The content bar was set much higher by RE4 - Resident Evil Village Review

[ZyroXZ2]

TruckOSaurus said:

I'm happy I'm not the only one the game tricked into selling ingredients before the kitchen unlocks.

Omg, I know! I said it calmly in the review, but I was so pissed when I had already sold about 5 fish and several meats... UGH!!!

method114 said:

ZyroXZ2 said:

While it's true most RE games clock in on the shorter side, we DO need to hold devs to higher standards, or in this case, at least RE4.  Apparently, a lot of the game was influenced by RE4 except one of the most exceptional parts: content.  However, RE5 and RE6 were both quite a bit longer, as I think RE5 was about 14 hours, and RE6 was about 17 hours.  You can look all this stuff up, though, lol

Having said that, RE8 summarily comes in on the short side, even though there are shorter RE experiences.  But this is 2021, we should expect our devs to be able to craft more detailed experiences considering the massively improved tech that is available.  When a car went 0-60 in 6 seconds 30 years ago, that was "fast".  Now, that's "slow".  The times change, and one has to consider that many other games costing the same amount provide far longer experiences or offer much more content.  The "not every game has to be long" rhetoric is mostly coming from Sony fanboys who are trying to justify Sony's push for $70 games.

I actually prefer RE games to be on the shorter side. People have this obsession with long games but I would prefer some games to be shorter. Now there is an argument to be made for not charging $60 for these shorter games and that I think is more reasonable. $45 I think would be more reasonable. Honestly I always wait for a sale on RE games (except RE2 remake) so maybe that's why I'm more ok with it than others.

I think "long" is all in how we perceive how far we've come and how much we get for our money.  JRPGs long held the crown for performance-per-dollar even with grindy quests in the way, and created a "40 hour" golden mark expectation.  I think it's mostly the western gaming world that put more of their budget into other things like graphics and thus could not create/craft a long enough adventure after all that money/time had been spent.  Granted, I can easily tell when there is a focus on quality over quantity, and TLoU2 clocked in nearly 25 hours without any real use of filler which makes it quite an impressive feat with being so heavily story-focused.  Things like that make REVillage look relatively short and "light" on content by comparison even if someone wants to argue that there's mercenaries mode and new game+.