Today Dom Matthews of Ninja Theory expressed a great truth, talking about the duration Of Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 which, being quite short as revealed, has created quite a bit of controversy: “I believe that our goal has always been to tell a story and that the length of the game is adequate for the story we want to tell. So it's not about creating experiences shorter. I think it's like this… Is there a story we want to tell with a beginning, a middle and an end and what is the right shape and size of the experience to tell it? That's where we start.”
You can forget the cappuccino
I recently got to finish Starfield, with Steam clocking in around 94 hours of gameplay. You will understand that I am not among those who despise him. I don't even exalt it as a masterpiece of humanity, but talking about a “bad game” as some do is the classic fan exaggeration from which, honestly, I prefer to free myself. However, one mission made me quite nervous, so much so that I was about to abandon it.
Before continuing it is fair to say that the game of Bethesda is full of filler missions, which seem designed more to waste time than to involve the player (like practically all the most recent triple-A games), but this one in particular annoyed me quite a bit, making me so annoyed that I took a break (thanks Bethesda, this is how I learned about Natsuki Chronicles).
An NPC actually asked me to bring him a Cappuccino purchasable on another planet. But… I… am… trying… to… discover… the… secret… of the universe. It's true that in Starfield the secondary activities can also lead to interesting stories, but the mere fact that someone thought to have an NPC ask me something similar stupidity made me think about how much time we waste playing games. Yes, for cases like this “we waste” is the right word.
Naturally I don't consider video games a waste of time, but in recent years I have found myself reflecting several times on how much time we are wasted in order to increase our playing time at all costs, time which in most cases turns out to be completely insignificant (there are exceptions, but they are indeed exceptions).
Ultimately I refused to do that side hustle. Maybe he would have opened one quest chain spectacular or it would have earned me a lot of experience points (I doubt it, considering how stingy Starfield is in this sense), but it doesn't matter. I thought that if a complete stranger asked me to go get him a cappuccino in another city in reality, I would simply take him for crazy. It's true that everything in the game is translated into a playful form and if desired the activity is also very short, but just the idea of carrying out that mission completely took me out of character. Why did he have to ask me that? What sense does this have for the gaming experience?
Here, knowing that Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 has the ambition to tell its story without forcing me to carry cappuccinos around the cold and inhospitable lands of the north, between one Senua delirium and another, reassures me a little. I really hope to be able to experience a meaningful adventure that doesn't aim to waste my time and that becomes part of my personal experience, as happened with the first Hellblade. As Matthews says, the stories should last the right amount of time, otherwise you end up climbing towers and clearing bases as if it were a job, without even realizing that you're clocking in every time you start the game.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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