WE NEED SHORTER GAMES!

No, YOU need to stop being black!

i also agree. Expedition 33 was ideal length, maybe just a bit too long.

I agree with him. I agree with a lot of things Tim Cain has to say about game design, really.

"The longer the game is, the less likely people are to finish"

No fucking shit Captain Obvious. Why is this even a headline?

Ex-Dragon Age Writer says

Fallout Creator Tim Cain says

what's with these articles constantly appearing lately

But you just called me oreo!

Why are games costing 150 million, 500 million, a billion? That's why

yikes, I don't even touch games that take less than 50 hours to complete

we need shorter games

npc subhuman parroting "influencers"

Expedition 33 was short, so I agree.

I don't mind shorter games. I expect the price to go down as well, though.

Isn't this guy gay?

pad out an open world game with shitty go from a to b and complete chores quest

make some of these shitty unimaginative and mindless tasks necessary to continue the main story

wtf why no one completed the game

true. Elden Ring would be Amazing if you remove the last third of the game.
FF7 Remake would be great, if they removed all the side quests.
Bloodborne is short as fuck, but miles better than any other Fromslop

I want shorter games with worse graphics (while also running like ass on high-end hardware) made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding.

"Influences" all said the opposite first

well yeah my experience with fallout 1 was vastly superior to persona 5

the fact that i know this quote, while never spend a single minute on Twitter, shows the absolute state of this board

New IPs can only be made with lower budget shorter experiences and that's a hard truth

Yeah, and less than 60% of players even finished Act 1

Why no more Fallout 1 & 2 likes? People need to appreciate them more.

PLEASE, EXPECT LESS OF OUR PRODUCTS!!! THINK OF OUR CEO SALARIES!!

I heard Rogue Trader was pretty good.

Based, give em less content and charge more.

100 hour playthrough before

exploring at your own pace, despite there being a handful of major locations at most

your quest is always somewhat unclear and you just get roped into whatever is going on at a particular town/village or accidentally enter a "Fuck you" dungeon

even after all that you still have either a fair final boss or you've found some exploits to nuke him with 1 touch

Modern 100 hour playthrough

Insane collectathon with 1000 shits scattered around that are used for crafting gear/leveling/currency

Constant grindwalls preventing you from progressing too fast since you'd beat the game in 2 evenings that way (You can pay to skip the grind for just $3.99)

All quests are either another collectathons or repeateable garbage meant for grinding

Two locations with fuckall to do so most of your time is spent in the "open world" aka empty fields of fucking nothing

story focused linear 5-10 hour DLC is always the best part of the game

correction, the more padding a game has the fewer people finish it

Pacing as a concept is a lost art.
Fallout 1 is only around 20 hours long but paced fantastically, you're never in a place too short or too long of a time and the time limit is always pushing the player forwards, even if the time limit is long enough that a player can effectively beat the game 3 times over before it runs out.
Modern devs don't understand pacing especially in more free form, open worlds so they use game length as a crutch. Good pacing is using it to create the illusion of a longer journey that it really is, densely packed but ultimately bite sized pieces of content, for example Junktown or the Den in Fallout 2 (even though the pacing of 2 suffers from the increase in overall game length). Modern games avoid attempting to do this by simply making the journey long.

Yep. I've never finished BG3. In fact I've never even finished act 1 of BG3 cause it's too fucking long.

Fallout 1 is one of the shortest RPG's I've played. It's kino and lvdo.

you don't get it you MUST beat all videogames you play or else [nonsensical babbling]

That is just yet another marketing excuse to promote overpriced trash.

The issue has absolutely nothing to do with length and everything to do with pacing

E33 was twice as long as it had to be. The rehashed content sucked.

(you)
You clearly wanted one with this bait so here you go

I bought that shit because I was dupped by the retards here. The game was so goddamn fucking boring and gay that I abandoned it after ACT1.

By that logic, no video game with 300+ devs should take longer than a year to finish. Start pumping that shit out. Studios need to start making more than 1 game a decade.

Given that every IP he touches crashes and burns (imagine failing so spectacularly with Fallout when even Todd can make it a success) I would not go by his opinion on vidya.

Cain was gone after Fallout 1.

Tim Cain is not a CEO. I believe he retired in 2020. Also, Fallout was a short RPG with high replayability. So he practiced what he is preaching.

