Techland, developer of Dying Light 2: Stay Human, put out a rather, er, interesting tweet over the weekend. To complete Dying Light 2, it’s going to take 500 hours.
Let’s put 500 hours into context. That’s almost 21 full days, with no breaks for food, drink, sleeping or peeing. Three full weeks. Three quarters of a month. It’s 50 full 10-hour shifts without a lunch break which, if we factor in weekends, is about two months.
That’s an alarming amount of time. To be clear, Techland did clarify that this is to 100% complete the game, not to finish to the point of seeing the credits roll. But many of us like to engage with everything a game has to offer; side content, achievements and all. Are we going to want to engage with 500 hours worth of that stuff, however? It’s a hell no from me.
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Now, there probably is a handful of games I’ve put 500 hours or more into, albeit over a long – very long – period of time. I haven’t counted, but I’ve probably put well over 500 hours into Diablo 3. But that came out in 2012, and I’ve played and replayed it on several different consoles in that time. I might have even sniffed somewhere near that mark in Borderlands 2, a game that consumed my life before GameSpew existed and I was free to play the same game for weeks and months on end. There aren’t many others, however. A few may have reached the heady heights of 100 or so hours, but typically I tire of them around that point. Apologies to my Animal Crossing islanders who must be fretting about my year-long absence.
I’m certainly not alone, either. Yes, there are some gamers who’ll gleefully pour thousands of hours into their MMO game of choice. But for many of us – particularly those of us over a certain age, with work and life commitments that stop us playing video games for 18 hours a day – the idea of having to put 500 hours into one game simply fills us with dread.
Of course, Techland isn’t saying that anyone needs to play Dying Light 2 for 500 hours. But its tweet, which you can see below, was rather boastful about its completion time. We’re long beyond the point of total play time equalling a game’s value, particularly when the tasks that Dying Light 2: Stay Human will expect from you over 500 hours will undoubtedly be repetitive and arbitrary.
As Chris wrote in his news piece earlier today, Techland has hinted that the game will have multiple endings. And so that 500 hour playtime undoubtedly means playing through Dying Light 2‘s story and sidequests – something that Techland still reckons will take most players 80+ hours, and even that is not something to be sniffed at – multiple times.
Maybe over the period of several years that’s something I could see myself doing. Provided that Dying Light 2: Stay Human is an enjoyable experience, of course, which we won’t know for sure until it releases next month. I’m hopeful it will be, and I’m looking forward to playing it. But my time with the game will be far less than 500 hours, as will most people’s. Sorry, Techland.
More on Dying Light 2:
Source: https://www.gamespew.com/2022/01/dying-light-2-500-hours/
