Should We Miss 200 Hour Long RPGs?

If you ask any gamer over ~20 years old, chances are that one of their top games of all time is the Baldur's Gate series. The Bioware/Black Isle classic is known for its quality story that spanned an epic amount of gameplay time. Massive dungeons were crawled, dragons slain, castles liberated, and dark secrets uncovered. In particular, the copious sidequests available in chapter 2 of the second installment could easily drag the game out into months of marathon play sessions.

Sometimes, I miss getting that kind of value for my gaming dollar. I'm lucky to get 30-40 hours out of a modern RPG (maybe twice that if it has decent replay value).

This isn't to say that the modern RPG has somehow devolved. In exchange for shorter games, we've recieved vastly improved graphics, volumes more dialogue (and the associated character development), fights that aren't solved with "send in summoned creatures to burn up the enemy's good spells", and fully 3-D worlds that are much more interesting to explore. I certainly don't regret the money and time I spent on KotOR, NWN2, or Mass Effect.

But still, sometimes I'd be willing to ditch some of that for a middle ground of sorts: a good 70-80 hours with the same characters, in a deeper, more involved storyline.