The argument for game length is important cause you can't focus with the required bloat. It's not that deep lil nigger.

no

sounds like you're describing AC origins (which i liked, but the crafting part was fucking annoying)

As with a lot of things there's no right or wrong answer here. Short games can be good just as long games can be bad and vice versa of course. The kind of retards that go by $1/1 hour kind of nonsense see less content and cry even if "more" is shitty 0 fun grindfest or bigger than normal time waste but they got 300 hours of not thinking about how dog their life is so that means it's good. Add to that longer games are extremely frontloaded. This is basically the same thing as LINEAR BAD OPEN WORLD GOOD all over again

omg save me directorrino, there is too much content

How did you let furries that want to have gay sex with bears dupe you into buying a game?

I disagree because the last 3rd of the game was adequetly propped up and made interesting by the unlocked 9999 mechanics and gamebreaking pictos. I had fun breaking the shit out of the game and when i got tired of it i oneshot the final boss.

Maybe if they learnt to fucking pace their games better and not bloat the shit out of it the games' sizes would be a little more managable.

Dependingbon the context, he's not inherently wrong. If steam achievements are anything to go by, then a lot of people buy games and never play them or finish them.
Having 1000 hour rpgs is great if it has quality and meaningful content, but most people tend to have other responsibilities so it's not uncommon for them to drop the game eventually.
It's still really nice to have, however.

I wished more indies would return to single player campaign based games like in the 00s instad of trying to poorly ape AAA trends like crafting, RPG mechanics, weapon upgrades, turret sections etc, just give me a hack'n'slash or FPS or whatever with a well paced immersive single player campaign and no bullshit padding.

nope, never finished fo4 or totk for this exact reason
side content reels you in and takes all your time untill you burn out on the game

Indies are busy pushing out "endless" roguelike pixelslop like it's still 2013 and SMB is still a hot&hip thing.

makes games that flopped so hard that the company he founded went bankrupt and he lost the rights to the franchise he created

continues to make nothing but forgettable garbage at obsidian

Yes, totally the guy that developers should take advice from :^)

Meanwhile elden ring and bg3 are long as fuck games that sold tens of millions of copies and are more popular than any game he has ever made.

Nope. It didn't. It was proven years ago almost every steam "players" were bots operated by China. 3 weeks after released only 0.1% players on steam had the achievement for beating tutorial (which only takes about 1 or 2 minutes).

We need denser games

Half the people who own BG3 have not made it to act2.

Games are expensive to produce because of photorealistic graphics that age like milk.

Holy schizo post copium. Imagine implying a company would pay someone else to buy their game en masse. Thats literally 0 profit

It just boils down to avoid spreading content too thin, if you have the resources to make a huge game full of quality content then good, but usually if a game is 100 hours long it's usually 10 hours of good content and 90 hours of completely unremarkable and repetitive shit that will burn you out.

You can make a 100 hour game if the game will consistently be interesting and fun and show new things, however that is nearly impossible, that is why as a rule shorter games are shilled around here and open world 1000 hour long games are demonized.

short games can be bad and long games can be good but overall this rule matters a lot too.

"The Gamers" share a fault with their "dollar per hour" valuation.

Less than 0 since Valve takes a cut from each sale.

games cost a lot because they’re too long and have too much content

ok but short and shallow games still cost me $80 in leafbucks so what the fuck

who cares what anyone says just buy games that are worth it and fuck games that aren't

Anon, companies have literally done worse for less. You think botting or buying up keys in bulk is some outlandish tinfoil theory? It’s marketing 101 now—inflate the numbers, get media buzz, slap on some fake awards, boom, perception becomes reality. Especially on PC where game sales data is practically self-reported half the time. Not saying your Steam library is all Chinese bot psyops, but don’t underestimate the lengths corpos (and governments) will go to for metrics.

