Disco Elysium - A Colossal Game

HiddenX

HiddenX

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Disco Elysium will be big:

DISCO ELYSIUM IS A COLOSSAL GAME

Let's talk content richness and playtime.

We've had enough people finish the game from start to end now. We can finally say how big the game is. And Disco Elysium is, in every sense of the word, a huge game. It's bigger than *giant* and (a little) smaller than *gargantuan*, so I would say it is about colossus-sized.



So -- a colossal game.

How long is a colossal game? Well, it takes 60+ hours of continuous playtime to finish Disco Elysium if you're a reasonably completionist player, as I am. It takes 90 hours if you're absolutely savouring every detail. And 30 hours if you're rushing it. Back-of-the-box, I would put playtime at: 60+ hours.

Map-wise, Disco Elysium takes place in one city district - Martinaise, in the city of Revachol. Martinaise is divided into five major areas - call them biomes if you like. Video game people love biomes:


  1. Martinaise proper, comprised of modern, renovated buildings. A dilapidated cityscape.
  2. The Industrial Harbour. Big machinery and containers upon containers of goods.
  3. The wild, abandoned urban coastline, full of ruins from a long lost Revolution.
  4. A plethora of underground areas meant to be explored with your flashlight.
  5. And a fifth area that I won't reveal here.
All four non-underground areas are one seamless, isometric open world that you can approach in any order.

The world is about the size of Planescape: Torment. Or a sizeable chunk of the first Pillars. A sizeable chunk of Fallout: New Vegas... But the resolution - the level of detail, content density - of these areas is, I would say, about 5 times denser than any RPG I've played. Disco Elysium is a detective game and thus you have to be able to put it under a magnifying glass. Any part of it. Every apartment, hallway, street corner, lamp, or even trashcan needs story, writing, details and interactivity that, to me, exceeds even the most detail-oriented adventure games.

None of these areas reuse assets or look the same like games that are asset-assembled do. Sure, people have the same radio every now and then, every little room is 100% unique when it comes to layout and art. And music, too.

There are four major weather states - snow, rain, mist and clear. And four times of day - morning, day, evening, night. These all combine to make an unpredictable, moody city where time moves in a very realistic manner. Getting through one day is a massive thing. Shadows fall. Sodium lights flicker. The music changes. Tomorrow brings new NPC's to old locations, as the world changes each day. It takes about one real life day to complete one in-world day, if you're being meticulous.

[...]
Click to expand...
Thanks GabrielMP_19!

More information.
 
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90 hours is not colossal. DOUBLE that and I still wouldn't call it colossal! Detailed, maybe.
 
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Depends on tastes I guess, for example Resident Evil remake audience believe anything that lasts more than one afternoon - colosal. ;)
 
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Well, according to what I read it should depend a lot on what do you want to be. So you probably cant see whole 90+ hours content in one playthrough.
Anyway after Sinking City its another detective game in open world-like city but this time there should be more options.


BTW there is said that your skills are like "other minds" to you! Like you are a schizophrenic talking to your skills:

 
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Hmm. I really thought this was to be the sort of game that one could play in 15, maybe 20 hours, but with promises of a high level of replayability. I'm a slow player, no doubt about it. So we'll see. If anyone gets 60+ hours in one playthrough out of this, it'll probably be me. Assuming it's good enough to hold my interest in the first place, of course, but it certainly looks like it has that potential.
 
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Stygian, which releases tomorrow, only has about 15h of game time. I'll probably won't buy it on release because of this.
 
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DarkELVES said:
Stygian, which releases tomorrow, only has about 15h of game time. I'll probably won't buy it on release because of this.
Click to expand...

Source?

*Edit* Nevermind. I just saw the developer's post where he mentions that. Yeah, that is a little disappointing especially for a game with TB combat.
 
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Considering its debut project of indie developer, 90+ sounds pretty colossal to me.
Really looking forward to this.
 
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I have big expectation from this game. I hope it does not disappoint.
 
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you said:
It is not the quantity but the quality…..
Click to expand...

For me, this becomes more true, the older I get. I appreciate a game that can give me a compelling experience in 20 or 30 hours. Too many other interesting things to spend my time on... and with so many more cool games these days then 20 or 30 years ago, I don't want (or need) to play games for 50, 100 or 200 hours anymore. My queue is getting bigger, not smaller, and I want to try all those games.
 
