Assassin's Creed 2: Revisited

I recently revisited Assassin's Creed 2, and I have to say that it was a welcome change of pace from my recent gaming schedule, and almost like seeing a friend from long ago. I was in love with the game from the trailers, truthfully, and played it straight through to its end in about 5 days after having waited for it with baited breath for months. It has a great many improvements over its predecessor: an interesting storyline that's relevant to the gameplay, a whole host of new killing instruments, and decidedly less linear mission timelines. Assassin's Creed broke a lot of barriers and blew a lot of people away; Assassin's Creed 2 demolished the standard set by its progenitor. Plus Altair's black armor is just motherfucking bad ass.

All of that being said, I'm sort of sad to say that it took purchasable DLC to bring me back to the game. For a modest sum, these game add-ons opened up new missions and memories, and in addition to providing several more hours of play, they reminded me why I had fallen in love with the game in the first place. All-in-all, money well spent, to be truthful. The only real nagging question for me is, why did it take DLC to bring me back to the game? I quite literally jumped at the chance to purchase the DLC so that there would be new missions in the game, but what if--and bear with me here, because it's going to get crazy--what if these games were just built with more replayable features? I know, it really does seem crazy to most of our brains, but what if you just didn't get tired of playing a game? Wouldn't that be crazy? Yes, it would destroy the market for DLC, which I understand is pretty profitable, but wouldn't it also revolutionize the way we look at the old games we keep on our shelves?

For now, DLC does a reasonable job of providing new content for old beloved titles, and I'm reasonably satisfied with it, for the moment. I'm anxiously looking forward to playing through some DLC for Batman: Arkham Asylum, as soon as I get my copy of the title back (ahem!), as a matter of fact. That said, the operative part of these statements is "for the moment." I don't want to live in a world where game developers release half-finished games for full-price, and then tack on a ton of DLC to generate extra revenue. It's dystopian, sure, but what's stopping them? The success of DLC has demonstrated to developers, I believe, that we're willing to shell out more dough for after-market parts. Where does it end?