It’s quite nice, actually. Not all work on a game is equally worthwhile. Lots of my favorite franchises have devolved into games that grew larger to their own detriment. It doesn’t often happen that one of these types of games scales back down. And it’s not like there are zero big games that I like; Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3 are both 100+ hour games that are some of my favorites of all time! But unlike a lot of big games, they actually felt like there was something interesting to see for that full runtime, whereas a lot of big games actively harm their pacing by filling it with uninteresting bloat.