hen you buy a game, how often do you know, more or less, how long it will take to complete? Even if your purchase isn’t based on that knowledge, even if you don’t care whether a game is 10 hours long or 20 or 80, that information is still out there, often advertised, and it’s usually part of our understanding of a game as we sit down to play. As I’ve discussed before, even if you’re totally, absolutely ignorant of a game as you load it up for the first time, many games will still gladly inform you of how much progress you’ve made, and how much longer you can expect to be playing.
I can’t remember the last time I played a game that truly surprised me with its length. Very rarely do I play a game where, 10 hours in, I have no idea whether I’m almost done or only halfway. Either a game has a tight enough narrative arc that its impending conclusion can be seen from far away, or the game measures your completion, or the game adheres to genre expectations. Almost no modern game defies all of these points – which is why Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has been an unusual experience for me.
I know I’m about 13 years late to Symphony of the Night. It’s one of those Great Games that generally elicits the sort of “what, really?” response when you reveal that you’ve never played it. It’s also one of those great games that, in my experience, people bemoan the absence of these days. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, etc. And while SOTN, released in 1997, represents a lot of design sensibilities we don’t see much these days, what struck me most is the game’s apparent disregard for pacing and player knowledge.
SOTN, often held up as an epitome of exploration-based “Metroidvania” games, provides a classic “where do I go next?” style of gameplay. This alone can feel player-hostile compared to many games today. If you ever lose your direction or aren’t sure where to go, you can spend large chunks of time wandering aimlessly or tediously consulting your map. But at a more basic level, the game deliberately challenges player expectations by subverting the completion percentage found in so many games. The game is actually measured on a 200% completion scale, and as you approach the 100% mark, as you approach what pretends to be the end of the game, the fortress Castlevania flips upside down and you have to explore it all over again in a different form. If you weren’t expecting this (as I wasn’t), the game immediately doubles in scope.
Final Fantasy VI, another mid-90s classic, takes a similar turn. Halfway through the game, during a climactic showdown with the Big Bad Boss, you actually fail in your quest to save the world. The World of Balance, the setting of the first half, is transformed into the World of Ruin, where the second half takes place. Again, for the fresh-faced player in 1994 who hasn’t been bombarded by thrice-daily Kotaku updates about the game, Final Fantasy VI suddenly sprawls to an unexpected size.
Many of the most prominent games of the past few years – our Uncharteds, our Mario Galaxies, our Mass Effects, our Braids and BioShocks – follow a set path that may offer plot twists or other surprises, but rarely offer that sense of, “Just how big is this game?” Even a game like Dragon Age, which is truly massive, never surprised me with its pacing. I didn’t always know where the plot was heading, but I always had a sense of my place in the overall arc.
Have games lost that sense of exploration? As production budgets explode and games tell stories that follow a tighter narrative arc, as gamers grow up and no longer have the ability to invest an unknown amount of time in a title, as we become cannier consumers of the medium, will we see a return to games that don’t play so heavily into our expectations, and maybe even subvert them? This could be nostalgia talking, or maybe I’m beginning the slow descent in cranky gamerism, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played a new game and thought, “I don’t know how long this game is, I don’t know what my goals are, and I barely even know where I’m going.”
Video games possess the unique power to surprise players, to plop them in the middle of an empty field and say, “Now figure out where to go. I’ll let you know when you get there.” Most other media simply can’t disguise their length or form. A book can’t fake an ending, because we know, visually, how long a book is. Movies, assuming we aren’t aware of their runtime, can sometimes surprise us with a final chapter or a twisting denouement, but won’t suddenly double into a 6 hour epic. Games, however, operate on a scope that is unknown to the player until the game communicates that scope, and I wonder if games are too quick to do so these days.
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