In a Q&A with Arkane Studios‘ Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio it was revealed their forthcoming game, Dishonored, will take around 12-14 hours to complete. Though the game features a hub and spoke game world, with some opportunities for exploration, they say that about 12 hours is the average completion time for Dishonored‘s core campaign.
These days a lot of attention is paid not just towards the content contained within a major publisher’s release, but also the length of that play experience. While Dishonored might take a player who works at a breakneck pace 12 hours to complete, those who like to eavesdrop and adventure could take up to double that time to complete the game.
Harvey Smith took to Twitter to stress that 12 hours is only the bare minimum playtime required to complete the game, and is only possible without any of the exploration inherent to a game like this. Even a 12-hour experience, though, should be commended in a time when the market is dominated by 8-10 hour games. It’s a far stretch from the completion time required for publisher Bethesda‘s other titles, like Skyrim, but 12 hours is nonetheless a respectable run time.
Our live demo of the game at E3 2012 showed two completely different ways to approach a small segment of a single mission – one stealth and one aggressive – which should factor into the completion time considerably. The stealth playthrough, for example, required a much more measured approach – listening in on conversations and avoiding enemy choke points – and will therefore be a little more time consuming.
Given the amount of variation possible with the six active and four passive powers available in the game, it’s entirely feasible that a player could breeze through Dishonored in 12 hours and then fire up the game, have a completely different experience, and log another 12 hours. It’s hard to believe it, but the game is just that varied.
Regardless of playtime, Dishonored will be one of the more unique gameplay experiences released during this very crowded Fall season. While the new IP draws inspiration from BioShock, Deus Ex, and Half-Life, it is an entirely different entity, and one to keep an eye on.
What do you think of Dishonored‘s completion time of between 12 and 14 hours? Does anything less than 20 hours feel unworthy of the $60 price tag?
Dishonored releases October 9, 2012 for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
Source: Bethesda Blog
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Sweet i luv wen a game takes awhile ta bbeat
great another one of those 1 week completion time games (i have a life and dont spend more then 2hrs a day on average playing games (if at all)).
when are people going to start making more lengthy sp games, i just hate it when the cater to kids with short attention spams that cant play the one game for over a few weeks or months. this is the 2nd worst thing next to the addition of pointless mp to games just to appeal to preb d***heads >:(
this wont reallt effect me anyways b/c i will be occupied with lengthier games such as borderlands 2 and far cry 3
For a brand new IP this isn’t bad at all for campaign length, especially seeing as it has high replayability. I think comparing this to borderlands 2 is a little unfair to. The 12 hours of this campaign should be full of non-stop great story whereas as fun as borderlands 2 will be (I still play the original) it will have many side quests being go from point A to B killing 20 of enemy X
Games need to have a lot of content and enough material to make the price of the game well worth the investment. 12 hours is a respectable time considering alternate paths to completion adding to re-playability. I very much love games with replay value and lengthy content, however; until developers really start listening to gamers and focusing more on quality story and game-play instead of graphics, multi-player, and DLC , we are going to be stuck in a hellish nightmare world where the only joy we get out of gaming comes from nostalgic conversation.
since when did 12 hr become respectable? i dont understand why i pay 60$ to play for a week and get rid of it? i reamber when games where 24+hrs and they where considered short. blah!!
The same reason you pay 8 euros to see a movie for that lasts 1.30 hours and has no resell value. With the same money you can watch 6 movies which sum up to 9 hours and have not replayability or resell value and you never get an actual product in your hands. I believe that 40 (pc prices) to 60 (console prices) are VERY OK for so good games. On the other hand if we are talking about another call of duty…then yes i agree with you