Are games giving us too much?

Dragon Age Inquisition surprised me in many ways, but my biggest surprise of all was that it actually gave me a greater appreciation for the oftly criticized second installment.

You see, that was a tight experience that still offered a shed-load of content, yet it knew its limits. It managed to get me to read everything and truly familiarize myself with Kirkwall, whereas I am finding myself skipping over things in Inquisition due to information overload. Don’t get me wrong, Inquisition is a better game in many ways, but one thing it doesn’t do is really get you to feel a sense of attachment to anywhere, even Skyhold. I’ve played the game a fuckton and I still don’t feel like I know my way around the game’s central hub. I find that truly bizarre.

Inquisition has overwhelmed me like no other game over the last few years. I’ve neglected a shelf full of quality 2014 releases because I’ve logged 150 hours and I am STILL not done. I STILL have side-things to do, I’ve barely even touched the multiplayer component but I’ve finally forced myself to just ‘get on with it’ and see it through to the end. Even Skyrim didn’t t suck me in for that long and I spent plenty of time making my way through that.

Are games giving us too much?

I feel that this makes a strong case against the padding out of games. To get the most out of your major titles these days, you’re really looking at investing at least 30/40 hours at minimum, whether it’s Assassin’s Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, GTA V, Sunset Overdrive…whatever. And because of that, we are finding ourselves pushing the story to one side because we want to clear an area or command every outpost or gather x amount of herbs.

I’m hugely into story and love a game that can grip me from start to finish, but I will freely admit that over the last few years my habits have changed dramatically because of the nature of today’s game. I feel a strange sense of embarrassment when I tell people ‘Hey, I finished this game, I really liked it.’ ‘Oh, really, then why do you only have 5% of trophies? You can’t have liked it that much….’ The best example of that was The Last Of Us. Play the base game through from start to finish, and you’ll have barely any accomplishments to show for it.

I appreciate that probably says more about me than anything else, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not getting my worth out of a game or I’m not showing my appreciation for it unless I’m investing the base length of time required to see everything it has to offer.

Perhaps Nintendo were right to ignore the system altogether, simply allowing you to play a game however you want.

Inquisition gets a lot of things right. Judging prisoners while sat on a throne produces some fascinating moral side-story dilemas and exploring your characters through their jaded backgrounds helps you to see things from their perspective, even setting your Inquisition on set-missions with their own little stories is a great way to earn things in the background as you play. But when you’re just running around filling requisitions or killing a mob because they looked at you funny, after about the fiftieth time, you can feel the fatigue really starting to set in. And Inquisition doesn’t always give you a real sense of justification or reason for playing that way. You could almost argue you’re playing it like an MMO half the time.

Scarily, that reality feels like a natural future for the story-driven RPGs I used to love. Jade Empire gave me just enough of everything and that game still firmly resides in my top twenty of all time. Mass Effect 1 and 2 are in the same boat. Even the original Dragon Age: Origins just about got the balance right, though the content for that started to get on the weighted side. But compared to that Bioware, this Bioware have taken the concept of bang for your buck and really beaten us over the head with it.

Inquisition is almost certain to receive some post-launch DLC and the multiplayer mode will naturally progress and evolve through patches, but while developers are enjoying giving us more and while we’re almost always happy to receive it, there comes a point when the player needs to feel like they can put the game down and move onto something else, satisfied that they got value for money, and that they’re not sacrificing their enjoyment because their game of the moment started becoming a slog.

Wouldn’t it actually be braver for a developer to say ‘You know what, this is enough content. This is value for money.’ and rubberstamp the thing. Maybe they need to properly heed the advice of dedicated Quality Assurance people and actually draw a line under things before the quality of the game starts to dilute.

For the record, Inquisition is likely my Game Of The Year 2014 – I say likely because I didn’t play enough of everything else to make a fair judgement just yet – it’s fantastic, but I can’t help feeling a little irked that my Christmas break was completely consumed by it considering I had a lot of gaming time available to me.

You can almost guarantee that any major release from Ubisoft these days offers you a fifty plus hour playthrough. I get that most things are optional and you don’t have to do anything, but with more background and story being attached to these little side-missions and trophies and achievements only unlocking once you’ve performed specific actions, people are naturally inspired to explore.

It offers incredible value for money, nobody can deny that. You could buy 22 Jump Street for £15 on Blu-Ray and have laughs for two hours, or you could spend £10 more and buy Alien Isolation which will last you an additional 20 hours and feel ten times more immersed in an experience. You can’t beat or argue with that, that is the true value of the video game.

With so many amazing titles releasing week on week, our gaming time is more precious than ever, and we want to fit in as many amazing experiences as we can. At the same time, we don’t want to feel burned as we have in the past, paying £60 for a game that lasts approximately half hour. If you lived in the SNES/Genesis era, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

With games like Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3 and Dying Light on the horizon, the prospects are exciting but you have to wonder if these amazing looking games are going to feel too weighted, just right or not quite enough. The challenge this industry faces from this point forward is understanding and recognising that balance. It’s time for developers to be more confident when calling time on a game without feeling the need to pile on the filler. Even the most die-hard fans who always want more will freely admit when they’ve had too much of a good thing.

Whether it finds that balance or completely ignores it, regardless, 2015 is going to be a very interesting year for gaming.