Approximately 60 hours, to be exact. Brady games, publishers of the Borderlands 2 official strategy guide, recently played though the entire campaign, and all side missions. It took them 58 hours to do so, and this fact was recently announced during a Destructoid.com live show.

A post was made about the matter on the official Gearbox forums, and a Gearbox employee confirmed the number.

http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showpost.php?p=2642116&postcount=60

Playtime will always vary depending on play style. Some may finish the game faster some may not.

The time that was quoted was how long it took Brady Games to get through all the main story and side missions on the first play through.

I guess that is a good indication that the guide will be nice and beefy

To add to that already crazy sounding length, keep in mind that this was the time for the FIRST playthough. Borderlands 2 will have at least a 2nd playthough option as a new game + feature, and developers have unofficially announced a possible 3rd playthough after that.

And that doesn't even cover all the fantastic DLC that will no doubt be released.

For reference, it took me over 30 hours to complete the original Borderlands, which included some co-op replaying of missions I'd already completed, but did not include a large number of side missions. By the time I put over 50 hours into the game (across two characters), I was knee-deep into my second playthough, and I was still only a level 38 out of 50. Borderlands 2 has been said to feature 60 experience levels, adding even more replay value.

This--along with the recently announced infinite upgrade system--is a good indication that once again, Borderlands will be one of the best values in gaming.

They're gonna need a bigger box to sell this game in just to provide more space for the long list of bullet points it'll have.

yeah no I get it....I'm gonna buy this game....stop telling me how awesome it's gonna be Randy....

Sounds like a big, fat fucking grind to me. Won't stop me from buying this bitch day one, but still, when I hear claims like this I have to wonder how watered down the pacing is going to be. This is not a Bethesda RPG. Without 50 different types of things to do at any given time, is killing enemies and buying/selling weapons fun enough to stretch a campaign out that long? Forget Bethesda RPG, this isn't even a Rockstar game. No offense to Gearbox whatsoever, but 58 hours of shooting things? Really?

This is good. If they can keep it interesting the entire way through, it will be loads better than the first game.

How many hours were spent collecting X amount of Y item?

And how many were spent throwing controllers around because after all the collecting you did none of it counts because the quest wasn't started yet?

Keep in mind that they played through the entire campaign, every single side mission, and were probably taking note of any and every good and bad strategy they could find because this is a strategy guide, so unless you're planning on doing the same thing this will probably take you less time. Hell, I'd bet you could drag 60 hours out of the original vanilla Borderlands if you took the time to do every single mission and take notes on anything you could about them.

It's still going to be an impressive length, I just think the average playthrough will involve a number of skipped side missions and less note-taking, knocking that number down to the ballpark of ~45 hours.

As long it stays interesting for solo players and provides a steady drip-feed of better loot, I'm in for the long haul. BL1 gave solo campaigners short shrift IMO.

Something everything I've seen/heard/read about Borderlands 2 makes it seem like the game Borderlands 1 was meant to be, which you would think would be obvious, given the "2" right there in the title, indicating it being a sequel to the first and supposedly better as a sequel ought to be, but I've played some sequels man... man, have I played some sequels.

I actually thought the first one was far, far too long. This isn't good news in my opinion.

@Chop said:

I actually thought the first one was far, far too long. This isn't good news in my opinion.

60 hours... I'll prolly be engaged by 20 of that. 60 hours is a long fucking time especially if you have a job and also don't play games for more than a few hours a night, frankly though when I do play for longer I don't want that much of the same game... should only brag about length if you actually can show it's all good stuff first, in other words brag about the length of a game after it's released and people are seeing it for themselves.

I'd bet my life that I'll finish Borderlands 2 and NOT spend even 40 hours with it... and I'm not some jerk that runs through video games 'just' to finish them.. I take the long road through games but I've never actually come close to the advertised lengths of most of these games. At most I've spent 100 hours in Skyrim... though an honest 20 hours of that is literally standing around testing mods, the rest of that is experiencing lack luster combat and story telling in a vast enthralling world.

@believer258 said:

Keep in mind that they played through the entire campaign, every single side mission, and were probably taking note of any and every good and bad strategy they could find because this is a strategy guide, so unless you're planning on doing the same thing this will probably take you less time.

There are two schools of thought about this.

1) They took notes and took their time to make sure they didn't miss anything.

2) A small team ran through the game as quickly as possible while another team took notes.

If it's the former, an actual playthough should take less time. If it's the latter, looking around a bit and exploring the scenery might actually mean a typical playthough could be over 60 hours.

At this point, it's hard to say. Either way, it's going to be a long game.

Considering I just recently clocked over 800 hours in Borderlands 1, this is especially good news to me. I maxed out all 4 characters and got every bonus skill point available from the DLCs and I still love playing this game! If the sequel is even half as good as it's hyped up to be I might never need to buy another game after this. Until Borderlands 3 anyway...

I really like the original Borderlands but I started to get bored with it sooner than I would have liked. I still haven't booted it back up and played the last DLC yet. Here is hoping they can keep it interesting for this supposed 58 hours.

Here's hoping they do it well. Conceptually I should've liked the the first one but just about everything was an incredible bore for me.

I'm hoping for even better replay-ability in terms of both difficulty, variety in the classes and their progression and variety in loot.