The Wonderful 101 is about 20 hours long
After much controversial discusson on just how long The Wonderful 101 will last, director Hideki Kamiya has said an average first play session could be about 20 hours.
"In the case of Wonderful 101, we really try to pack a lot of different ideas into it, and it got a lot bigger than I thought. And in fact we estimate that a normal play session would be 20 hours," Kamiya told Nintendo World Report.
"Personally I think that I kept piling stuff on and I realized 'Wow, this is going to be a pretty big game.'"
Kamiya's comments came up in the context of a bit of a scandal he caused on Twitter by saying that those who were after a long game wouldn't enjoy the Wii U title.
Elsewhere in the interview, Kamiya clarified what he meant by that; it's not that the game is short so much as that he planned it with a different kind of gamer in mind.
"Basically, with action games, like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, something that we really strive for is replayability. These are types of games that you get out of what you put into them, the play quality is really important," he said.
"So we estimate with some of these past games you get around maybe ten hours of play, but it's also the type of experience that you put in a lot of effort in designing so that you may get ten hours of play but its the kind of experience that you can play over and over. Like, you come home from school and once you get really good at it you can start getting through the game a little bit quicker and, you know, there's this constant sport of effort to outdo your last play sessions.
"So, we do pay attention to the length. It's something that I try to put in a lot of volume into it, but also reward players who are able to play it quicker and better, and so the experience of course in that case ends up shorter. But the focus on replayability has been something really strong, especially in Bayonetta and Wonderful 101, and even Resident Evil 2 so you could get it down to a two-hour play session."