Prey 2 will take roughly 15 hours to complete if you bolt through the campaign without exploring or tackling any side quests, Human Head’s revealed.
Speaking during a chinwag with Eurogamer, project lead Chris Reinhart said the studio is aiming to craft a “strong, powerful single-player experience” and as a result opted to forgo any form of multiplayer component.
“We’re focused on making it a strong, powerful single-player experience,” said Reinhart. “And we’re tied with Bethesda, which has proven they are the masters of making awesome single-player experiences. It’s an interesting challenge. It makes us change some of the other things we do. The single-player game has to be larger. There’s more player choice. There’s more to do."
“We’re targeting, for the average player, at least around 15 hours to play through. But because there are so many open world activities you can do when you explore around and find different things, it’s hard to put an upper cap on it.
“I guess if someone were to haul ass, they might be able to get through it under that. But I could haul ass through many open world games and get through them in a handful of hours.”
Elsewhere, Reinhart expressed his desire to see more developers focus on the single-player side of things, and reckons that if multiplayer is part of the equation, it’s best for devs to channel their efforts into one or the other as not to potentially water down the overall package.
“It would be great if more people focused on single-player,” said Reinhart. “I love playing multiplayer. My big thing with that, if you’re not going to be able to beat or exceed Call of Duty, don’t do that kind of multiplayer, to be perfectly honest. If you’re going to do multiplayer, do something else that fits with your style of game, and something that’s going to be really fun, that’s going to get people to play together in this game.”
“The other thing is, I would want to make sure developers put their focus in the right place and area. Taking and watering down both single-player and multiplayer is not good for the developer. It’s not good for the publisher. It’s not good for the game player.
“It’s better to focus your energy on one or the other. If there’s a focus issue and you need to be able to focus on one, do that.”
Prey 2 is due out on PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360 in 2012.