It's really not that far fetched, its not like Dragons Dogma would be the first game with invisible walls barring you from all that scenery that "looks" like you can explore, but can't. Also, there is now skill based content in the demo, you can't mess with your class at all, you can't play as the mage for instance, you cannot pick your abilities or skills at all, and the first quest against the Chimera is very linear.
Alot of people play demos of games with no prior knowledge of the games exsistance. Kingdoms of Amalur is a perfect example of a recent game that no one bother to care about until the demo released. Then the flood gates opened and the game was everywhere, the demo thread on Gaf alone blew up. Yet many of the people in that thread stated that they had no prior knowledge or interest in the game.
I've said it before, and Derrick01 seems to agree that this demo should have been handled the same way the Reckoning demo was. Let players create their character, play through the tutorial quest, and then give them an hour or so of unrestricted playtime to do whatever they want. Mess with the Class system, explore the towns, talk to NPCs, go dungeon crawling, get a real feel for the combat other thank just fighting a few peons on the way to the big boss beast.
This demo funnels you through a cave in on quest scenario, and the second they pit you against a griffon within 5 minutes, giving you nothing else to do. They don't even have a trailer at the end showing and of the depth available in the full release. It just comes off that with the amount of rescourses Capcom has supposedly sunk into this game, they would have thought this demo out abit more carefully and made it meaningful. The demo sold me, but I already knew what the game was, this feels like the D&D game i've wanted all this gen, I just think the demo will leave some with a bad taste in their mouth. Hope i'm wrong though.