Cyberpunk 2077 Beatable in Less Than 30 Hours Sounds Perfect

Cyberpunk 2077 drops in a few days and it seems like it’s getting some great reviews along with some more critical, un-scored reviews. I’m looking forward to give it a shot for myself but one thing that’s piqued my interest so far is the game’s length:

Less than 28 hours to beat the campaign? Sounds perfect to me. I like to joke with my friends that they should call me “Critical Path Carlos” because as far as games are concerned, I like them to respect my very limited time.

And that goes for any medium, really. I’m always more partial to movies that fit within a tight, concise 90 minute time frame — especially for pulpy, popcorn poppin’ adventures. Games, I know, can work on a different spectrum.

Game length is something that the internet denizens love to pore over and try to calculate a perfect time to dollar ratio; the higher bang for your $60-$70 buck the better. It’s a game’s only redeemable quality, you know? (That’s sarcasm, by the way.)

The perfect length for a game’s campaign, to me, would be between 8-12 hours. It’s usually found in smaller titles like Chronos — whose limitations were successfully mitigated by a shorter play time in my review — and for bigger titles, Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War holds the title for 2020’s shortest AAA campaign at 4-6 hours. And in that case, it’s mostly a matter of something needing to give when it’s offering you everything and the kitchen sink.

As far as RPGs are concerned, they are closer to 40 hours in length like my current Game of the Year ™: Final Fantasy VII Remake — which is the exception to the rule simply based on how good and enjoyable the gameplay was. But I would’ve been okay had it followed another favorite, The Outer Worlds, in delivering a 12 hour campaign and with plenty left to explore if I was so inclined.

Cyberpunk 2077 had me worried that it would be pushing the limits of my patience — especially since it’s a game that is more RPG than action. But given that I can expect the campaign itself to be less than 30 hours, I’ll be more than happy to take a trip to Night City.

If I like it enough, maybe I delve into some more of the side missions and stories. At the very least, I know I should be able get an epic feel from it without the length required to traverse it all.