they were indie titles that asked a quarter or less of what this will be selling for.
I don't buy games often and I have other things to use my money on. As such I have to consider what I'm getting out of games I buy.....I buy one game a month, less sometimes and The Order isn't going to keep me busy for more than a few days.
Daytona & Sega Rally on the Sega Saturn cost £49.99 when both games launched, and you could play through all they had to offer in less than an hour easily. Just offering a little perspective as noone here knows how that 5/6 hours of The Order is going to be, or if there's anything like collectibles to offer replay value - yet keep using length as a barometer of quality. That works so well for Ubisoft afterall I guess....
Let the disappointment begin
@xMEADx last of us was always 40 quid and its a 15 to 20 hour game, it also has a pretty decent multiplayer. I bought it a couple of weeks ago just to try the multiplayer and poss replay as I already completed it on ps3, enjoyed the multiplayer and dlc, only paid twenty quid and then traded for 23, bargain, I'll replay that when it hits PS plus
@robisa666 no, the average film isn't an hour and a half, a short film is 90 minutes, that can be enjoyed over and over, usually within a couple of months of release it can be picked up for a fiver. This game is 50 quid. Not acceptable. 40 is.
@MadchesterManc good point: how replayable is it? When i finish it, will I want to go back, day after day after day, to show my friends, etc?
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi and why can't you enjoy a game over and over. Almost every game has loads of replayibility whether it be for trophys , difficulty or extras. A game can also be sold , traded in etc.
@WARDIE This, this, and this. I have no problems whatsoever with shorter games. Heck, they're nice sometimes as you occasionally might want to be able to sit down and romp through an entire game. I used to do that with the first Dead Space, and I always enjoyed it. But charging full price is ridiculous. I know they spent a lot of money on this game. That much is obvious by looking at it. So their goal should be to sell more copies at a lower cost than fewer at a higher cost. If this game were $39.99, I think far more people (myself included) would have snatched it up already.
I remember paying £45 for sonic the hedgehog 2 from Dixons. That took about 4 hours altogether. That said it did have multiplayer. The problem I see is we are so used to cheap games and poor padding of full priced games that there is no value in our game collections anymore. Unless you buy Nintendo all games depreciate alarmingly quick. So unfortunately I will wait for the order.
I'll wait till it's $30.
5 hours single player plus no multi plus no replayability equal offers bin or second hand For me
Sorry but just a couple of evening of gameplay are still not worth 50 dollars or more..
@robisa666 I don't really have time to replay so many games, their depreciation is far greater so I usually try to complete a game within the first week or month of purchase and move on, I think PS Now will change the industry quite a bit for these shorter games, if they sign up that is.
Someone once said time is relative. I finished and platted farcry4 in a week. I took it back to Game n got most of the value back. Dragon age took over 100 hours of my life before I traded that in. Both were excellent games. I don't care less how long it takes. A good game is a good game.
I'm still hyped for this game.
When a developer has to make this many claims, it doesnt feel right
Like if they are putting themself the bandage before the wound
No we(PS owners) need more boring Xbox like games like Evolve & Destiny... NOT
I feel bad for RAD... so much negativity & so much damage control to be done...
Hope the game able to delivers.
I agree with them on this, different games are needed, but I don't know if I'd share the same thought process as the people at Ready on Dawn. To me, it's a shame that the Japanese gaming market has been destroyed by the rise of mobile gaming and idiotic decision making like 'westernizing' games such as Resident Evil and Final Fantasy which were already well loved in North America and Europe and didn't need to be changed. Japan is where most of the creativity lied and without some of those games they used to provide all we're seeing is shooter after shooter, open world game after open world game. I love both genres but I miss the 'B' level efforts as well from the old Capcom which would give us something like Devil May Cry or Onimusha. I miss the Castlevanias, Contras, Time Crisises, the real Silent Hill, Brave Fencer Musasi, the Mana games, Breath of Fire, etc.
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