It depends what you mean by "respect of our time". Really since there's been the popular dichotomy of playtime to $ invested by hour with the maximisation of these aspects, game devs and publishers in some cases have forced themselves into this trap of "easily" and cheaply made side content to affectively bloat and pad either their gigantic world maps and/or playtime by fear of the critics of being short games.
Essentially, I won't mind the matter of the bloat if not interacting with said bloat isn't gonna hamper the main game experience in much capacity.
Actually, there's plenty of good examples knowdays where the side content can be the most fun you can derive from an experience since it can be competently made and also add weight to either the main narrative or feedback into the gameplay loop meaningfully.
Also having a world design that's also worth exploring is something that's gotta be appreciated.
It's kinda why I personally really fell deep into the Xenoblade Chronicles series. The first game had a horrible side quests system(with neat ideas) for the most part. But Xenoblade X and Xenoblade 3 are prolly the among the few JRPGs in the landscape to actually make their side content and world exploration feel like an integral part of their experience instead of being a mandatory sets of mandates by executives oversees and such.
Funnily enough though, short RPGs can be just as engaging and engrossing than longer forms of them since having the possibility to encapsulate your whole experience into a "short" 20-30 hours experiences can be beneficial if the intention is to make the experience a concentration of one's game best elements without the need to add said amount of unnecessary fluff to the experience.
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