One of the principal developers at Ready At Dawn, the California studio responsible for The Order: 1886, has responded to mounting questions regarding the apparently short length of the game’s campaign.

On Sunday, a video emerged on YouTube showing the full game being played, seemingly as fast as possible, and finishing in about five hours. This deliberate speedrun led some to suggest that the campaign length is five hours long as standard.

However, Ready At Dawn’s chief technical officer Andrea Pessino has challenged this assumption. One day after insisting he would not respond to “clickbait rumors about game length,” Pessino was asked at a press conference in Milan on the very subject.

According to paraphrases published by Dualshockers, Pessino claimed that “at a normal pace and difficulty level, you can finish the game in a window between eight and ten hours”.

He is also reported to have said that playing in hard mode would require at least twelve hours’ play. These figures, he told journalists, were calculated by Ready At Dawn’s internal teams.

Controversy surrounding The Order: 1886’s game length has encouraged a debate on whether, and to what extent, gameplay duration is a factor in overall value.

The Order: 1886 ships across Europe and North America on Friday, February 20.