Shadows

 

The Red Sox comeback was on pause yesterday and the Bruins and Celtics aren't starting their playoff series until Sunday, so the Gaming Desk gets a word in today. Because video games are e-sports, right? 

We finally finished Assassins Creed: Shadows! It took me 250 hours, but I finally got to the end credits. That's the longest, by far, I spent in a single playthrough of any video game. I spent nearly 99 hours on Assassins Creed: Valhalla, a notoriously bloated game, and 100 hours on God of War. I completed Death Stranding in 150. On the other end of the scale, completing BioShock Infinite took me 15 hours, and I knocked off the indie game Everyone's Gone to the Rapture in 10 hours.  The closest I've spent to 250 hours in any video game was The Witcher 3 (274 hours), which I've played more times than I can recall.      

According to the Google AI bot, it should take approximately 35–40 hours to complete the Shadows main story, while side quests can add 15 to 30 hours. Significant time can be consumed customizing gear and clearing map content, with some players logging over 100 hours and those aiming for 100% can spend over 100–140 hours exploring the open world. 

So it took me over 100 hours more than most OCD completionists need to complete every main and side quest and to check off every achievement, and I haven't even downloaded the DLC. I'm not sure why it took me so long, as I didn't even complete everything. There are some "search" quests where you're supposed to find certain objects across the map, and I never fully completed some of those searches. For example, Mayu's Offering requires you to find 69 randomly located statues. I found a lot of them, most of them even, but not all 69. Even more frustrating, another quest requires you to find 10 assorted "valuable objects" - I found nine, and the effort it would take to retrace my route through the entire game to find the one object I missed is incalculable.   

I lost some time because I'm apparently a dumb ass with slow reflexes who kept getting myself  killed and had to start some castle sieges and battles over and over again, but I'm pretty damn confident I didn't spend 100 hours repeating those quests. 

I think the lost hours were most likely spent in just slowing down and enjoying the game's world. I spent a lot of time travelling, traversing the countryside on horse or on foot, rather than fast-travel teleporting across the map. A lot of time taking selfies in photo mode. Many hours fidgeting with equipment, trying out new armor or weapons, and upgrading said equipment. 

So, after two calendar months in real time and 250 hours of playtime, I finally got to the end, and what did I do? Why. immediately start a New Game Plus, of course! Now that I know what I'm doing and fully powered up (I finished the first game and started the new game at Level 61), let's see how long it takes to actually complete all of the game, including those missing statues and objects and all.