Is anyone else tired of buying incomplete games?

[moondude]

Look at 2 recent games that came out in the past year, Bioshock infinite and dishonored. Both games got really high praise from both critics and fans alike. I bought both games and have to admit that they were both really fun to play.

Each game how ever had some really sad side characters whose story lines were fairly pathetic. Dishonored recently released information on the final dlc which focuses almost solely on daud. While bioshock doesn't have a dlc yet i can guess that at least one of the dlc's will include story for daisy fitzroy. Each of these characters were presented in the game as an important person to the storyline. Then just get pushed to the side and quickly killed almost as fast as they were introduced. Even their deaths were fairly underwhelming with almost no effort put into them.

The reason that i find this so annoying is because it seems as if its just left out of the game, so that they can finish it later as a dlc.

Does anyone else think that this whole dlc craze is getting a little out of hand? Sure they are adding content but they are providing it because they don't have complete characters.

 

[DoPo]

The reason that i find this so annoying is because it seems as if its just left out of the game, so that they can finish it later as a dlc.

Or they left them off so they can release a game. I'm not sure if you're familiar with feature creep but it's one quick way to annihilate a software project. Alternatively, they may have left them out, in order to tell a story. Daud in particular is completely different from Corvo and somehow I'd think that the game would have been a bit schizophrenic if you had both with two completely different things going on.

I haven't played Bioshock: Infinite, so I can't say, but faulting Dishonored is...a bit dishonourable, I think. They provide extra story which you do not need to buy at all. Nor is it influencing the base game in any way. Or are you telling me that at the time of the release of the game you booted the game and your first thought was "Geez, but where is Daud's story here?"

Does anyone else think that this whole dlc craze is getting a little out of hand? Sure they are adding content but they are providing it because they don't have complete characters.

So Daud was incomplete in vanilla? Funny, I thought he was as complete as all other NPCs but apparently, he's the only person lacking...whatever he's lacking.

Also, are you familiar with expansions? Funny thing - they did THE EXACT SAME THING but apparently aren't the devil because they aren't DLC. You know what else does the same? Sequels and prequels. And spinoffs. Actually any game that's from the same franchise is likely to be doing the same thing a DLC is doing albeit on a much larger scale.

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

No, not really. I buy the game as is on the disc. If I like the game and want more of it, I'll purchase DLC.

Most games are perfectly playable and "complete" as they come on the disc, without DLC.

Now, if you were talking about "the complete experience," that's another topic entirely.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Just don't buy the game untill all the DLC comes out.

Thats what I'm doing with Inifnite.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Bioshock Infinite felt complete to me, to the point of deciding sight unseen that I won't be buying the DLC because I felt it was complete as it could get.

Not quite the same with Dishonored, cuz I believed that there was a whole lot more that can be done with it (and I loved it to the moon, back, and to the moon again). But even without the DLC it stands on its own. But that's the nature of an expansion.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

The term "incomplete" would imply that either, a) the game is unfinished, and lacking features which were advertised on the box, or b) is lacking features which are advertised within the game itself, such as menues you can't access, weapons or vehichles etc, that can't be used but are clearly present, or c) is inherently broken such that certain parts can't be completed, such as the main story or certain sidequests being bugged to hell, which does happen and is usually patched anyway.

I do not believe the OPs examples match any of these criteria, and thus no dlc has anything to do with the term incomplete.

Some actual examples of incomplete games that match this criteria would be WarZ in its initial incarnation for type A, Big Rigs Over the Road Racing for types B and possibly C (thoguh that's debatable, as you can in fact win every race, sort of...) and any Bethesda game upon release is usually a type C due to quests glitching, though they get better.

 

[krazykidd]

I agree with you . But , i'm against DLC as a whole . I don't ever buy DLC . Then again , i have completly stopped buying AAA game full price . Of publishers and Devs want to start fucking me over , i will go out of my way to do the same . I won't buy a AAA game over 20$ and i will almost always buy it used . Not because i can't afford more expensive games ( i just bought SMT4 for 49$) , soley out of spite .

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

You say you're tired of this as though its some kind of new issue. Plenty of games (or movies or books) have come out that didn't have "complete" stories for every character. Its not like they needed some kind of biography for Daud because part of what makes him interesting is that you don't know a lot about him. There's so much they could have done with his story that if they included anymore in the main game, it probably would have seemed half-assed or he would have overshadowed Corvo's story. It makes more sense to reserve that for a new game, or dlc as they chose. I haven't bought the dlc yet but I certainly don't see it as necessary. If I buy the dlc, it'll be because I want more Dishonored not because I felt Daud's story was incomplete.