Yeah i didnt mean exactly zero. They would have only LOST money, which we know isnt the case. These schizos are so fucking delusional

Keep huffing the copium anon you lost.

there's no point in hiring 3000 people for a 12 hour long game and that's just jews rubbing their hands together but it is true that when you get too much entertainment you either develop very niche tastes or you get outright sick of it.
the 100 hour long open world rpg is the male equivalent of seasonal netflix slop. hours wasted for absolutely no reason but vapid consumption.
there is a way with shorter experimental games made by a single dude in his basement but the current market isn't poised for it. anyone trying either puts it out for free and hopes it catches on or dies in the <500 review limbo

The court has scrambled to remove the document, but the damage is done; reporters and Sony’s competition have already downloaded all the documents while they were in the public domain. Among other things, the document shows that Horizon Forbidden West apparently cost $212 million over five years with 300 employees, and The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million with around 200 employees:

I haven’t played a game that was worth it in so long I think im just getting old

Atlus solved this. Make gameplay mechanic similar across entries with 1-2 new mechanic each game to play with and slightly tweak old thing just enough to keep it fresh. Hence why Devil Survivor, SMT, and persona play and feel different despite sharibg 90% of demons and common moves

Games these days are so fucking long that most people don't even finish the game before they jump to the next release and there are a lot of releases. More than ever in fact.
Better off with 12-25 hours of quality rather than a 100 hour trek through mostly filler with a few set pieces.
Unfortunately gamers are fucking retarded and expect 10 000 hours and infinite updates to their 60 dollar game and absolutely fume at the idea of 10 000 hours and infinite updates costing 70 dollars or even 100 dollars.

0 profit

Not if they make a deal with steam to "buy" millions copies of the game for free. Steam and Larian both gets boost in sales.

compulsion to finish games

for why? I've only beaten 40 of the 2000 games I've played.

this has absolutely nothing to do with any of the game industry issues.
Where do these bizarre critiques come from?

Indie devs are unironically trannies in many cases

What is more likely, that there is a giant grand conspiracy where their entire company and valve are in on it, or you are just wrong and cant accept that the game sold well.

I mean in order for you to be right SO MANY PEOPLE would have to be in on it and there is literally 0 evidence. None. Not a single shred. 0 leakers. 0 reason to believe this nonsense other than you shitting and pissing your diaper on Anon Babble at the thought of a game selling well when you think it shouldnt.

well to be fair nowadays the economical power of the everyman is going to shit so even if a game is good it becomes increasingly likely that paying 70 dollards or more will still be a bad decision, specially on the age of the internet where now you can just watch and learn all there is to learn about a game just by googling.

retard, tim cain is frequently speaking his own mind on topics like this all the time. he uploads several times a week on his YouTube channel where he just speaks frankly about game design completely of his own volition

good main stream games used to be 8 hours start to finish at most, almost infinitely repayable, and offered multiple ways for the player to play the game. games now simply do not respect the players time or ability

Yeah, but everything gets boring after a while. Giant games balance it by putting a ton of boring bussy work inbetween to make the mediocre story missions feel great.
Classic zelda used to do this, a boring third act that made the final feel epic because what came before it was so boring (triforce quest). Its a trick that devs use a lot.
Now this works the other way as well. A god tier action game will still get a bit boring after a few hours if it keeps the intensity level always at a 10. Breaks are needed even in shorter games. See bayonetta 2, its ALMOST constant action but it still puts in breaks, even though the game is 5 hours max.

So its a balancing act that keeps getting harder the longer your game is.
For myself, I can take a game that bounces between a 8 and a 10 and then just shut it down in 2 hours or so to pick it up later again, but the modern gamer doesnt see it that way.
A game that bounces between a 3 and a 7 will get the more engagement and longer play sessions then a game that bounces between a 8 and a 10
They think that if you shut it down even though you have the time, its shit.
Sucks man

little Timmy's game flopped howeverbeit?

millennial faggots are trying to prop up has been losers of their age

Games cost a lot because they have a gorillian HR and consultant shit inflating everything plus massive ad campaigns. Its all bloat. There were plenty of 80+ hour games 2 decades ago and they were crying.

spend 1,000,000 man hours on a game

500,000 of those are on the back half of the story

which 75+% of players will never see

Tim is right. Anons are fags. Tale as old as time.

zoomer retard still cant discern between gen x and millenial

Why are zoomers so legitimately retarded?

Why does everyone who plays this game have thousands of hours in it?

Funny how this wasnt a problem in the past. Funny how they still made money and prospered. Really makes you think.

I'm so sick of padding. Playing FF16 and over half of the main story content is useless padding quests where you fight the same 5 enemies over and over. I can't fucking take it.

That's essentially irrelevant, really.
If their objective is to make a commercial product, then at the point of sale, their objective is completed. Whether the customer "finishes" or not is up to them.

If their objective is to make something artistic, then their objective is complete when someone suitably appreciates the work, not when it's skimmed over by a mob of morons.

