"Mass Effect 3 day one DLC files spotted on disk, Bioware respond"

[kane_magus]

So, not only did Mass Effect 3 have Day 1 DLC, apparently it was already on the disc, at least in part. And, of course, BioWare is scrambling to try to come up with more bullshit excuses for why this is not as bad as it seems.

(EDIT) Video embed removed because the video itself no longer exists. (/EDIT)

Requiescat in pace BioWare, February 1995 - October 2007. You are sorely missed.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

The fun thing is that when the Day 1 DLC is on the disc, it completely invalidates the only plausible excuse to have DLC at all. "We were killing dead time between game completion and disc press/release to keep busy."

That is apparently not the case when it's already on the disc. This means, no matter how they try to slice or spin it, they REMOVED content from the game. Seriously. Removed it. It would have been in the game if they didn't deliberately lock it away.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

The evidence here directly supports, what with the "framework" (i.e. the DLC character itself) already being on the disc, that BioWare are clearly lying through their teeth and this whole From Ashes crap was blatantly cut from the game purely as a DLC money-grab.

They're trying to say now that they had to make preparations for the DLC since they couldn't just stick a new character in completely via DLC (and why the fuck not, given they made the game and should be able to set it up to do whatever they needed it to do, especially since they obviously didn't have this problem with Mass Effect 2 and all of the DLC add-on characters for that game), and that's why the data is already on the disc. But of course that means that, yes, they did indeed have work on the DLC going before the main game was finished, contrary to everything they've claimed in the past, and that they explicitly planned for this to be DLC from the start, and thus are utterly full of shit when they say that they would never cut content from the main game just to sell as DLC.

At this point, BioWare is neck and neck with Blizzard for the top spot on my "List of game companies that used to be completely awesome but now suck the shit straight from Satan's sphincter through a swirly straw." And in both cases, the anal suction definitively started when they were bought out by or merged with bigger companies. Just as has been the case with pretty much every single other company bought by EA and Activision. I've already ranted a lot (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/495575.html) about all the companies that have been butchered by EA, so let's take a short, incomplete look at the Activision side of things and see what they have butchered or are in the process of butchering: Infinity Ward, Neversoft, Raven, Infocom, and (for me, the biggest tragedy of all) goddamn Sierra On-Line. At least in Blizzard's case, though, they managed to still be awesome even after being bought by Vivendi. It was only after the merger between Blizzard and Activision in 2008 that they started sucking in earnest.