After initially backtracking to clarify that 500 hours is how long it'd take to do absolutely everything, Techland have now explained that you can finish the game's main story in 20 hours, or 80 if you hit every side quest too.

Obviously their initial figure wouldn't be the length of a standard playthrough, but their follow-up saying that "a regular player should finish the story + side quests and do quite a lot of exploring in less than 100 hours" still sounded wearying and left open questions about filler and busywork.

We wanted to clarify our recent communication about the amount of hours required to complete the game.

So: 20 hours to complete the main story; 80 hours to finish the main story and every side quest; 500 hours to do all the quests, choices, and endings, check everywhere on the map, see all dialogue, and find every collectible.

Roguelikes, roguelikelikes, and other games built on procedural generation can hold my attention that long (I'm over 1300 hours into The Binding Of Isaac).

To make me play 500 hours, either the moment-to-moment action would need to be phenomenal or the game would need to have an impractical quantity of great side quests and activities?