Like a wicked siren, BioWare is attacking its fans' wallets with the alluring and sorrowful call of day-one DLC. Fans must once again decide what they like more: money or awesome alien allies.
[Link]
Like a wicked siren, BioWare is attacking its fans' wallets with the alluring and sorrowful call of day-one DLC. Fans must once again decide what they like more: money or awesome alien allies.
[Link]
a prothean squad member... wow. cant wait to see this guy/gal
“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it and it will never be used to hurt you.” - Tyrion Lannister
Ask and ye shall receive. He talks with a Kenyan accent as well, so you know.
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I'm excited. This guy comes included in the CE, So I'm glad I'm there this go around.
And this is now getting me to cancel my pre-order and transfer it to another game. I draw the line at a game company purposely removing content from a game to sell it as DLC to people who bought an original copy. That's just greedy nonsense. Especially when it's a character that there's no way that you don't want to recruit, due to the previous two games story.
Were it not for the fact that the collector's edition will include the DLC for free, I would be right there with you, Freykin.
I notice there are no neural dialogue options in the demo. Is that going to be DLC as well?
It's a frustrating decision to make, too, since the first two Mass Effect's are some of the best games I've played this console generation. However this move feels like they are taking advantage of that to try and milk some extra money out of it, and I'm a firm believer of voting with my money on matters like this. Ah well, Tales of Graces comes out around the same time and this means I can devote more time to it.
And to think, a year or so ago this would have been the "buy this game new at full regular price" bonus. Not the "buy the more expensive collector's edition" bonus.
What's worse is that they've already revealed that this game will have about half as many party members as 2, so an extra character is a much bigger deal.
Whatever, I wasn't seriously considering picking this game up anyway. I just hope this isn't something that other RPG developers start to take on board.
I don't mind, considering that they're keeping fan favorites (such as Garrus and Tali) permanent members during the game. Though I do wish we had a choice on who was permanent and who wasn't, other than Ashley and Kaiden (they aren't permanent unless you skip letting them help in the war effort, which lowers the total amount of Galactic Readiness points you can get).
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Hm...yeah I think I'll just wait until the Game of the Year edition comes out when all the DLCs will eventually get added. I got a backlog of game as it is that I need to take care of.
They'll be a steal at only 99 cents each!I notice there are no neural dialogue options in the demo. Is that going to be DLC as well?
Maybe EA could do a thing where you give Origin your credit card info and it adds the neutral dialog options to the game, and every-time you choose one it deducts the money from your account.
**** I better patent that.
Stop giving them ideas, heh.
"In other news: Internet reactionaries overreact to minor issue."BioWare Unveils the First Mass Effect 3 DLC
I really don't see the fuss over most DLC. Much of it seem REALLY optional, and easy to skip. This one certainly seems to fit that bill. Ah, well. /shrug
The problem I have with it is that they had to have made it before the game launched. They're basically taking something from the games development, stripping it from the game, and then charging more for it. If it were one of those DLC things that you get if you buy the game firsthand, I'd roll my eyes, but still get it. Asking for an additional sum for content that should be there in the first place? Sorry, not going to do it.
From what I heard, they only started on this idea after it went Gold (meaning ready for the day it was to be released). The Prothean character was in fact one of their original scrapped ideas for the game that they decided to use, and it took them a few months to get everything squared away with him.
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Whoa. It went gold THAT long ago? Any links to stuff related to this? If that's the case, that IS different in my mind, and I will get it.
I'm used to gold being several weeks before release dates, not months in advance. Sometimes I forget how backwards this industry is in when to publish things, what with indie developers releasing stuff whenever they feel like it.
I remember reading it somewhere, but I'd have to hunt google to find the link to the article. I'll let you know if I find it.
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"Reactionaries" and apologists alike are always going to butt heads. Personally, I think that the apologists overlook the bigger picture; the precedent for abuse that releasing DLC like this represents. It opens up the doors for further degradation of the core experience of a game, in favor of double/triple/quadruple/etc-dipping for content that would have been, in previous years, included in the initial price.
At the end of the day, large-scale publishers are indeed in a "war" with consumers...and before the advent of DLC, consumers could always vote with their dollars to determine how much they were willing to accept before they took those dollars elsewhere. Now, that line is blurring, and those eager for a new release...especially one as eagerly-awaited as Mass Effect 3...are becoming more and more pliant and forgiving. (read: suckers)
Remember, the idea of DLC is that it represented a means of prolonging the life of a given title...to inject new-life in a game that may have grown stagnant over time. Now, however, DLC is developed in tandem with the actual game, and that content which could have been included with the core experience has become a commodity...not an extension of gameplay for a title that needs a shot-in-the-arm, but a means of digging profit where none existed (nor should have) before. In essence, Day-One DLC represents a sort of hostage situation, where the developed code that was written along with the main title is dangled within wallet's reach.
What people are mad about is not just this one instance of abuse, as it is, admittedly, of a minor-scale. They are angry because of the gradual, quiet nature of these sorts of actions...a manipulation of the Status-Quo that is slowly pushing the market in the publisher's favor. How long will it be before actual chapters of the whole game are sold piecemeal, even above and beyond the entry fee? Will it take a $60 *.exe alone, with all other game options being sold separately, before people start to say "Hey, now just wait a minute, here..."?
Read into this what you will...we've been selling our power away as consumers bit by bit for years now...perhaps the sad truth is that gaming is now simply catching up to the rest of the world's markets...