Posting my thoughts in a Wall of text, be warned man.
Firstly going to post what has been said by the developer to use as a frame of reference, I heard there was a follow up post somewhere but the thread this was originally in exploded with comments and couldn't find the secondary post.
Michael Gamble wrote...
As most of you know, yesterday there was a leak that revealed the upcoming DLC ?ME3:From Ashes? on the
Xbox LIVE Marketplace. This leak took place before we were prepared to make an announcement about the details of that pack (slated for this Friday).
There has been a lot of discussion about the DLC offering but we wanted to clarify a few things...
- ?From Ashes? includes the Prothean squad mate, an adventure on Eden Prime, a new weapon, and an alternate
appearance for every squad mate. Note that these alternate appearances are in addition to the ones already advertised in the CE.
- The Collectors Edition has been advertised from the beginning as containing a bonus character/mission, but we were not at liberty to provide the details. The Prothean is optional content that is certainly designed to appeal to long-time fans, which is why he is part of the CE offering (the version many fans would be likely to purchase). Mass Effect 3 is a complete ? and a huge game - right out of the box.
- The content in ?From Ashes? was developed by a separate team (after the core game was finished) and not completed until well after the main game went into certification.
- The Collectors Edition has been sold out in most places for some time now, and is becoming very hard to find (many players prefer not to purchase the digital version). As such, we wanted to make this content available so that SE buyers could also incorporate the Prothean into their game.
We?ll be releasing someimages and video about this pack in the coming days.
As always, we are extremely thankful for all of your support. We pulled out all of the stops to make Mass Effect 3 the best game ever, and we can't wait for you all to experience it.
Mike
[As a note this is highly opinionated, this is not objective discussion as we simply don't know enough about the character's storyline, this is mainly speculation based on what we have found so far and my thoughts why I hate the entire idea of this DLC.]
Now going by this it was stated that it was done by a seperate team and was only ready long after the game went into production (The actual final build and disc manufacture, not design time, etc) but wasn't this Squad Mate announced almost a year ago, around the May 2011 area? If the character has no significant impact on the story, something I will bring up later, then why did it take say roughly 12 months time to make. [This is a very rough guess, assuming it was started before May so it could be announced and has yet to be finished?] The other reason alot of people are upset is due to the stigma of Day 1 DLC which has in the past, even with BioWare games like Warden's Keep in DA:O, added content to the game that can directly involve the storyline. Don't get me wrong Warden's Keep was a very small dungeon but it did give you new powers, new armor, and a new weapon that could directly affect your playthrough.
The part where I scratch my head is that the squad member is a Prothen. If Michael's comment is to be believed the character is to have no impact on the storyline and so the DLC is not a required by to get the full story, but my reaction is more 'how is that possible?'. For those of you who don't know, the Protheans were an organic race that lived 50,000 years in the past from the current Mass Effect timeline and who were systematically wiped out by the Reaper swarms. That in and of itself is a problem as the only Prothean outpost alive after the reapers left was Ilos and all the protheans there eventually died from starvation after being brought back from cryostasis. The protheans who are stated to be smart enough to build Mass Relays and the likes also state they know one prothean or even a dozen remaining won't bring about a new population and so don't even try, so why was this one lone prothean put into cryo by himself? [This is speculation, naturally we won't know the full story until release.] The other major problem is that the Protheans are the entire and only reason these three games exist in the first place, had they not altered their cycle ever so slightly, the galaxy would have been under reaper invasion right after the title card came up.
To put it more simply, bringing even one member of an extinct race who is at the very least 50,000 years old and who is so monumentally important to the game back, was always going to cause rage. Not only does it seem like the fans are being exploited, after all it is stated this was made for the fans yet most fans are the ones shredding it apart, but to put a price tag of 10 dollars on a DLC [with an extremely rare squadmember, whose race is the single most important one in the universe, and yet who has no meaningful impact on the story and some new skins] really doesn't help the case of making it look less like a cash grab.
Now as for myself personally, and I know alot of people won't share the same opinion, but why is the last Prothean in existence Jamaican? It doesn't make me feel for the character, I can't help but immediatly throw him into the same pile with the Sons of Sandin in Saints Row 2, or Little Jacob in GTA 4. If the character is meant to be unserious and add levity its one thing, but so far the entire marketing and point behind Mass Effect 3 has been it is a dark, bitter world on the edge of oblivion. Its really a bad stereotype from me indeed, but the character's audio lines seem absurd and laughable, in the sense they are bad as opposed to actually funny. Again I know not everyone will share my point of view but I just wanted to give it.
Now people could argue that I don't have to get the character to play the full storyline, buts its a Prothean. That single fact means it has to be important to the stroy, if not then why not just make it a Zaaed 2.0, or a new Geth Platform, or a Batarian, or something that seems it could fit without breaking the lore of this carefully crafted universe. This is also the main reason so many people are angry (According to much of the postings, though I couldn't go through all of it, I would be here all week if that were the case x.x) that the single most important race in the galaxy has a squad member that you can't have unless you get a Collecters Edition (DDE) or pay 10 dollars for the right to play it.
Really I don't expect anyone from Bioware to respond back to me, but I just wanted to clarify why I personally think this DLC is a very bad idea. Naturally others see this as the coolest thing ever and that is their right to have that opinion. Also just to note I already pre-bought the N7 Collector's Edition many moons again, so I am speaking from the perspective of someone that was always going to get this character anyways.
Thank you for your time,
Setch Dreskar