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Ninety hours is plenty enough meat for me. Actually, anything fifty hours plus will satiate this guy. Quality is also important, and yes, ranks higher for me than actual time necessary to complete the game. It's hard to judge the quality until you play the game, so that will be the litmus for me.
 
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Considering this game does not have lots of trash combat (or any combat in a standard meaning of that word) I wonder how are they filling even 60h of playtime.
Is this 60h of reading? is part of that solving riddles? Slowly walking from one place to another? Watching long cutscenes?
 
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SSIGuy said:
For me, this becomes more true, the older I get. I appreciate a game that can give me a compelling experience in 20 or 30 hours. Too many other interesting things to spend my time on… and with so many more cool games these days then 20 or 30 years ago, I don't want (or need) to play games for 50, 100 or 200 hours anymore. My queue is getting bigger, not smaller, and I want to try all those games.
Click to expand...

I've never associated length to quality and never have I even thought about whether I'd prefer quality over quantity as a result of that. If I like a game then I don't care how long it goes on for, unless it loses 'consistency' in the later stages, to which only then would the point be made that it was too long for it's own good, but even here this can happen in a 10 hour game as much as a 100 hour game.

How long is a piece of string.

The thing about RPGs is that they are usually long, relatively speaking, because in a very short game, relatively speaking, you wont have enough time to build a character. At least, enough time to get into building a character. Hence the RPG genre tends towards epic scenarios. And therefore epic length.

It's not a cliché, it's not a check-list requirement, it's not a matter of sacrificing quality for quantity, it's a matter of when people make RPGs they naturally just end up making something epic, whether that was the original vision or not, because the whole basis of the genre is to… slowly build a character, or, preferably, characters.

Hence why I'm even replying to you. Careful what you wish for. Make 'short games' en-vogue… make the RPG genre poorer, inherently.
 
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lackblogger said:
Hence why I'm even replying to you. Careful what you wish for. Make 'short games' en-vogue… make the RPG genre poorer, inherently.
Click to expand...

Absolutely not true. Just like your point that equating length to quality does not make sense, so too it does not make sense in your last point that shorter RPGs equates poorer ones.

Anecdotally, I can name a lot of RPGs who are favourites of mine where my playtime has been short - and they still told a great story with awesome character development.

And looking at various mediums in general... a 200 page novel can deliver an incredibly rich story, etc just like a 900 page one can. A 2 hour movie can do the same compared to 5 seasons of a TV show, etc. So, as your point goes that length does not equate quality - you're right. So making the point that shorter means poorer doesn't hold water.

So yeah, I continue to wish for shorter RPGs, where the developers tell great stories without the need to pad out the experience.
 
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I think the problem RPGs have is that they ask you to invest heavily in a character or party, and if you're enjoying building that character/party you end up wanting more, More, MORE!

As I get older, I prefer shorter games that I can finish. Also, there seem to be a lot more games now then there were historically, so I struggle to play everything. Shorter = Faster to Finish = Play More Games.

These two things conflict with each other - you want MORE of a good game, but you want to play MORE games too. Not easy to solve.

Other genres can use multiplayer as a crutch (FPS, RTS) if the single player content is a bit skimpy. Call of Duty seems to have made an art of this! RPGs don't tend to do multiplayer, so the only way to give you "More" is to make the game longer, or expect you to replay with different builds.

I recently had this with Operencia - first time in (forever) that I've immediately replayed a game. It basically left me wanting a few more levels, and so I had to replay it with a different party build. Not ideal, because it is re-doing the same old content, but equally I might not have finished it if it was significantly longer.

Conversely, I'm doing Bard's Tale 4 right now, and after about 30-40hr, it's a bit of a slog. I'm not sure how close I am to finishing (I guess about 2/3 maybe) but the puzzles and content seem artificially lengthy.

I am not sure there's a good answer, really.
 
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Irien said:
I think the problem RPGs have is that they ask you to invest heavily in a character or party, and if you're enjoying building that character/party you end up wanting more, More, MORE!
Click to expand...

And there's the reason I keep questioning these kind of posts. You start off by saying there's a problem, and then it turns out there isn't a problem, at least not with the genre and the genre's routines, but instead a problem with you and how you approach a game via your own personal situation and tastes. Your post details why you personally have come to prefer shorter games, but your post doesn't say why it's a problem generally, which, if it is just a you thing then it's not a problem and I have no idea why 'so many' people like to phrase the topic in such a damaging way.

And I wouldn't bother making a counter-issue out of these posts if it wasn't something I could see as a growing problem in the forum communities.
 
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