I guess it all depends on what your definition of a "full, complete game" is.
… which makes me wonder, what if they cut the game in half and sold both pieces as Dragon Age 1 and 2 from the start, at the same time? Would you still feel that you're not going to miss anything by only playing part 1?
(That's a scary thought too, because hey, they could charge twice as much for a single game.)
I don't bother with trying to define a "complete" game. I'm not sure a useful definition is possible.
I played Batman: Arkham recently - really quite enjoyed it for a casual action title. It lasted about 10 hours or so and cost the usual price. Dragon Age should be 80 hours+ according to most (Desslock spent >120 hours for his review, most with his primary character, according to him). Does that mean I should have only paid $5 for Batman, or should I pay $500 for Dragon Age, given 10x the content?
Or should I look at sunk costs? Assassin's Creed has 400 developers versus Risen's 20 or so…maybe Piranha Bytes ripped me off only giving me 60 man-years of development work, while other games might offer >500 man-years of effort? In that sense, Piranha Bytes
is charging me twice as much or more!
If Dragon Age were split in half, that would still be longer than Risen…is that fair? Plus there's a toolset, which means free community mods.
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All of that is silly. I simply look at a game and decide if I'm interested. If I am, I buy it. From what I can see, I'll enjoy Dragon Age enough to be worth a purchase, so I'll buy it. In fact, I'm downright impressed with some of the recent previews, so I'm happy to give them another $7 for extra content! Sounds like you're not happy to pay it - how does that change the core experience? You paid less and got less. I paid more and got more.
On the other hand, I didn't enjoy Fallout 3 enough to buy all the DLC - which doesn't bother me at all, even though my game is no longer "complete". As it is, some North American retailers have bonuses that aren't available in Australia (as far as I can see), so it was never an identical playing field to start with.