The Mass Effect series is a series of role playing games, but the games themselves aren’t actually that long- each of them can be finished within 30 hours or so, and the cumulative play time for the average player across the entire trilogy can’t be too over 100 hours.
In one way, this may be one of the reasons for the games’ enduring popularity- they are lengthy and meaty, but they are decidedly not timesinks threatening tok take over a player’s life. On the other hand, for many, there may be a desire to spend more time in the fantastical world that Bioware inevitably ends up crafting.
That latter group of people will probably be happy with the newest tease made by Mass Effect Andromeda‘s Lead designer Ian Frazier, who, in response to a question by a fan on Twitter, suggested that the new game might take ‘significantly more days [than Mass Effect 3]’ to complete.
Of course, will this inevitable extra content in the game be meaningful, or will it be the style of padding and fluff that characterized Bioware’s last release, Dragon Age Inquisition? That remains to be seen for now. The ball is in your court, Bioware.