Basically it shouldn't matter to them.

I mean, I agree. Most open world games are bloated. They just develop a few different activities and place them around a map that is too big with too much running/riding/whatever in between. It is like does the game need 50 raider/bandit camps that are all separated by 3-4 minutes of horse riding? Does the game need 50 different identical dungeons separated by 3-4 minutes of running? Even open world games I like, such as Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild, definitely fall into these trappings but at least have the decency to not mark all this shit on the map so I feel like I am exploring something.

There WAS evidence. 3 weeks after released only 0.1% players had the steam achievement for beating the tutorial. Only when Larian noticed they change it so the bots would beat the tutorial. You just need to accept reality. I don't even know a single person who bought this game.

where is this evidence then

NEET losers with infinite time to waste

It was all over Anon Babble, newfag

no anon, you dont get to just lie and pretend anyone else has to believe it. screenshots are not evidence. show the evidence

Yeah, keeping a game engaging for everyone gets harder the longer a game is, in fact, on average most games that are purchased never get finished, most people don't see the credits of the game they've bought.

You know, a recent exameple that comes to mind is MHWilds, in that game, they railroaded you throughout the story, the game is easier, the story is all frontloaded and the credits play as soon as the 15 hour mark in spite of MH's fame for being a long game, now, most of the playtime in MH comes from players grinding out of their own volition, but back in the day seeing the credits still took at least twice as much.
And why did they do this? They were afraid of people not finishing the game, cuase that's impossible, there's a thousand different reasons why people keep playing or not.

You yourself have mentioned the importance of balancing intensity in games, but not only are different people gonna have different preferences for that, they will also have different perceptions of what's intense for them.
I heard this analogy on a youtube video, I don't know from who, but I thought it was quite fitting, some people are comfortable when they are free in games, and some people are comfortable when a game is linear and carries them along, the first group plays games to fuck around, for freedom and playable experimentation, they want most of the game to be a playground to fuck around and do cool shit, that's the intensity they seek, and then to break it up maybe the game will have some cutscenes or story sections that bring down the freedom in favour of some scripted sequences, the second group however, is the opposite, there's people who get overwhelmed with games that have too many systems, too much freedom, too much open endedness, they don't know what do, and they far prefer when a game is linear and simple, focusing more on story, carrying them around from level to level, they will enjoy sony movie games and such.

Orly. You can probably finish gta 6 in like 20 hours if it wasn't for all the filler and padding.

no evidence

based literally just making shit up schizo

based cap

It's true, especially for CRPGs. Which all tend to fall apart at the final act. Fallout 1 is still one of, if not the greatest CRPGs becuase of how well paced and consise it is. It doesn't waste your time with bloat like modern CRPGs or Fallout 2. Yet it still feels like a complete experience unlike many indie RPGs which feel half baked and under developed.

Among other things, the document shows that Horizon Forbidden West apparently cost $212 million over five years with 300 employees, and The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million with around 200 employees:

The weird thing is despite how much money they're spending their games usually feel limited, I guess it's the body count.

"Why are games costing 150 million, 500 million, a billion? Thats why"

Can someone name a few games from the past few years that had a budget that big and lasted 100+ hours

I cant think of any other than BG3 and Larian are claiming the exact opposite of Mr Cain

Go ahead and make another 5 hour Order 1886 see what happens.

yeah it was the length of the game that sucked, not anything else

I'm definitely in the second camp but I wouldn't say I stick to movie games. Plenty of arcade games are like this and there are still games that are level based.

I've been playing Dodonpachi DaiOuJou, Earth Defense Force 6, and Doom Dark Ages recently as examples.

But nothing is less appealing to me than being dropped in "a world" to "make your own fun".

y-you're a zoomer

shut the fuck up millennial

Wouldn't know, didn't play it.

Industry is getting curbstomped by games that are released a decade ago like terraria that people have a bajillion hours in

Durr people not like long gaem

It was a problem and still is. What ends up happening is devs attempt to make a long ass game and run out of time / reason to make the back half of the game good. Tim worked on VTMB and it obviously has that issue.

if your game is good i won't mind playing it for a long time

well it's mosre of a spectrum but you get it.

why do people say dumbshit like this as if, mhw, clair obscur, bg3, didnt just sell shitloads in the last 3 years

Schizos disappear the second you ask for actual evidence

every time

there's a direct relationship between games costing a billion dollars and the length of time required to complete any given game

which is why gtav

a game that cost 265 million dollars

can be completed in a weekend, 40 hours tops

60 hours if we're being generous, including side content (non-multiplayer)

oh yeah sure it's definitely related to completion time and not, say, bloated advertising budgets and having to pay a legion of middle managers to do who knows what

Those games sold like shit and it's obvious because of how aggressive they were and still are being shilled.

