As a direct comparison? Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2. But pretty much everything Bioware up to Dragon Age Origins.

the companion back stories are rich, and full of tragedy.

The thing is, they’re mostly exposition dumped at you. All of them already went through the worst of it and tell you about it. To me, Larian fell in the old TTRPG trap of making up those elaborate grandiose backgrounds for your characters and expecting the other players to be impressed instead of writing the story of their adventures during the actual game.

I was there when Jaheira found Khalid’s corpse. I accompanied Nalia when she came back to a ruined home and a dead father. I broke Imoen out of the wizard’s asylum.

Karlach told me how bad the hells used to be and we proceeded to make a few trips to the blacksmith together. Wyll told me of his pact and his crazy adventures, the rest just happened to us at camp. Gale told me he banged a goddess and I got to make a persuasion check at the end. Astarion told me of the torture he suffered, and the resolution was done in 2 fights after we met zero vampires before the last room (BG2’s Bodhi and her lair were so much ahead of this it’s not even funny).

Shadowheart is the only one I felt had a story that I actually experienced with her and wasn’t just politely informed of. Oh, and Minthara, but the evil play through really got the short straw in any other way.

Larian’s writers can’t hold a candle to the Bioware of old.

I’m not. You are making that connection.

The sentence right after that one applies better to OP.

In my experience, game time estimates on boxes are similar to gas consumption of a car given by the manufacturer. Multiply by at least 1.5.

I am the person that loves long and complex games. If I have an upper limit for those qualities I have not found it yet, because it must be higher than those of all the players I’ve met.

So, I can’t really answer your question, but I think I can tell you why the rest of the table was pissed off, and maybe that will help you in some way.

You like a certain type of game, but it’s somewhat outside the mainstream, so it’s difficult to find a full group for it and gather them all at the table at the same time. You get excited, you finally get to play the game you have been itching for. You’re really having fun. Your strategy starts paying off. And then you don’t get to see it to completion because one person gets up and leaves. It might be weeks or months before you get another chance. You got your hopes up and then got left hanging. That sucks.

A similar situation is if you talked somebody into a game who didn’t want to play at first and just end up doing you a favor. In my experience, 9 times out of 10 they’re not going to have a good time, and they’ll drag the rest of the table down with them.

But here’s the kicker: After some painful lessons I know those things now. So I don’t nag people about playing with me anymore. I ask once, and then a no is a no. And I don’t invite people who I know have a short attention span to play long games with me. And I sure as hell don’t schedule a game night on a weekday where everybody needs to work tomorrow.

The person putting together the table has a responsibility to curate games that fit the audience or vice versa. Everybody else attending has a responsibility to be transparent about their availability and preferences.

That was a quick game of TI in my experience.

I love this kind of game btw… Unfortunately, nobody else I know really does.