RPGs can be quite long, and just the thought of starting a new one ages me. I'm also getting gray hairs. Especially these days, with game length being wielded like a weapon by marketing teams, many games seem to be trying to get us to spend 100 hours on them. But Cyberpunk 2077 is not one of those games.

When I chatted with streamers Alanah Pearce, Deejay Knight, and Cohh Carnage after the last Night City Wire, senior quest designer Patrick K. Mills did not give specific numbers, but he did say that Cyberpunk 2077's main story is shorter than The Witcher 3's, he said. The full story can be found below (cheers, dat saucy).

"We know that the main storyline of Cyberpunk 2077 is slightly shorter than that of The Witcher 3, because many people complained that the main storyline of The Witcher 3 was too long. The indicators show that there are a great many people who played really far in that game but never made it to the end." We want people to see the whole story, so we kept the main story short, but we have a lot of work to do."

I spent about 120 hours on The Witcher 3, playing through the main story, DLC quests, and expansion content, but not to completion; according to How Long to Beat, the main story alone takes an average of 51.5 hours.

At least on Steam, only a quarter of all players play through to the credits. But if I had spent more than a decade on an epic RPG like "Cyberpunk" or "The Witcher," I would want a few more people to experience it in its entirety.

Game length is a poor way to measure the quality of a game, but if you're looking for something that will eat up all your time, Cyberpunk 2077 might still satisfy you. If you include side quests and exploration, it could be as long or longer than Geralt's adventure.

When I completed The Witcher 3, I wanted to do more, but in the five years since then, I have come to prefer shorter games because they are easier to fit into my life. Even if I spend an unhealthily long time in Night City, eating my way through everything, I appreciate the fact that I can finish it in less than 50 hours if I want to. I won't do it, but it's nice to have the option.