Nah, it's not a modern trend. As always, it depends on the game. I remember spending 100+ hours playing Ocarina of time back in 1998, way more than more recent games in the series. Or something like DOOM and all it's 4 episodes taking me forever to complete (that's 32 maps in total, excluding the secret ones). Also, the "collectathon" 3D platformers on the N64 were huge. Even Mario 64 (which was the simplest) was pretty big, especially if you went for more than 70 stars, but stuff like Banjo-Kazooie and DK64 were massive games. I even gave up on the later because of how big and bloated it was.
Those games were longer then because they were introducing new mechanics and new ways of playing. They’re extremely compact when compared to the average modern game. Banjo-Kazooie is a marvel of game design as it manages to cram so much content in such compact stages. DK64 feels massive mostly thanks to convoluted, compartmentalized level design and the need to explore every nook and cranny with 5 different characters. But these games would still take you around 30 hours to complete in their time, hardly more than that. I doubt you spent 100 hours on OoT in one single playthrough.
Anyway, like I said in the opening, those games took us a long time to beat because we had to learn new ways of playing. We had to cope with standards of game design that were much more obscure than today. Now we’re still playing with controls and design tropes from that era, just simplified and perfected. Simply put, we already know how to play the new games and what to expect from them, because the template is largely the same. We could finish them much faster if not for all the filler content and cinema stuff, which is why they’re making the games longer on purpose. Most devs were kids that played PS and N64 games in the mid-90s. That’s where they’re taking their ideas and design standards from. They know most gamers are accustomed to the same templates and tropes, so they need to pad their games out or whoever cut their teeth on the N64 or earlier can understand what to do in every given situation in a heartbeat. Hence why gamers past their teens complain about the handholding and the games giving you the solution to everything before you even realize there’s a roadblock.
About the people who say “I’m not paying $70 for a 8-to-12 hour game”. Don’t you see that your premise is wrong? The problem is in thinking that new game HAS TO cost this “standard” full price. The new-game price notion is so ingrained, not only in the publishers, but in the gamers themselves. “It’s new and AAA, so of course it must be $70”. But why? Who decided this? They could have made TLOU2 10 hours shorter and launch it at $50. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a top-quality, but shorter-than-average game costing less than this standard everyone has somehow silently agreed upon. But of course, it’s all psychology at work here - people have become so accustomed to paying $60, then $70 for AAA, that if God of War launched at $50, they’d smell a rat. AAA
has to cost that because if it doesn’t, it can’t possibly be the premium product people expect. If Sony/Nintendo/MS is launching a supposedly big game at less than the expected price, then they themselves must not think it’s worth top dollar! There’s the nice psychological trap people fell into. Things don’t have to be this way, yet a lot of people desperately want them to be this way to feel their purchase validated.
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