I would. DAI felt incredibly derivative of Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed; both games that pad their length with endless lists of things that need to be killed and collected for upgrades. DAI is positively gravid with such insipid busy work.

Watching someone else play a demo for forty-five minutes may not be the same thing as oneself playing a demo for forty-five minutes (although it is far closer than is often smarmily claimed) or as playing a game for forty hours, but it is patently absurd to argue that forty-five minutes of a demo does not convey reasonable details about which one might adjudge the game, given that much of the core gameplay will remain essentially unchanged throughout the the game. In fact, that is the very purpose of a demo, and if it fails in that regard, that is also a perfectly right judgement upon the developers.

One does not need to read through a one thousand page novel before one’s negative judgement is justified if the first one hundred pages are complete rubbish, or if it is apparent in the first ten pages that the author cannot write. It is the duty of the novel to engage the reader all the way. Some sort of creative redemption on the part of the author in the final pages of the novel does not save the rest of the novel. It is still an awful work, because if it alienates its audience to the point that they are unwilling to finish it or engage with it, then it is a wasted enterprise. Mere creativity alone is not some sort of unfettered good.

Certainly it butters a lot of scones to reassure oneself that being hesitant to pass judgement is the same thing as the exercise of reason, but these are in no way equivalent things. To wit, we have had nothing but bad news about FFXV for months, and the more we see the worse it appears. I struggle to think of even a single glimmer of hope that we have heard which has been proved to be true. So, it is not unreasonable to have real, concrete fears for the FFXV enterprise at this point, or to express those fears as condemnations of what one has seen thus far should it manifest in the full title, in the hope that outcry will result in a changed direction. In fact, the unreasonable position is to refuse to accept what one has seen on the basis that development has not yet reached the point where it is too late to change it.

Finally, if the development team are only releasing overwhelmingly negative material which reflects poorly upon their game, but which is somehow (magically, perhaps?) not a true representation of the as-yet unseen ‘goodness’ of the game itself, then:
– The developer is doing an awful job at communication, for which they rightly deserve a great deal of negative critique; and,
– The material they are showing is unappealing to their audience, for which negative critique is absolutely needful; and,
– We cannot know how ‘good’ their work is if they only show us crap, and so we cannot praise it.

So, are we supposed dyslogistically to praise games and not critique any obvious problems we see in advance, because of the possibility that–because of developer incomptence–what we see might not be an accurate reflection of the ‘whole’? No. This is an obviously indefensible position. If the developer is that incompetent, and if the evidence is consistent, then the negative judgements are reasonable, and it is instead unreasonable to refuse to accept the implications drawn, quod erat demonstrandum.