Have there been other egregious Day 1 paid DLCs like ME3's, "From Ashes" which were of crucial consequence to the title in one or more ways?

[Hey Please]

With the release of the ME LE which features all the story and character DLCs (sans 1 from ME1) on the horizon, I recalled how it was when ME3 originally released. The hype surrounding the final entry of the trilogy was immense. And then, From Ashes DLC was announced as a Day 1 paid purchase with Bioware selling a recruitable NPC like they had done with Kasumi and Zaeed in ME2. However, the difference was neither of ME2's DLC was crucial towards lending historical context about a time and a species that were mostly lost to history (sans the VI, Vigil) that fought the Reapers to not only be defeated but cruelly repurposed to become drones of their foe, nor were they released alongside the base game on Day 1.

Honestly, I did not know what I was missing with the DLC until I watched a bit of walkthrough with Javik in it. As someone who got all ME2 DLCs and played the heck out of ME3 (esp. MP to boost that 'Readiness' number), it felt like such a gut punch. Bioware essentially carved out an incredibly salient piece of the ME3's narrative potential and world building history just so that they can exploit the enthused player base. I never bought that or the subsequent Citadel DLC (again, saw a bit of playthrough on YT; memory of exact details of DLC are foggy now, but I still remember the disappointment).

Suffice it to say, when I get the Legendary Edition, it will be akin to a brand new experience for me with Javik. So please no spoilers.

I know people talk about Horse Armour DLC and how it went downhill from there. In retrospect, at least that was cosmetic (look how normalized it has become that I can write, "at least" so casually).

 

[Weiss]

I kind of feel that Javik was so important (and he is, won't go any further) because Kasumi and Zaeed in ME2 were basically just there as set dressing so they wanted the DLC party member in ME3 to have more incentive.

Javik's the answer I'd also swing to, because ME3 is even lesser as a story without him.

 

[Abuguet]

Asura's Wrath whole ending was paid DLC. The game literally left you in a cliffhanger until you dished out some extra cash.

 

[Weiss]

Asura's Wrath whole ending was paid DLC. The game literally left you in a cliffhanger until you dished out some extra cash.

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This is probably more of a question about sending games out that are supposed to need sequels they'll never get, which then makes you wonder why they make games where the protagonist is about to kill the villain, whereupon they get set back and go on a whole new adventure to get where they were back at the end of the last one.

 

[Ragnarsson]

I purchased a used copy of ME3 close to launch (because I was still a kid with limited money to spend and I was still clueless about DLC), and only found out later about the missing content. I was mostly just sad (a little bit angry, but mostly sad) about Javik. It was an incredibly shitty thing to do and it's one of the things that made me, to this day, cautious whenever EA announces anything.

 

[Fat4all]

Drakengard 3 putting important story and character details behind 6 separate DLC purchases was pretty bad

 

[TheXbox]

I can't think of anything as bad as Javik. It's insane to think that millions of people finished Mass Effect 3 without ever recruiting him. He's one of the few bright spots in that game, as well as being massively pivotal to the lore.

 

[aisback]

Evolve basically is the prime example of this

 

[hog]

The most recent Assassin's Creed games don't properly end their stories, just tease you with stuff for a true ending in the DLC. It's really lame and frustrating to get to the end of a massive long game like that and not see things get tied up.

 

[Deleted member 56803]

Total War Warhammer 1 had the Chaos Warriors as a preorder dlc. For those unfamiliar with the setting, it would be like making Injustice, but putting Joker as a preorder bonus

 

[m0therzer0]

Considering I didn't even know there was any crucial storyline content in ME3 behind the DLC, I never even noticed I was missing out on anything.

As someone who didn't pay for Xbox Live, though, missing out on being able to easily raise my readiness rating for storyline content in single-player mode kind of fucking sucked.

 

[ApexNorth]

The worst part about the From Ashes DLC from what I remember is that the content was actually on the disk and you just paid to unlock it.

 

[rras1994]

The worst part about the From Ashes DLC from what I remember is that the content was actually on the disk and you just paid to unlock it.

