http://shoryuken.com/2012/07/01/persona-4-arena-director-kazuhisa-wada-confirms-a-30-40-hour-story-mode-for-the-console-release/

On the developers blog they stated that the story mode is 30-40 hours long and takes place after the events of persona 4, how nuts is that?

I remember BlazBlue having much longer storylines for characters than I ever expected from fighting games, so I can imagine the sum total of story hours for a similarly made kind of game to amount to that many hours.

Guilty Gear XX was about the same, if you account for almost every character having around three branching story paths, so I'm wondering if it'll be in that style, or the Mortal Kombat style of a single, linear narrative.

if its 30-40 hours of anime stills with just text box I'm gonna pass on this game.

@Undeadpool said:

I'm wondering if it'll be in that style, or the Mortal Kombat style of a single, linear narrative.

No, it's the BlazBlue style of each character having their own story mode with all of them being related. Don't know if they have branching paths, though.

@niamahai: If BB's story mode is anything to go by, prepare for stills. Granted, some of the writing in that game is pretty good and the Teach Me Ms. Lichi stuff is pretty funny.

But don't go expecting a whole ton of newly animated scenes, because you're not getting them.

God, that reminds me just how painful BB's prologue was.

@Undeadpool said:

Guilty Gear XX was about the same, if you account for almost every character having around three branching story paths, so I'm wondering if it'll be in that style, or the Mortal Kombat style of a single, linear narrative.

It's almost assuredly the branching arc stuff. That's how every ArcSys game has been to date.

@FluxWaveZ: I think it would be more likely than not that Arc System Works keeps branching paths in with one that's actually canon. Hopefully getting through the canon path doesn't require exhausting the branching paths, though, because I find it difficult to commit to that many hours of fighting games in one sitting.

For example, I could only get through Noel Vermillion's story path before having to put down BlazBlue for a while... maybe I should get back to that, though.

@Mesoian said:

But don't go expecting a whole ton of newly animated scenes, because you're not getting them.

I guess a "whole ton" is relative, but the story mode trailer obviously points to there being several:

@Mesoian said:

@niamahai: If BB's story mode is anything to go by, prepare for stills. Granted, some of the writing in that game is pretty good and the Teach Me Ms. Lichi stuff is pretty funny.

But don't go expecting a whole ton of newly animated scenes, because you're not getting them.

God, that reminds me just how painful BB's prologue was.

Atlus is in charge of the story, actually, so I don't think BB's story mode has any bearing on the P4A one besides the format.

@EquitasInvictus said:

@FluxWaveZ: I think it would be more likely than not that Arc System Works keeps branching paths in with one that's actually canon. Hopefully getting through the canon path doesn't require exhausting the branching paths, though, because I find it difficult to commit to that many hours of fighting games in one sitting.

For example, I could only get through Noel Vermillion's story path before having to put down BlazBlue for a while... maybe I should get back to that, though.

ASW isn't handling Persona 4 Arena's story mode; Atlus is, so whatever BlazBlue did isn't really an indication of how P4A will work.

@EquitasInvictus said:

@FluxWaveZ: I think it would be more likely than not that Arc System Works keeps branching paths in with one that's actually canon. Hopefully getting through the canon path doesn't require exhausting the branching paths, though, because I find it difficult to commit to that many hours of fighting games in one sitting.

For example, I could only get through Noel Vermillion's story path before having to put down BlazBlue for a while... maybe I should get back to that, though.

That's sort of the rough thing about robust fighting games. I know there's a lot to be said about getting the most out of your game and putting in as much content as possible, but there are certain characters that I just don't want to play. In GG, I loved playing Baiken, Faust, Anji and Zappa. I couldn't be fucked to play through anyone else's story, or even more, satisfy the super extreme limitations to keep a story on the path it's on or make it branch out. I wish there was a better way of handling that stuff (there is, but it's unlikely to ever find it's way into a game like this).

I quite like that visual novel style storytelling and I loved blazblue's story mode, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy this.

@Mesoian: @FluxWaveZ: Completely forgot Arc System is doing this, so yeah: silly question is silly.

@FluxWaveZ: I wasn't aware of this, that might certainly change the nature of the story mode. Hopefully they decided to deviate from Arc System Works' approach and just goes for one straightforward narrative, which would probably end up being miles better than a bunch of branching storylines with one canon.

Don't really play fighting games competitively but if the single player is this long and is well done I might buy it. At the very least I'll watch Chie's story sequence online.

Edit: PS: Totally Nuts

Seems consistent with what the European PR said. Hope it isn't terrible.

@Undeadpool

@Mesoian: @FluxWaveZ: Completely forgot Arc System is doing this, so yeah: silly question is silly.

That is nuts. Hopefully the story is actually good.

At least it's longer than I would have expected. Hope the story mode is done decently.

I can't wait ... to watch it on youtube.

Ewww, too long. Skipping all of it.

Ewww, too long. Skipping all of it.

@mutha3 said:

@Vade said:

Ewww, too long. Skipping all of it.

Or, you know, just play arcade mode.

Even worse! I'll stick to training mode.

Actually, I'm fine with all of that time. Still looking forward to the game, though.

I really hope this is better then the BlazBlue story mode. The story mode in that game was boring.

I really hope this has joke endings like BB. Really liked those.

I am sooooo okay with this.

I'm not a fan of fighting games but I love Persona 4. I feel bad for skipping this. /:

The story is the main reason I'm interested in the game (or rather, the characters are), so I hope it's quality. 30 to 40 hours seems like a pretty darn good length, it's more than I was expecting.

Sounds cool. I will probably not see all of it, but cool nonetheless.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

30-40 hours of story mode sounds amazing.

I get that it's based on an 80hr RPG game, which probably had the best story in a jrpg, but...
 
 
40hr story mode? There are only so many characters in the game, how many times are you going to have to fight the same characters again and again to get through that? It sounds way too long. Like. After the 15th time The story mode has found an excuse for me to fight Yukiko, maybe I don't need to fight Yukiko anymore. The AI is not going to be so adaptive and fun to fight that it'll feel worth it, because that just doesn't happen with fighting game ai.
 
 
 
Still really looking forward to the game though. Hopefully it's fun enough that the multiplayer is good.

@Ulong: You're making assumptions on how the story will work. Who's to say players won't spend more time outside of battles than not? If all a player wants to do is fight against the A.I., they can play arcade mode.

30 hours of story is great for games that are actually worth playing by yourself. One on one fighting games are not those games.