And it still has way more story than any of the other Dooms. A lot of the story comes from environmental storytelling and all the audio logs and video discs. It actual gets quite interesting once you get to the archaeological dig sites.

Anyway, it's interesting how some people complain that games are too short, while others complain that they are too long.

Oh I've complained in both directions! It's all about the pacing and quality of what it there. When things are dragging and not being fun or high quality (or is just grindy), it's pretty easy to get too long. When something doles things out at a good pace and it's a blast the entire time, it's easy to see it as too short.

I mostly disagree. Both maps are beautiful and I liked exploring more of the world. Only real problem is when it launched, the game stopped loading saves after a certain percentage, so you absolutely had to speed through it if you wanted to complete it. Otherwise, I just savored the game at my own pace exploring the world and getting into shootouts.

Now, a game going on for far longer than it should have is probably Resident Evil 4 (original). Third act really felt like a stretch. Was it bad? Certainly not, it kept adding to the game. But more isn't always better and thematically it felt tacked on. Ooh, spooky village! Ooh, spooky castle! Ooh, spooky... military base? What?

Reminds me of Wizardry Gaiden 4. At the start, there are 3 towers, each with multiple NPCs and multiple puzzles that can sometimes be skipped through various means, like killing an NPC. I even was able to get an NPC to give me a quest item by casting this game's version of Charm on them.

But then, after those dungeons, there are no more NPCs; furthermore, the next dungeon has a Rubic's Cube puzzle that can't be skipped. While that dungeon finally has stronger enemies, you then get to the final dungeon, where the enemies don't get as strong (though there is a nice plot twist, at least).

That's a great example. The first act on it's own could be one of my favorite RPGs of all time, it's a fantastic setting and I had tremendous fun with everything, much more so than any of the Infinity Engine games... and then there's the rest of the game. It's all just like you said. I never even finished the game, sadly. There is a brief episode when it picks up a bit later on, I don't remember it too well, but I think it's some town in a snowy mountain-y area, where tehre again is a bit more story and roleplaying than just combat, but it's much too little. Other than that it's just grindy, un-fun combat. And indeed, as a magic user I was completely screwed, it was almost unplayable.

Still, that first act is more than worth buying the game on sale, if anyone is wondering. I wish it would get a remake, or a sequel that would take full advantage of the setting.

Lionheart also opens up the dialog and plot a bit more at the end. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "plot twist", but its obvious the developers did they best they could under the circumstances they were placed in and provided what feels like a rough-draft for what the ending could have been. It at least ties up the "plot" and is more than just "bad guy dies, blood spurts everywhere". But it's sad because you get a glimpse of the potential the plot could have had if it was just given enough time to be fully developed.

I've noticed this often happens with incremental games. Candy Box 2 is perhaps too short (once you get past the time wall of a few minutes at the start), while The Prestige Tree Rewritten drags on once you get to the 4th row.

Pretty common phenomenon. Gothic 1&2, Risen, Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines...all are frontloaded with the good stuff, the quests with choices and use of skills, the interesting characters, the interactions with different factions...and all devolve into grindy combat orgies that go on for far too long in their last third or so.
There's also the blatantly unfinished stuff like Knights of the old republic 2 where the ending section is obviously incomplete (though much of the game before is quite playable and enjoyable).

If Gothic is frontloaded with the good stuff, I shudder to even imagine what it's like later :D

It's kinda sad in KotOR 2, it's absolutely hilarious in LotR: The Third Age, where after the Battle of Pelennor Fields the game seems to sort of... run out of itself. Aragorn talks to the player with audio blatantly, awkwardly copy-pasted from the movie and then... BAM! with no transition at all you're suddenly on top of Barad-dur, having a fist fight with the Eye of Sauron. It's all so awkward and goofy I couldn't even be mad at it.

Gothic 1 in its 2nd half or last third devolves into absolutely tedious dungeon crawling (iirc including demented puzzles where you have to hit switches with arrows, even if your character normally doesn't use a bow) with endless combat. Which was just painful for me, since I never mastered the melee combat system.
I liked Gothic 2 much better and still think it does a lot of things right as an open world exploration game. But the ending section is also pretty underwhelming, and I felt strangely empty after finishing it (in a "That's it? What a lame finale, why did I waste so much time for this" way).
Can't comment on the LotR game, I only played those Interplay titles from the early 1990s (where only the first two games ever got made; still would like to see them on Gog though).

BG3 is still actively bugfixed and expanded and there will be most likely what Larian calls a "definite edition" in the end, when they're fully happy with the game.

Not really ? The best quests are towards the end ... only the final sections are suddenly combat, combat, combat, and nothing else.

Same here.

BG3 is downright aggressively successful, especially considering its a round based game for geeks.

Dont think they'll lose the license either, never heard that of any D&D game before. Dunno how that went with that Pathfinder game, I never played those.

Some content is interchangeable. The devs might need 5 towns worth of quests, write them, and them swap the best-written ones to the early towns.

Games that start out fun but then turns into slogs... that would be quite the list but a couple of extra sore examples would be Horizon Forbidden West, Borderlands 3 (every Borderlands-game is identical to the last one but BL3 is 10 times bigger than previous games so the boring part is 10 times longer) and Cloudpunk.