First off, the comparison to Mass Effect 2's Cerberus Network. As Totalbiscut stated, you got a bunch of free little DLC pieces for buying ME2 new, including the character Zaeed and a side mission to the remains of the previous Normandy. But I don't really feel that this is comparable to the Prothean DLC, because the Prothean DLC promises to be a much bigger deal than either of those things were to begin with. The side mission to the old Normandy was little more than an interactive cutscene, and Zaeed was little more than a bit character. I'm sorry if that offends Zaeed fans, but really, all you got with him was one short mission and then he was done. The Cerberus DLC was thus little more than window dressing, and while I appreciated it, it held virtually no substance in the big scheme of things. I honestly think it wasn't even worth the ten dollars it was supposed to represent. So can you really compare this almost worthless DLC to getting a Prothean squadmate?
The next thing Totalbiscut brought up was Warden's Keep, the DLC you got for getting the Digital Deluxe edition of Dragon Age Origins. The comparison he draws here REALLY doesn't make sense, especially when he goes on later to talk about the difference between physical collector's editions and digital ones.
If you bought the physical collector's edition of Dragon Age, you got some DVDs and a map, something which you obviously can't put into a digital edition. In order to balance this out, people who got the Digital edition got Warden's Keep for free, while everyone else had to buy it. In my opinion, this is entirely justified, because you didn't get screwed if you got one collector's edition instead of the other one. Some people wanted cloth maps and "making of" DVDs for their ten dollars, while other people wanted extra DLC; the consumer got to make the choice as to which was more important to them. The only people who didn't get anything out of the exchange were the people who bought the vanilla version of the game, and even they got Shale, which was Dragon Age's ten-dollar freebie, a much better freebie than Zaeed from what I've heard.
This appears to be the same strategy that Bioware is employing for Mass Effect 3. The physical collector's editions of the game come with an art book and a lithographic print, which are obviously not going to make it into the Digital Deluxe edition, or if they are (they're still listed on it) you're only going to get images as compared to an actual book, which isn't really the same. Hence, the players that get the Digital Collector's edition get the Prothean as an extra reward in addition to the DLC that the ordinary collector's editions get. That's what it looks like right now, though I can't say for sure thanks to the byzantine maze that is Amazon's and Origin's Mass Effect 3 pages.
I do agree that the Prothean is a really important thing in the Mass Effect universe. That in and of itself is pretty obvious. However, I do not agree with Totalbiscut's idea that his DLC should be free just because he is related to a critical plot point and happened to come out on day one. The reason I say this is because of Mass Effect 2: specifically, the Shadow Broker DLC.
Obviously, Liara (who was a party member in ME1) should be considered pretty damn important to the plot of the games. However she was reduced to NPC status in ME2 until the Shadow Broker DLC was announced. And a LOT of people bought the Shadow Broker DLC when it came out to unlock her. So why are people so up in arms about the Prothean DLC when they were totally willing to buy the Shadow Broker DLC?
My answer is timing. Totalbiscut makes several references about how he believes gamers are entitled to content made before the game is released, and people who complain about day one DLC in general say the same thing: that they're being sold content that was purposefully cut out of the game in order to make a profit. However, this thought process betrays a lack of knowledge regarding the way the industry works.
If you want a detailed explanation of why day one DLC isn't a scam, you can read this post: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.154083-Dragon-Age-Designer-Says-DLC-Not-Meant-to-Rip-Off-Players#3719305
However, to sum it up in a few words, day one DLC is made mostly from ideas that HAD to be removed from the full game in order to meet production deadlines. In other words, this kind of DLC is stuff that had to be sacrificed in order to get the base game out the door. Once the company is finished with the full game and has passed it off for the finishing touches, it allows the employees that aren't involved in that process (such as writers and designers) to go back and turn some of the ideas that they couldn't stuff into the original game before it shipped into actual content.
This means that Day One DLC is produced separately from the base game. It has its own budget, and its own resources, and all of that has to pay for itself. When you take this into consideration, saying that you should get the Prothean for free "because he comes out on the same day as the game" doesn't make much sense.
Honestly, the only legitimate argument I can see for why the Prothean should be free is that he's not worth the price of admission. But unless you can predict the future, no one can make that argument until the reviews come in. Hell, we don't even know what the Prothean DLC is even about: maybe the Protheans come back en masse, and this guy is just the one you get to have fight by your side. Maybe he'll be another Zaeed, or maybe his DLC will be as long/fufilling as Shadow Broker... only time will tell.
Until then, I'm not flipping tables over it.