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Unfinished content was on the disc. Here's a good explanation from a dev why Javik ended up as day 1 dlc and how the option wasn't Javik included in base game or as day one dlc, but Day 1 DLC Javik, Javik being cut completely or another companion in ME3 being cut so Javik could be made instead :
https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/166009145896/what-about-day-one-dlc-is-it-stuff-whose/amp

 

[Quinton]

All I'll say is that you're going to have an absolute blast with the "Citadel" DLC. The only negative I can even conceive of is that the name is about as bland as humanly possible. Everything -- everything -- is at least a 9/10 in that package.

 

[jakomocha]

The most frustrating part about Javik being DLC is that by making him DLC (day 1 DLC at that) they made him not crucial to the plot. I honestly can't believe they squandered the narrative potential of a Prothean squadmate so badly. He easily could've tied into the plot in seriously consequential ways, such as by playing a key role in developing a strategy to defeat the reapers, and just generally served as an awesome insight into the series lore. Javik is also by far the best new character introduced in ME3 and is super well realized, so it truly does feel like they wasted an opportunity to do so much more with his character.

I'd argue that in terms of actual consequence on the plot, the Leviathan DLC was far more consequential as it actually fleshes out the Reapers origins and purpose. Still, From Ashes is the better DLC as Javik is a great character

 

[Hey Please]

All I'll say is that you're going to have an absolute blast with the "Citadel" DLC. The only negative I can even conceive of is that the name is about as bland as humanly possible. Everything -- everything -- is at least a 9/10 in that package.

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I tend to remember the big ticket plot points and so for the Citadel DLC, all I remember somewhat vaguely is who the antagonist is (cannot remember their origin however).

Considering I didn't even know there was any crucial storyline content in ME3 behind the DLC, I never even noticed I was missing out on anything.

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I can empathize, right up until I saw the YT videos and people talking about it on GAF back in the day.

As someone who didn't pay for Xbox Live, though, missing out on being able to easily raise my readiness rating for storyline content in single-player mode kind of fucking sucked.

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NGL, it was literally the ONLY MP title I played on Xbox 360 and had a temporary Live subscription for. FWIW, at least with the upcoming remaster, this will no longer be an issue.

Evolve basically is the prime example of this

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Good lord, I suddenly had a flash back about all the pre-order DLCs...

The most frustrating part about Javik being DLC is that by making him DLC (day 1 DLC at that) they made him not crucial to the plot. I honestly can't believe they squandered the narrative potential of a Prothean squadmate so badly. He easily could've tied into the plot in seriously consequential ways, such as by playing a key role in developing a strategy to defeat the reapers, and just generally served as an awesome insight into the series lore. Javik is also by far the best new character introduced in ME3 and is super well realized, so it truly does feel like they wasted an opportunity to do so much more with his character.

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This was one of the consensus I can remember that reverberated through GAF as well as a few YT videos that have dealt with long form retrospective criticism since its launch.

 

[karnage10]

Total War Warhammer 1 had the Chaos Warriors as a preorder dlc. For those unfamiliar with the setting, it would be like making Injustice, but putting Joker as a preorder bonus

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I highly disagree with this sentiment/comparison. First of all CA usually gives the DLC for free for at least 1 week after launch, which means you aren't forced to pre-order to get the DLC and can see reviews and first impressions
Secondly WoC IMO Biggest issue is them being playable. THey are just an AI race made playable for the player. CA basically retooled the Huns from previous game and that was it. THey clearly were just suposed to be playable by AI. I mena their unique feature was when armies were together they lost health...
Lastly they are severely gimped in terms of roster. THye don't have marks, lack most single entity monsters of chaos and their units were not balanced for horde gameplay.

Obviously CA has worked on them quite a bit since then but even so i doubt you owuld find a single player of warhammer 2 that would say that WoC are in a good spot.
In short what i am trying to say is:
IS it shitty for WoC to be pre-order DLC?
Yes they should have been a full Campaign Pack DLC - Pre-order DLC should have been a minor faction like TEB
Is WoC pre-order DLC as important as ME3 Javik?
No way. WoC is a low budget low feature race that is there to be a punching bag until warhammer 3 arrives while Javik is a very worthwhile addition to a thesry by giving the perpective of the race that lost to the reapers.
In a way not having WoC basically doesn't change the experience of wh1 and wh2 while not having Javik makes ME3 feel smaller.

