It seems someone's now proven you can finish Polish studio CD Projekt Red's forthcoming life-gobbling simulation, otherwise known as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, in just 25 hours. Be still your beating hearts, all you stalwarts planning a semester off (or extended leave of absence from work) to lavish a reported 200 or more hours polishing off the full game the studio doubtless hopes we’ll play in its entirety.
That 25-hour figure must be robot-assembly-line math, a swaggering integer devoid of narrative context, thoughtful exploration, or much to do with diversionary raisons d'être (i.e. genuine enjoyment). I also assume we’re going to eventually see articles about exploits surface after the game's left dry dock: cheats or circuitous ways of playing that let a few proud souls boast of finishing these games in a few hours, because that’s something limit-pushers do.
But for the rest of us, myself included, The Witcher 3 feels like Leviathan peering over the horizon, a moon-sized planetoid quietly rounding the outer rim of the solar system, wheeling through vacuum with the gravitas of an extinction event headed straight for our living rooms. On the vanishing block: everything due for months thereafter.
200 hours isn't the far-flung playtime estimate, either. CD Projekt Red announced earlier this week that at least two expansions to the game are happening. One's a 10-hour-plus mystery arriving later this year, the other a 20-hour-plus trip to an entirely new region due in early 2016.
"We remember the time when add-on disks truly expanded games by delivering meaningful content," said CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiński in the press release. And I remember the time when add-ons felt like add-ons, not second and third dessert helpings after sumptuous umpteen-course meals.
Hey, I'm not complaining! I love The Witcher games, and my calendar's cleared for Wild Hunt. I'm just thinking about the sort of temporal hex that games like The Witcher 3 can place, if they're well made in the bargain, on everything in their vicinity. Imagine what the makers of the console versions of Farming Simulator 15---a woefully timed field-furrower that arrives the same day as The Witcher 3, May 19---must be feeling, about now.
I can't remember who first pointed out that it's a dwindling few who actually finish, much less see all of, sprawling games like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto V. But I'd wager it's still a majority that wants to know the sprawl's there, just the same, and just in case. We want far more than we consume, be it comfort food or comfortably colossal other-worlds.
