I took 140 hours to finish Assassin's Creed Shadows, but post-launch updates are making it harder than ever to feel satisfied by RPGs

We've all been there. You've made it to the end of a mammoth RPG like Assassin's Creed Shadows after a hundred-plus hours' hard work, and finally, you can rest. You sit back, shut your eyes, and let the end credits music wash over you as you revel in the fact that you have finished something. Then out of nowhere, the developer promises a host of updates – possibly a DLC or two – in a massive two-page roadmap spanning the next three years, and that sense of accomplishment drains away.

When I sit down to play a sprawling new game billed as an open world RPG, I know what I'm signing up for. RPGs are a commitment. Most take me well over 100 hours to complete, my record accomplishment being a 60-hour Baldur's Gate 3 save file that I stomped through while writing game guides. While I believe it's important to get the most for your money out of every huge, expensive RPG you purchase without it feeling like a hard-won slog, and while I too would feel a bit cheated by a super short, equally as expensive experience, it's my firm belief that you can have too much of a good thing – and that's why I flinch from single-player game roadmaps.

One and done

I'm here to set us all free by suggesting something wild. Single-player RPGs like Assassin's Creed Valhalla aren't exhausting because they're spatially huge and overly long at face value, as one Ubisoft developer suggests. They're exhausting because new content equals new renewed expectations to get back to a game you've long since uninstalled, and it robs me of ever feeling finished.

As someone who gets immense satisfaction out of playing, enjoying, and ultimately wrapping up a game, this sucks to high heaven. Post-launch content and updates for single player games seem to be everywhere in 2025, riffing off live service games like Fortnite to keep players engaged as long as they can by revitalizing interest over an extended period with shiny new everything.

But this is based on the assumption that people treat single player games the same as they do online co op games (hint: they do not), as well as the notion that we'll all still playing a given single-player game five months later. I'll be honest with you: I rarely do that unless we're talking about Resident Evil, Cyberpunk 2077, or my aforementioned darling Baldur's Gate 3. Most of the time, I'm a one and done kinda person.

This isn't me saying that I am racing through games just to show off about finishing them. My Steam library is a de facto purgatory of games left stuck in the liminal space between start and finish, a damning testament to my short attention span. If a game doesn't grip me in the first few hours, I'll happily leave it be. But if I am embarking on a huge RPG with full knowledge that it will take me at least two or three weeks of solid evenings spent dedicated to it, you best believe I'll expect the simple accomplishment of rolling credits and uninstalling that baby soon after. Call it an ADHD thing, but I think it's just a valuing-my-own-time thing.

Acceptance

I don't think it's wild to suggest that post-launch content is not for everyone. At the very least, my interest in it is variable. We all have our undying favorites we're bound to return to time and time again – I'm actually stoked for the new Cyberpunk 2077 2.3 update for example – but the vast majority of single-player games won't make the cut and I'm making the executive decision to making commitments I can't keep.

Another example: I'll be happy to jump into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's upcoming DLC eventually, but I've said the exact same thing about far too many games to count and have ended up neglecting those plans entirely. That doesn't mean I didn't like those games in the first place. It just means I've finished them and filed them away in my brain as fun, entertaining experiences that don't need to be anything else, and I got everything I want out of it by the time I finished.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla, as one of the biggest perpetrators of crimes against game-finishers everywhere, offers a brilliant base-game experience that I very much enjoyed seeing through to the end. If you had time to play all three DLCs and complete both the modern and historical storylines and get loads of mileage out of the roguelike mode, I am genuinely thrilled for you. I just know that could never be me.

RPGs aren't too big. The post-launch content is just too much. As I look upon everything to come in Assassin's Creed Shadows' roadmap, I keep reminding myself that it's ok if I don't want to take part. FOMO is a weird thing, and more often than not, the pressure to jump back into something and fold to expectation is coming mainly from myself rather than others.

If any of this rings true for you, hold my hands when I say this: it's okay to finish a game and let it be done. Games are supposed to be fun, not a chore, and the moment it feels otherwise is the moment I try to step away.

Here's all the upcoming PS5 games we're waiting for in 2025, as well as all the other new games you'll want to watch for if you're a PC or Xbox fan.