Personally i would prefer a much bigger game length but no replay value.

Many games insert random time-filler crap to boast the lenght of the game (planet scanning anyone?).

W2 has almost none. The only filler I found is the best I ever seen... the world is SO beautiful that I actually WALK around instead of running.

This. Damn, I miss shooting those probes in Witcher 2 :)

Hmmm .. I prolly take some 60-70 hours on my runs. After 5 full runs, it doesn't get any shorter too. At least on Insane diff. Aw well, it can get real short if you die! =P

But I guess that some plougher playing it on easy without doing any sidequests, skipping all dialogues, etc, could finish the game a lot faster than I do.

I actually try hard to delay end game the most I can, particularly when it is a grand game like this. And I will farm a lot for exp and loot, particularly mutagens, clearing areas many times, day and night, as stuff that appears in some are very different depending on the time of the day.

After 20 runs with DA:Origins, around 100 hrs each, and over 150 vids of it on YouTube, it really does not surprise me when someone comment, on many of my vids: (and they do, believe me. Bellow is just one I copie/pasted here, there are lots of them) I'd expect the same with TW2, only that I'm not bothering making that many vids so soon 'cause I'm too busy playing the fraking game! Not until my 10th Insane run is done, at least!

Yes, I do have a life but I do have lots of time to play my games and I am very OCD when it comes to completionism.

I love replay Value. For example I played Alpha Protocol over 4times to try all the possibilities and endings. And I still didn't discover everything. I love replay value, because if the game is longer but still same with no difference in the second playthrough I will soon get bored by it because there is nothing new to experience. Witcher 2 has awesome replay value for me.

It's admirable how much effort developers putted in to the game. Creating a whole different second chapter with different characters and quests, and some players could not even see that if they don't play the game at least twice. I think most of the reviewers played it only once, if they would play Vernon path and Iowreth path as well the reviews would be +5% higher on metacritic.

Witcher 2 is awesome. (But my english is not, so sorry :)

I loved every minute of TW2 but it is definitely to short for my liking. The game lacks one additional act. I wouldn't have any complaints if the third act wasn't so damn short.

How many hours did your first play through take? I finished the game in 3-4 days(can't remember exactly as i didn't sleep much in those days), the last day i played about 18-19 hours and the days before i played about 14-15 hours so it took about roughly 45-60 hours for me to finish the game in normal and i missed some of the side quests the first time i play which should take about an additional 3-5 hours for the first playthrough. I've played the game 2 times more from beginning to ending(which took about 30-35 hours to play if i am not mistaken), i also played the game at least 2 more times loading from a bit before Iorveth/Roche decision(both took between 20-25 hours if i am not mistaken) and playing them to the end and a several more times from later important decision points. So its safe to say that the game has high replay value, that i played it more than 100 hours and still am not bored to the point of not playing again in the next few months. Now i want you(as saying you i don't just refer to Summit but all of you) to tell me which game released in the past 5 years apart from the free world games like Elder Scrolls had more than 40-50 hours of singleplayer gameplay in first run and this high replay value?

Dragon Age Origins was very long (DA 2 is much worse for me didn't even played it to the end) but didn't had so strong replay value as Witcher 2.

Alpha Protocol had very good replay value, but it was short. SImply, Witcher 2 is a masterpiece.

I'm not sure how much time did i spent on my first playthrough. I only play 2-3 hours a day. All I know is that Witcher 1 was significantly longer then the sequel and was just about perfect for me lengthwise. TW2 third act feels extremely rushed. I would be content with less replayability, but longer story and more sidequests.

Risen was realased not long ago and felt a lot longer then TW2 despite linearity of the last chapter.

While I agree with you on the masterpiece part, you have no idea of what you missed if you only played Origins once. I have over 2,000 hours with Origins, abt 20 playthroughs and I can guarantee you, every time it was a new experience. Of course I never repeated the exact same party and the exact same path. And I have over 100 vids of Origins to show it.

This one alone would require at least 6 or more replays to have all possibilities seen in its entirety:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKvkzMfomoI

TW2 has the same potential since they're both masterspieces!

Your entire premise is invalid. I am in chapter one at about 17.5 hours nearing the end. That projects to be 35 - 40 hours, accounting for a shorter act three.

what made TW1 long was backtracking also the pace in TW1 it was more of investigating your own stuff and doing your own thing while in TW2 it's oh no! a girl was poisoned we need to cure her soon or she'll die oh no! your friend got kidnapped no time to loiter around doing sidequests

WOW ! I see that I will play Origins for next few days :) That Party combinations and dialogues are great, and Zevran + Oghren is hilarious :D.

Is it too short? Damn right it is. Of course I compare games to Baulder's Gate 2.

What gets to me is some try to justify a shorter game length. They say the audience is older have familes etc. True but a longer game of say 100 hours means it takes a month or two to finish it at reduced playing times instead of a couple of weeks.

To support my position that the game is short I will use what the developers have said. They say there are 16 different endings. Putting this many into the game means the developers want us to experince most of them. So they made the game shorter to do this. If the core game was 60 hours instead of the 15-20 that I think it really is, that would result in months of playing to see most of the endings. It was a trade off to them.

Finally, some have said you aren't playing the game unless you read each entry, every book, etc etc. I disagree. On a second playthrough I skip all that stuff and on the first playthrough I feel I don't have to spend time reading a paragraph about lore that I already know from the first game or from dialogue. As an example the book on wraiths. I only read the last sentence to confirm that my strategy for killing them was still valid. I don't have to read the first three paragraphs because I already know what a wraith is.