Why are you lying

schizos always lie

short games with lots of replayability have always been better. roll the credits at 10 hour mark or I'm not playing or replaying your bloat slop.

Man, they are so desperate for money...

It's not about length it's about it being a satisfying experience. The longer the game the less likely it will be finished and leave an over all good impression in the player.
Shorter games can be way tighter experiences but could also leave an unsatisfactory feeling due to it feeling more like a demo.
Yes, games should be shorter but not indie art short either.
Find that balance and the game is eventually put down wanting more but NOT from the same game. Making sequels more profitable with less work as all you really need to do is freshen up small things like abilities and the world.
Fuck these gigantic 100+ hour experiences. Give me a solid 30 to 60 hour game.

your right, we need 60 hour games, where 50 of it is just bloated pointless filler

40 hours to 100% a game is the ideal length

I WAS INVOLVED IN MAKING A GREAT GAME 25 YEARS AGO PLEASE LISTEN TO MEEEEEE

Not wrong. I'll never play P5 because a 100 hour game is ridiculous.

Yeah lets listen to the dykes and tranny who make games today instead

I don't think

people are unlikely to finish long games

is a controversial statement considering most people don't finish most games at all anyway.

You know a game can be long and still entertaining right? Have you tried not playing your shitty jrpgs?

same. with modern storage / processing power and using similair graphics to 2000s-2010s shooters we could have some ridiculously complex SP campaigns
of course they'd be somewhat linear at the end of the day but there could be lots of different levels and choices that effect what route or level happens next
and lots of scripted michael bay tier bullshit for every choice

i have to get up at 6am. my $70 game has to last two hours so i can finish it after the missus goes to bed

Cool, and how many games that are long are actually truly good? Most of them have worthless filler.

he's right. FF7 Rebirth made me want to kill myself. Like only 30% of that game is actually good content.

I beateted Fallout 1 this year and I was sort of shocked to discover that the whole thing was just like five towns and five "dungeons," each of them about three screens wide

And I swear half my playtime was just reloading and retrying because some nigger super mutant critted me for 2000 damage right through my power armor

muh hour to dollar ratio

Some of the best games ever made are a few hours long.

fallout 1 was designed to be a quick game. there's a reason why there are two countdown times in the game.

people take issue with this

Fallout is less than 10 hours long on a blind first playthrough

Guys, I'm starting to think a lot of you haven't actually played Fallout
(Which would explain why so many of you call it a good game)

I've never even finished Skyrim
game just goes into a crash loop during or after the Battle of Whiterun no matter what .ods I try to fix it with, or even with no mods at all

bro people have been playing mmos for years that have hundreds of hours of content and they still cry for more. you know why? because people know how to pace themselves. assuming video games are your actual hobby, then it means you have a lot of time for games, so you can get through a lot of content in 8+ hours. other people might do martial arts, or basketball, or whatever and have less time for vidya, but even they can manage to get through a WoW + DLC campaign in a few months time in between other activities.

the point I'm making is that you should worry less about the amount of hours people will put into your game, because all games can technically be replayed infinitely ( replayibility is a stupid meme concept that doesn't matter), and focus on making a fun game worth putting thousands of hours into.

nobody NOBODY likes what modern gaming has become, with

daily log in tasks

time/resource capped grinding (antigrind)

multiple layers of grinding (grind so you can get resource A; then use resource A to grind for resource B)

retarded skill trees and loot systems that don't necessarily enhance the experience but instead incentivize the grind

cyclical/seasonal/missed content that's done for the sake of player retention

waiting real life days for "development" or unlocking of equipment

actual fucking gacha gambling for new characters/equipment/attribute enhancing items

etc.

and yet people will put hundreds of hours into elder scrolls games because they have a fuck ton of content (even if it's highly repetitive and basic, at least it doesn't come along with all the woes of modern live service games). of course I'm not saying you should try to make games as long as possible, but I've yet to come across a game that's so long it can't be reasonably completed within a month's time (barring mmos + gaasslop).

