Well, the plus side of "Today" is that it takes much less time to build a game, we're not building EVERY thing from scratch.
Should also mean that it takes less money, and Digital releases should also lower the price (We're not buying a box, CDs, paying to have it shipped to the local game store), but the price is about the same as 20 years ago (inflation?) or higher. But, you arguably get "More" now than you did in the past, for example, all the Voice Acting.
X Dollars are needed to build a game, Studios get a big chunk in advance from somewhere, and if the choices are
a) Micro transactions in game
b) Proprietary (Xbox / Playstation releases) Distribution
c) Some people paying for it in advance (including Kickstarter backing which might not get you anything, or Presales)
Getting a playable (buggy?) version with option C) doesn't really seem like the worst thing, if you are confident that the Developer will do a good job on fixing things.
Especially with Larian being a "trusted" developer, that doesn't turn around and release a bunch of extra content for additional $ down the line.
