BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk was talking to
MTV Multiplayer about the company's upcoming
Dragon Age, when he took a left turn at Alpha Centauri and discussed future
Mass Effect DLC. He tells the site that it's still a trilogy and that the company is "looking at some other post-release content." He won't confirm anything, but says the company is "talking about" more DLC.
The space opera has only had one episodic DLC adventure with
Bring Down the Sky, which was made available
free for PC purchasers of the game. Since then, the space around The Citadel has been pretty quiet ... but not in that normal space sort of way ... you know what we mean.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Christopher Grant @ Aug 7th 2008 11:02AM
By 'talking about' they better mean 'about to release.' Podkayne Shephard and I need to take to the stars once more, thwarting evil-doers and building our stats.
dark_inchworm @ Aug 7th 2008 11:29AM
Aw, I was kinda hoping for something along the lines of "I'M CHRISTOPHER GRANT BITCH, I CAN HAVE FIRST."
borland502 (SDF Macross) @ Aug 7th 2008 12:39PM
I think a moderator posting "first", however funny, would result in a new moderator. It's like browsing porn at work...instant joblessness.
My first love is PC, and aside from having dumbed down menus, it hasn't been bad getting sloppy seconds from the console. I like Mass Effect on the PC.
borland502 (SDF Macross) @ Aug 7th 2008 12:41PM
Er, I should choose my words with more care or get banned myself :-.) I meant doing that whole "First post" declaration. The lord and master of this thread state what he pleases.
Er, no ban yes?
Jeff the Joker @ Aug 7th 2008 6:36PM
I agree completely Chris, I also think it would have been great to get a DLC pack in time for the Fall Update.
I think Mass Effect will be one of the titles to benefit most from the Play from HDD feature. So I'm putting off my second play though till then.
And setting the last one to only 50G implies they left themselves room to do 4 more packs before they hit the 1250 Point limit, then ready to release ME2.
Duke @ Aug 7th 2008 11:04AM
I wish there were some details. A timeline for DLC and the future ME games would be helpful from BioWare.
Ninegauger @ Aug 7th 2008 11:10AM
Yeah, I hope it's more like "Talking about when to release it and how much it's going to cost... because it's already done"
Terry Bosky @ Aug 7th 2008 11:15AM
More DLC wouldn't be as big an issue if ME could be patched to allow players to keep playing after beating the game.
JW @ Aug 7th 2008 11:33AM
Umm.... I've beaten the game several times with the same character so I'm not sure that you're talking about....
In regards to the article, every developer needs to have their heads examined as to why they would release only one DLC package in a 10 month window? Someone please explain to me why a developer wants to wait until at least 6-8 months after the initial release to disseminate DLC, especially when a game's popularity has all but diminished by that time. This is the trend in the industry and it makes no sense whatsoever.
Logic dictates that one would want to release additional content while the game is still popular to keep people playing it. Who is going to want to play Mass Effect DLC this fall then Fallout 3, Fable 2 and The Force Unleashed released? Is it not safe to assume that more people would have played this DLC had it been released within 3-5 months of the games initial release data? Deductive logic concludes that the answer is yes but the developers say no..... go figure.
Terry Bosky @ Aug 7th 2008 11:40AM
Ah, I don't mean starting back at square one, but continuing on from the last story mission. Kinda like how Oblivion or GTA let you keep playing after the final mission. I guess I'm asking for ME to be more of a next-gen, open-world, sand-box, Web 2.0 thing. Or something.
Jeff @ Aug 7th 2008 11:45AM
JW, what you're suggesting is having devs develop DLC while the game is still in development. The next step from that is saving effort by including it on the disc and making us pay to unlock it!
So no-- that's a terrible idea. The reason it takes a long time after the game is released is because-- guess what? They have to design it.
Anticrawl @ Aug 7th 2008 11:49AM
Haha, you can keep playing the game after beating it, you can even use the same character and keep all your gear.
Vcize @ Aug 7th 2008 3:24PM
Anticrawl and JW, he's not talking about starting the game over with the same character and going through all the Citadel nonsense again, etc.
He's talking about the following. Let's say you never did the side missions on the moon. Then you beat the game, and now you want to go to the moon. Too bad, you can't just up and keep traveling around as you please. You have to either start the game over and go through all the Citadel stuff over again and do the side missions again that unlock the Sol System, or you have to load up an old save from before you went past "the point of no return" in the story where you can just fly your ship around however you want again.
It's particularly annoying with the ally achievements, as if beating the game didn't complete enough missions to unlock the achievement, you'd have to load up an old save, do some extra missions, and then go through the whole end sequence again and hope that this time you did enough.
JW @ Aug 7th 2008 4:47PM
I understand your point now and I completely agree. An open-ended game would have been the best way to go, especially from a DLC perspective.
I do not agree with whomever spoke regarding DLC and the developers designing it after the fact. If one is naive enough to think that these developers go into the post-release gate without a plan, you're sorely mistaken and somewhat foolish. The point it this: if BioWare wanted to make DLC, they would have been pushing it out every few months with the amount of devs they have working for them on ME and ME related work. They simply do not wish to put resources towards that end since the game has all but exhausted its popularity by now (at least on the 360).
Don't think for a second that they work only on the game and then all of a sudden decide "Hey, lets make some DLC from scratch." That would be the poorest business decision in a long line of stupidity that plagues the game development industry. There is nothing that anyone can say to legitimize or substantiate the claim that developers need "more time" to make DLC packages from scratch. Thats just plain wrong and thinking in this way is why you're being taken advantage of on a yearly basis.