For me, it was hearing so much about the writing, dialogue, and choices, but even a lot of talking heads don't have a lot to say, and your responses are incredibly limited once you get past the initial questions.

If anything, it was an immensely pleasant surprise regarding how far the genre's come, as it means we've reached the point where the original Fallout is basically on the same level of scale and quality as worldspace mods you'd find for the later titles. Shame that a lot of midwit grognards would instead just keep clinging to the old days, thoughbeit.

/thread

Why games cost so much!?!

Meanwhile the entire C-suite and mid-level executives who produce NOTHING are getting 100s of millions in financial compensation.

Tim Caine is a fat dumb faggot
I hope you read this Tim, you fucking moron

Yes, shorter, more replayable schlop > whatever schlop you have.
Too bad good ol' Kaine can't make good games any more.

Games are expensive to make because they are very long

Okay, now explain all of the AAA slop that is absurdly expensive to make, but also lasts less than 20 hours.

we need to make shorter games that cost more because our consultants says that Tiktok normalfag audience never finish games!

wtf why we are bankrupting now?! It's fucking racists fault!

WE NEED SHORTER GAMES!

The fuck, these games are already short as shit, its these bloated ass cutscenes taking up almost the majority of the play time making the games look bigger than they actually are. Iam afraid to find out how big GTA6 cutscenes are going to be.

They'll give it to you for eighty bucks.

Intimidating money pits

How does that make sense? You having fun is not linked exclusively to the moment you finish the game. How is getting more content without having to pay more bad?

Yeah, thats the reason these games are so expensive to make, because they are long, not because the ads, celebrity cameos, and long cut scenes eating up the development costs, not the ridiculously insane graphics trying to simulate realism, and definitely not the out of touch CEO that needs 5 million a month. No its fucking length of these already 7to 10 hour games as to why they are so expensive.

He's not wrong. I haven't finished Baldur's Gate, neither 1, nor 2, nor 3.

they didnt finish the final story mission to unlock the "finished" achievement, that means its a waste!

Surely the metric to look at would be hours played, not checking a specific box. If 20% of fallout 7 players finish the final quest but 80% of them play for more than 100 hours and even multiple hundreds of hours it seems its worth it

cyberpunk77 did that retard. end result is wankers bitching about how short and unfinished the main quest feels like when majority of time is taken up by side content

25% of players finished BG3 which is actually huge number. Most games get between 1-6% finish rates according to the achievement thingies

Nobody wants to hire those people anymore so they are starting youtube channels in the hopes of making some money. Jurnos then mine those channels for easy articles based on name recognition of their former work.

Yeah, the annyoing kind too.

he and most of the rest of the old guard is obsessed in following "successful" formulas like Todds amusement parks or Ken Levine -schocks. Because all their life stories are cult hits with incredibly long shelf life that sold like shit and were commercial failure on launch. like arcanum or vtmb. or only broke even with a small profit (fallout 1)

thus they start to obsess over dumbing down everything and incredibly worried if randoms buying it on sales even finish it or not.

You should play the recent game I really enjoyed. No, I'm not telling you which one, because you might be a cynical faggot who just wants to be miserable. Can't risk it.

If the game has 100+ hours of main-story to offer, the games should last even longer.

But what do we get today? I walk through an empty, boring world to find an item in the last corner that only appears during a full moon while two owls pair in flight to get the last achievement.
We get stupid building system, survival nonsense, infinite side quests and no alternative endings.

Fifteen years ago, we used to have games with a real adult storyline that were becoming more and more like movies, and today? Go there, kill that and get the same quest again when you come back.
For this masterpiece they want €80

These retards don't actually play videogames anymore and can't understand why some game with hundreds of hours of content becomes popular.

Because it's way harder to catch someone who "plays this game" if he only plays it for 10 hours?

you aint missing out on anything. all i remember from finishing it once years ago was the big black dragon seething at the player on top of the mountain where that cloister was

utterly forgettable. never even finished fallout 4 once on account of how bad the main quest line is. Only times played it used it as a scavenger survival shooter with the horizon overhaul mod

The people who complaint about the game being "short" did so because a lot of areas were either missing or underdeveloped.
The people complaining about the campaign were complaining because the whole thing is way too on rails, especially with how much of a joke the 3 life-paths were.