T w e n t y S i d e d

Around 13 minutes or so, we meet an NPC asking us to look into the disappearance of his son. It’s the voice of Neil Ross, who to me will always be the voice of the Narrator in the Leisure Suit Larry games. I associate this voice with innuendo, sarcasm, and dick jokes. It’s very strange to hear this voice talking for three whole minutes and not making one joke about screwing.

Speaking off-the-cuff, I commented in this episode that in KOTOR, the introduction zones of Endar Spire + Taris + Dantooine would be as long as all of Mass Effect 1. And then today I started wondering how far off / reasonable / hyperbolic that guess was.

By the end of this week we’ll be on episode 21, and (spoiler) we’re going to be on Dantooine until nearly the very end. If we estimate episodes are about 25 minutes longSometimes we run long, but then subtract a couple of minutes for the credits at the end of each episode. For the purposes of simplicity, I’m going to call it a wash. then Josh will finally get to the main “open” part of the game around the 8.75 hour mark.

Spoiler Warning season one is embarrassing in its crudeness and I never encourage people to watch it, but that clocks in at around 11 hours.

So maybe I was overstating things? Except, we’ve been skipping quite a bit of content here in KOTOR. We skipped the ages-long dialog-based crime solver quest. We skipped the Romeo and Juliet thing where you have to storm some guy’s house, which is a huge maze of mines and killer robots for some reason. We skipped all but the first of the arena fights. We only played one round of Pazzak. I think we only did one of several bounties.

On the other hand, we did a good bit of optional side content in Mass Effect 1. The idea of “side content” is somewhat nebulously defined, so it would probably be hard to get a proper apples-to-apples comparison that everyone could agree on. But still, I think my statement isn’t nearly as ridiculous as it sounded at first.

On the other hand, according to How Long to Beat, the Mass Effect main story (no extras) takes around 17 hours. The fastest time on the site was 12, about an hour longer than the Spoiler Warning play through, which included side content like the Moon. Also, Josh and Randy didn’t skip dialog, and most players skip at least some of it. So I dunno.

At any rate, they don’t make ’em like they used to.

Except for Witcher 3, in which case they make ’em like they used to, only moreso.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I know I already covered this in my Mass Effect series, but if you missed it for whatever reason, I think the structure of Mass Effect and KOTOR have a lot in common:

You have a brief section aboard the (Endar Spire / Normandy) followed by the tutorial area on (Taris / Eden Prime), which is destroyed by (Saren / Malak) to establish the villain. Then you go to (Dantooine / Citadel) and talk to (The Council / The Council). They scorn you at first, but after some quests they agree to make you a (Jedi / Spectre) and send you in search of (The Conduit / Star Map). You get the (Normandy / Ebon Hawk) to hop around to a few different planets and pick up new teammates. Each planet tells a self-contained story, which then leads back into the main plot at the very end. You share a series of visions with (Bastila / Liara) that do a little mystery exposition and foreshadowing. Once you finish the next-to-last planet, you have the stakes-raising chokepoint mission on (Leviathan / Virmire) where one of your companions is (captured / killed). Then you go to the hidden mystery world of (Rakata / Iilos) where the BIG SECRETS ARE REVEALED, which leads to the final battle on the (Star Forge / Citadel).

Man, I’m loving this season. I know we’re not doing a lot of analysis, but it’s so fun to just joke about this game. It’s this perfect blend of earnestness, enthusiasm, quirky retro charm, odd mechanics, and that classic STAR WARS feel.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.