 

[Deleted member 721]

castlevania lords of shadow dlc is the true ending

 

[jungomitis]

Javik was a result of that awful time when some members of the industry thought they could combat the used game market through on-disc DLC and new copy codes. I'm very glad that phase is over now

 

[Smash-It Stan]

Prince of Persia 2008's DLC is the true actual ending. Seeing a trend here from that generation?

 

[Lemony1984]

I kind of like when DLC is plot relevant. More often than not, DLC is just a waste of time and money.

 

[kurahador]

Asura's Wrath whole ending was paid DLC. The game literally left you in a cliffhanger until you dished out some extra cash.

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Disagree. Asura's Wrath ending without the DLC is fine, he basically did what he sets out to do in the first place. You don't even know the villain in the DLC unless you get top rank in all chapters. The DLC is more of a sequel+series finale. It's like saying Avengers ends on a cliffhanger because it tease some purple dude at the end.

 

[Lump]

ME2's character DLC with Zaeed and Kasumi felt like they were developed separately and slotted in nicely as side characters into the game as DLC. They felt like characters that wouldn't have existed if not for being planned and budgeted as DLC.

In contrast, ME3's Javik DLC felt like a character that was designed to be part of ME3 all along, and then stripped out later to be sold as DLC. I remember I was a bit of a dumbass going into ME3's launch defending the decision because I thought it would be like Zaeed and Kasumi, and that we were lucky to get extra ME3 that wouldn't have had the budget / team resources if it weren't going to be DLC. But actually playing made me think that Javik was someone that was supposed to be in the base game all along (or at least was designed so well by a separate team that the director should've realized that keeping him as optional paid DLC would be a disservice to the game, but I'd still bet money on the situation being the former).

 

[NateDog]

I was the same OP, so excited for ME3 but sickened at the thought of what they were doing that I refused to ever buy that or any ME3 DLC so this'll be new to me too.

I also remember one that irked me. With Assassin's Creed, I already had issues with what they did at the end of Brotherhood with a certain character's death. In fact I hated how they went from the first game giving that character what seemed to be a good arc to just killing them out of the blue in Brotherhood, but figured there was a good reason rather than it being the most obvious one. But there wasn't, it was just the most obvious thing (tried explaining this with tags but I don't know how to hide text properly here so I'll avoid spoilers even though these are pretty old). But it wasn't enough to not answer this in Brotherhood, it wasn't even enough to answer it in the entirety of Revelations, but you had to buy DLC for the latter just to get that answer and it was an awful DLC played entirely in first person.

 

[Crushed]

IIRC, the ME3 beta that had files included in it that leaked, included some kind of script files that seemed to be a much earlier draft of the game's plot. Javik (with a different name, I think?) was included in them as part of the main plot; Kai Leng was going to kidnap him, not steal the VI on the asari planet.

 

[Spacejaws]

Evolve basically is the prime example of this

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I preordered Evolve and I remember drama but don't actually remember being affected by it. Wasn't it just 1 extra monster locked behind DLC then a season pass? Pretty much identical to some fighting games right now and since Evolve the market loves the season pass format for character unlocks in fighting games and Rainbow Six Siege for example and Dead by Daylight is churning out monsters and characters constantly with a ton of cosmetics.

I think I remember it being a ton of skins and a monster but I don't think that was anywhere near as bad as Mass Effect 3 lockinh away critical content behind DLC. Evolve was fluff locked away iirc but it was confusing as fuck what got you what if you cared about it.

*Disclaimer for post - I loved Evolve lol.

 

[Tagyhag]

I still can't believe they got away with that.

Though it hasn't been too long ago, I feel like there's no way you could get away with that nowadays.

The worst part about the From Ashes DLC from what I remember is that the content was actually on the disk and you just paid to unlock it.

