Hours of Content vs. Systemic Depth

Design

I keep seeing marketing pushes where the main selling point is a 100+ hour campaign. On paper, that looks like value for money. In practice, it usually means the developers added a bunch of repetitive chores to pad the runtime. It is like when a municipal project is judged by the number of miles paved instead of whether the traffic actually flows better. When a game focuses on a checklist of icons on a map, the systems usually suffer. You get a world that is wide but shallow. I would rather have 20 hours of interlocking systems where my choices create unscripted moments than 100 hours of collecting herbs or clearing identical outposts. The first approach gives the player agency; the second is just a second job. We talk a lot about value, but we should be talking about density. If a game is long just because it is bloated, that is not a feature. It is a design failure. What is a game you have played where the systems actually rewarded your curiosity more than a quest marker did, or conversely, one where the filler killed the experience for you?