Some dlc on the other hand does feel like it was ripped from the game. One thing I like about the Last of Us and Uncharted 2 is that Naughty Dog included skins and other pointless things that can be unlocked by playing the fucking game. It adds so much more to replays by changing things up. It harkens back to yee olden' time of the ps2 and gamecube when beating a game different difficulties or other challenges unlocked that stuff. These days, you usually have to "unlock" the same shit by paying a fucking dollar for it

 

[barbzilla]

Sorry, while I am not big on day one DLC, I don't think they are releasing incomplete games so they can release DLC later on. Now day one DLC feels like they developed game content, then removed it to hide it behind a paywall. Now you could argue that they could always wait a week and release it, but it doesn't change the concept. If A: the content feels like it is a part of the primary gameplay experience and B: it was developed during the primary development cycle, then the game is purposefully removing content for the purposes of extra money. On the other hand, the game and DLC you mention, doesn't do this in the slightest. Daud's story is separate from the gameplay experience, it doesn't seem like it was produced alongside the primary dev cycle. It was something they made to add to an already great (and complete) game.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Not really, I enjoyed playing Minecraft through the alpha and beta stages and I still enjoy it now.
Also, those games you mentioned weren't incomplete.

 

[Pinkscare]

Towns and Ace of Spades were the two games I'd consider incomplete that highly pissed me off. I, however, do not buy early release games (beta). Also, DLC doesn't bother me. It's just the way it is. We can't always have every game the exact way we want it.

 

[josemlopes]

You could have mentioned Asura's Wrath or something like that.

In your cases, no, they are quite complete games as they tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and it features whatever features they promised to include. If they think that they can add more later on to that it doesnt mean that the original wasnt complete, its just that you can have more of it.

I get what you say about feeling that some things are left out if you dont buy the DLC but that is for you to decide if you want more of it. You can get to the ending of the game and be done with it (the game will give you the sensation of accomplishment, its not like it ends mid sentence and then tells you that the rest of the story is in a DLC).

 

[MysticSlayer]

An incomplete story indicates that actual story segments that are needed for the game are left out. Look at L.A. Noire. Some of the content present in the PS3 version of the game on launch was DLC content for the 360 version, yet, even if you didn't have the DLC content on the 360, the game still referenced those story moments as if you were expected to understand them. Anyone who bought the game on the 360 did receive an incomplete story.

BioShock Infinite, on the other hand, wasn't incomplete (or at least not in that way). Fitzroy's character was developed enough so the player could understand her motivations and place in the story. She was obviously tired of the racism and class divide in Colombia, was crazy enough to kill Lady Comstock, wanted to completely overthrow Comstock in a violent revolution, and she was crazy enough to kill innocent children in the process. Sure, you don't understand every little detail that happened to her while serving the Comstocks, but given what you see and hear around Colombia, you don't need to understand what happened specifically to her, just what happened to minorities in general, and going in-depth on her specific character would have made an already convoluted story even more convoluted. If anything, the game had too much on her and Colombia's/America's politics and culture, especially when you consider that all of it was pointless except to provide a catalyst by which to drive the actual story.

 

[lacktheknack]

YOU ARE BUYING A WHOLE GAME. Just cause there is DLC doesn't mean you are getting an unfinished game.

Saints Row 3, complete game.
Arkham Asylum/City, complete game.
Dishonored, complete game.

To answer your question, no, no I don't think it is out of hand. Have you seen Railroad simulator, they boast the $1,000+ DLC they have.

Normally $2500, but only $1248.05 for another hour!

 

[Zhukov]

Phht.

Seriously?

On what exactly do you base this claim?

Also, what exactly is the difference between "holding back content for DLC" (what you claim they're doing) and "using DLC to expand on elements of the main game that allow for it" (what they're actually doing)...?

You sound like you're being sore for the sake of being sore.

 

[Kajin]

Just because a game has DLC doesn't mean it's an incomplete game. That's just self-entitled whining of the highest order.

 

[Billy D Williams]

If a game looks that it has content withheld as DLC I won't buy it, but considering that barely happens and I buy all my games on Steam sales months after they originally come out I can usually get the GOTY for $5-$15 so either way I'm not to effected by it compared to most people, which still isn't that much anyways.