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Yep, and it was even more egregious than that.

On PC, you could unlock Javik by just changing one single line of code in a file.

Basically: Unlock Javik? [ ] Yes [ ] No

 

[carlsojo]

Hot take incoming but I never felt Javik was that pivotal. Interesting, sure, and certainly a different (and better) take on Renegade.

 

[RedOnePunch]

Asura's Wrath whole ending was paid DLC. The game literally left you in a cliffhanger until you dished out some extra cash.

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Even if you pay for it you can't play it until you unlock it by earning certain amount of points. It was so annoying after paying for the ending and not being able to play it.

 

[SofNascimento]

I'm afraid I can't answer that quesiton OP, what I can say is that Javik is indeed salient. Very salient. Not only there are a lot of important things that he talks about concerning the Reapers, but everything he says is pure gold. He offers a very interesting perspective on the war and what it's needed to win. I won't spoil anything per your request, but I'd urge you to bring him EVERYWHERE. Especially Thessia.

Also, this is probably the quote from Mass Effect that I've seen mentioned the most:

"... the silence is your answer."

 

[Quinton]

While we're adding salt to wounds here, "Leviathan" enhances the trilogy's lore a fair bit and "Omega" -- while the least pertinent -- tackles a familiar little arc nevertheless.

 

[DefiedFaith]

The most recent Assassin's Creed games don't properly end their stories, just tease you with stuff for a true ending in the DLC. It's really lame and frustrating to get to the end of a massive long game like that and not see things get tied up.

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I was about to post the same thing. Valhalla clearly left content out of the ending for DLC later.

 

[Spacejaws]

I was about to post the same thing. Valhalla clearly left content out of the ending for DLC later.

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I think the last 2 Dragon Age games did that. Dragon Age Inquisition follows on from DA2 DLC and Dragon Age 4 looks to be following on fron DA3 DLC. I was super confused playing DA Inquistion after 2 about the bad guy before finding out he apparently was introduced in the previous games DLC that I didn't play.

Felt like they clearly left out these important story elements to leave setting the next games through DLC. Feels kinda shitty.

 

[RecLib]

Evolve basically is the prime example of this

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Good lord, I suddenly had a flash back about all the pre-order DLCs...

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I preordered Evolve and I remember drama but don't actually remember being affected by it. Wasn't it just 1 extra monster locked behind DLC then a season pass? Pretty much identical to some fighting games right now and since Evolve the market loves the season pass format for character unlocks in fighting games and Rainbow Six Siege for example and Dead by Daylight is churning out monsters and characters constantly with a ton of cosmetics.

I think I remember it being a ton of skins and a monster but I don't think that was anywhere near as bad as Mass Effect 3 lockinh away critical content behind DLC. Evolve was fluff locked away iirc but it was confusing as fuck what got you what if you cared about it.

*Disclaimer for post - I loved Evolve lol.

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Evolve's issue was a marketing issue and not an actual problem with the dlc. The game had a lot of cosmetic dlc, and one preorder monster that wasn't out until some post launch date. When you bought the game you got every single thing needed for gameplay. The game came with every character (except the post launch monster). You had to earn the characters in game, but this was true no matter what. There was no way to pay for faster access to any of the characters, even if you bought every piece of dlc you still had to earn every character in game. The DLC was 100% cosmetics only.

You get a lot of people who remember it wrong and post about how egregious the dlc was because of the marketing. The game pushed the cosmetic dlc all over the place everywhere constantly. Every single ad was about "buy from this store to get this dlc, buy here to get this dlc, preorder to get this dlc."

I don't blame people for getting confused, the marketing helped kill that game's launch. But I do feel the need to correct and defend Turtlerock here whenever Evolve gets brought up in threads like this: The only difference between someone who bought the base game and someone who bought every dlc was cosmetics. Evolve is really the antithesis of this thread. Mass effect had one dlc that was super important and never should have been dlc, evolve had loads of dlc that was pointless cosmetics you could easily ignore. Opposites.

