I played all of those games and beat them relatively quickly as an adolescent. I can't say I really play linear games more than once. They were linear and in regards to those games who had weapons and power, it was literally just obtain the best weapons and abilities and screw the rest. Yeah, you could dick around but when it came to having to put in work, you knew which weapons and abilities you had to use. Yeah, they were great games because they captured the imagination. But if you honestly put more than 100 hours into Kingdom Hearts, I don't know what to say. Congrats that you're a slow game player? That game wasn't very hard. Even Sephiroth isn't as difficult as everyone makes him out to be. And isn't the whole Jak series one big continuing storyline? Pretty sure that fits the very definition of DLC. But they put it on disc, so it doesn't count right? Couldn't possibly count. And God of War is basically Kratos finding another God to kick the hell out of because they made him angry. Still, sounds like more continuing DLC except it's not because its on disc. Which is TOTALLY different. I remember playing THUG 1 & 2. I literally beat them the same day they came out. The only replayability they had was designing your own parks to do the same tricks over and over in a slightly different way. To date, there are very few games I've put more than 100 hours into: Shadow Hearts series Mass Effect series World of Wacraft Skyrim Elder Scrolls Online (possibly) Old School Runescape Destiny 1 & 2 Overwatch Modern Warfare 2 Final Fantasy 10 Final Fantasy Tactics Only 3 of those are what you'd call solely linear. Unless you count Destiny. And of those three, only Tactics and FFX offer anything in terms of real build and customization options. You could beat the game using tons of different builds. There were optimal builds, sure, but you could let your imagination run wild in those games. The rest would be absolutely shit out of luck if they didn't add new content. The biggest problem online games face is that gamers want tons of content like in many offline PvE games that didn't really exist to begin with. Yeah sure, many offline games have large maps, but that's really it. Very few offer a gazillion quests. And those that do suffer from very repetitive or monotonous quest quality. I mean, have you played Skyrim? I have. I have over little over 200 hours. I quested the entire base game as well as the DLCs AND I didn't need the book glitch to max all my skills. Majority of those quests were just sending you on a murder run. I wouldn't call that crazy content. So no, I can't say I remember when older games had tons of base content when I was younger. Nor can I say I put hundreds upon hundreds of hours into them. I'm not trying to be a douche, but don't act like something existed when it didn't. We only played those games because we were kids and almost anything captivated us. Games have always been short. You just don't notice it until you've gotten older.