I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet-
http://kotaku.com/5888816/buying-all-of-mass-effect-3s-dlc-will-cost-you-870
No matter how you look at it, this kind of "piecing out" of content was never done in this industry until quite recently. Do you need ANY of this to get a complete story experience? No, obviously not, but it's things like these that used to be unlockables and rewards for playing well and as collectables or rewards for paying attention to your environment or HELL, just available in a freakin' in-game shop. I mean, Mass Effect 2 entirely did away with weapon shops and made it so you had to randomly find the select few weapons in the entire universe that Shepard could actually use. A couple you could even miss permanently, an insane design choice in an RPG as far as I'm concerned. You'd even walk past NPCs talking about weapons they wanted to buy at the shops in marketplace areas. Apparently, for some reason all these shops just happened to of banned all humans named Shepard.
Which if that's just a design choice, then fine, but it's certainly taking away a "RPG" element, another massive complaint people have about this series. Which is bad enough, but then we get DLC lists like this, which include weapons galore available only if you buy them separately, pre-order or buy a piece of expensive merchandise that comes with a code. Why couldn't these weapons and items just be included in the game in someway, to help buff up the list of available equipment options? To be clear, it does NOT matter if this content affects the plot of the game or not, as some of us actually like to PLAY our games, not just go through them for a story and having these options available to all could do nothing but improve the GAME'S experience. (Capitalized for emphasize. This is a game, not a book or movie, and as such it's the game play that makes it a unique experience.) Like the end of the Kotaku post says "And people wonder why other people get upset about DLC."
http://kotaku.com/5888816/buying-all-of-mass-effect-3s-dlc-will-cost-you-870
No matter how you look at it, this kind of "piecing out" of content was never done in this industry until quite recently. Do you need ANY of this to get a complete story experience? No, obviously not, but it's things like these that used to be unlockables and rewards for playing well and as collectables or rewards for paying attention to your environment or HELL, just available in a freakin' in-game shop. I mean, Mass Effect 2 entirely did away with weapon shops and made it so you had to randomly find the select few weapons in the entire universe that Shepard could actually use. A couple you could even miss permanently, an insane design choice in an RPG as far as I'm concerned. You'd even walk past NPCs talking about weapons they wanted to buy at the shops in marketplace areas. Apparently, for some reason all these shops just happened to of banned all humans named Shepard.
Which if that's just a design choice, then fine, but it's certainly taking away a "RPG" element, another massive complaint people have about this series. Which is bad enough, but then we get DLC lists like this, which include weapons galore available only if you buy them separately, pre-order or buy a piece of expensive merchandise that comes with a code. Why couldn't these weapons and items just be included in the game in someway, to help buff up the list of available equipment options? To be clear, it does NOT matter if this content affects the plot of the game or not, as some of us actually like to PLAY our games, not just go through them for a story and having these options available to all could do nothing but improve the GAME'S experience. (Capitalized for emphasize. This is a game, not a book or movie, and as such it's the game play that makes it a unique experience.) Like the end of the Kotaku post says "And people wonder why other people get upset about DLC."