 

[EntelechyFuff]

Disagree. Asura's Wrath ending without the DLC is fine, he basically did what he sets out to do in the first place. You don't even know the villain in the DLC unless you get top rank in all chapters. The DLC is more of a sequel+series finale. It's like saying Avengers ends on a cliffhanger because it tease some purple dude at the end.

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This is such an uncommon take and I want to say I wholeheartedly agree. I actually felt that the DLC ending was weaker than the original and made the story drag on longer than necessary.

That might be because my brother and I played through the whole game in one or two sittings though.

 

[Wrexis]

Dead Space's 2 (or 3?) DLC added a lot to the story I think.

 

[HardRojo]

Yeah I didn't play the game with Javik and only noticed later how much great content I was missing because of that.

 

[Mahaveer RaGOATnatan]

The leviathan dlc was also pretty big story wise and would have been interesting to drive more into in the main storyline

 

[Djalminha]

castlevania lords of shadow dlc is the true ending

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Damn, I played it back then and didn't know that, I thought they just left it open for the sequel. Now I'm about to beat the sequel and wondering why nothing in the story makes any sense.

 

[daegan]

It was a smart business decision in the end. I worked at Gamestop and we sold a SHITTON of that DLC. TBH not having a season pass for that game had to have screwed them out of a STUPID amount of money (but it's hard to scope how much to charge when you're not sure what else you're going to do, see also: Infinite, Bioshock.) Still I'm really glad the new one is going to have all the DLC because I'm not hooking up my PS3 to go back and buy DLC for that game before the store goes down

 

[ZeroX]

I beat Mass Effect 3 at launch without any of the DLC and never felt it was a compromised experience, thought it was easily the best in the series

Looking forward to the remastered version I guess

 

[DefiedFaith]

Didn't Final Fantasy 15 have 3 pieces of DLC that filled missing content from the main game? I remember that being a big deal.

 

[francium87]

It was worse because of the ending controversies. As people argue about the chances of victory, and the themes of the trilogy, well, is everything Javik says impermissible because technically players that paid $60 wouldn't hear them?

It was insane because any fan of 1 and 2 would do anything to get that perspective, and EA is basically just fleecing the most loyal fans. Hard to think of anything that asinine. IGN even did a podcast episode "had mass effect sold out" because of all the stupid business decisions made for ME3. I can't think of anything worse.

 

[Wil Grieve]

I can't think of anything as bad as Javik. It's insane to think that millions of people finished Mass Effect 3 without ever recruiting him. He's one of the few bright spots in that game, as well as being massively pivotal to the lore.

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ME3 was the best game in the series, minus the last 10 minutes

 

[Chromie]

I'm afraid I can't answer that quesiton OP, what I can say is that Javik is indeed salient. Very salient. Not only there are a lot of important things that he talks about concerning the Reapers, but everything he says is pure gold. He offers a very interesting perspective on the war and what it's needed to win. I won't spoil anything per your request, but I'd urge you to bring him EVERYWHERE. Especially Thessia.

Also, this is probably the quote from Mass Effect that I've seen mentioned the most:

"... the silence is your answer."

Click to shrink...

Was there any story significance with this guy? Like the whole race is dead and in Mass Effect 1 the whole galaxy thought Protheans were the reason for the relays and well a lot more. You think a living one would have some serious importance.

 

[JT60564]

I never bought that or the subsequent Citadel DLC (again, saw a bit of playthrough on YT; memory of exact details of DLC are foggy now, but I still remember the disappointment

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What! Citadel DLC didn't really figure into the main plot, but it was glorious fan service and it was awesome. True fans know Citadel was the real ending to ME3.

 

[Abuguet]

Disagree. Asura's Wrath ending without the DLC is fine, he basically did what he sets out to do in the first place. You don't even know the villain in the DLC unless you get top rank in all chapters. The DLC is more of a sequel+series finale. It's like saying Avengers ends on a cliffhanger because it tease some purple dude at the end.

Click to shrink...

I was on the same boat when I first played the game: "Great, there's going to be a sequel, can't wait".

You can imagine the disappointment when I played the DLC. It's not a sequel or series finale if there's one more episode with the actual ending.