The simply fact is that DLC development is included in each and every game's budget. If you don't agree, then you should probably read some game development articles or take a class on finance. This "fact" ensures that there will be DLC for a certain game. Now why wait 6-8 months after the release date to provide these packages? Thats my question and I have yet to see a logical explanation. All i've heard are fanboys claims that have no basis in fact or reason. That is what I was alluding to.
Terry Bosky @ Aug 8th 2008 9:14AM
Thank god, I thought I was going insane.
I think part of the problem with DLC for Mass Effect is (at least with Bring Down the Sky) that the DLC isn't game changing. Bring Down the Sky was a 90-minute instance which didn't add new equipment, populate the world of ME with Batarians, or have any effect on the rest of the game.
Jeff @ Aug 7th 2008 11:43AM
I don't like "DLC" for Mass Effect and probably many other RPGs. I don't feel like replaying the game for a bunch of little bullshit missions with a minor subplot.
The full-expansion model is much better imho, and should remain standard.
AwesomeTown @ Aug 7th 2008 11:55AM
I agree. The side missions tended to get pretty old by the end of the game. I don't think only having 3 or 4 different settings helped anything. Bring Down the Sky was just more of the same, and this one probably will too.
I say this, yet I'll still probably get it. It'll give me an excuse to finish another playthrough.
xxHughesxx @ Aug 7th 2008 12:22PM
Hopefully they'll drop the idea and focus on the new Kotor MMO.
This was the most overhyped game iv played for the 360. And it was barely hyped, so that shows my opinion of it, the little praise it got and the decent reviews all seem to gorget about the most important part of a game.
It should be enjoyable.
Mass Effect was a struggle to play, every mindnumbing second of it. Im sure others will disagree, but iv stated the problems of the game to many times to repeat it all again here, unless of course some raving fanboy insists on arguing :D
Deuce @ Aug 7th 2008 12:30PM
If you knew what you were talking about, we'd be listening to you by now.
xxHughesxx @ Aug 7th 2008 12:48PM
Have you played the game? It looked beautiful, there was a lot of story(a lot), but that is where the compliments stop. The quality of the story wasnt even decent, give any decent sci-fi writer and they can come up with a better plot. On top of that it makes no sense at times but well going into that would involve me actually brushing up on the game in detail and i cant bring myself to do that.
Graphics i will give you, you can say whatever you want about how beautiful it was and i wont argue one wink. But thats where that stops.
The story was touted as having some ridiculous number like a billion lines of dialogue. That sounds great at first, you think, "wow, lots of story, it must be good". But man do they need to learn how to present it. There is nothing more boring than sitting and clicking through questions to find something out and then it turns it was completly the wrong guy, or that actually you didnt need to talk to him. Tag onto this the fact that no matter what you say the reaction is the same.
Shepard: "I hate your guts alien scum."
Alien: "Well thats all right, ill still help you in whatever fashion you originally needed, even though clearly any character of more than one dimension would react differently to intimidation as to being asked nicely."
When i tell an annoying character to go fuck himself i want him to take a swing at me, or run off or something. Just because you have all this dialogue doesnt make it interesting, id rather read one line of Orwell than sit through that entire story. Quality over quantity, my friends.
Whats the point if you dont care for the characters, or the universe, i would have been just as happy going off and becoming a mercenary and killing randoms the entire time for all the story was worth. And by "just as happy" i mean not at all, as the gameplay was even worse than the story.
The shooting was both unintuitive and unexciting. The special moves all looked exactly the same and had about as much effect most of the time as trying to force push in real life. Finally add on the ridiculous vehicle they tagged on at the end because they suddenly realised we needed to get around the totally barren and empty planets that are mostly completly irrelevant and provide no new challenge or excitement. It suffers from Oblivionitus in this sense, so much content, but all meaning so little. Except Oblivion was fun, and when you got new weapons/armour you cared, looked cooler and noticed a difference.
Please try and refute me, change my mind if your capable.
Dr. Stabbingworth @ Aug 7th 2008 3:30PM
That's actually a very succinct nega-review. The game is OK, but it seemed to get those great reviews on the BioWare name.
The combat was meh.
The driving was awful.
I'll disagree on the storyline, but yeah, the conversations blow.
Still waiting for a game like this with excellent CoD4/Halo 3 style shooting.
John @ Aug 7th 2008 1:23PM
Could we just have Mass Effect 2 please?
Mass Effect was probably some of the money I've ever spent on a game.
MikeO. @ Aug 7th 2008 6:33PM
I agree John. I put the game aside for a long time to finish the orgy of games we had last Fall and recently picked it up and beat it 3 or 4 times.
I absolutely love it. I can agree that the Mako could be annoying and the missions weren't varied enough, but it was still a great RPG/FPS hybrid (I'm hoping Fallout 3 will be more of the same).
I'm anxious to see how the second game will open...
SPOILER ALERT
...and if it will vary depending on if you allowed the council to die or not.
John @ Aug 8th 2008 10:09AM
I'm also looking forward to how my decisions in the first game effect the second (should I really have killed the Rachni??!?,etc.)
Jhongerkong @ Aug 7th 2008 3:15PM
Where's my DLC to unlock virtual orgasmic rape?
jetenginejesus @ Aug 7th 2008 3:39PM
Is anybody still even playing ME? There are so many other great games out there, why would anyone bother paying for DLC for a game that will be almost a year old once BW actually gets around to releasing it...? I might have been interested it if it came out in, oh, I don't know, February...
tc @ Aug 7th 2008 4:03PM
well us pc users did have to wait a it to play it. Due to this (and other distractions) I only actually finished it there last weekend.
Plus the DLC is free for the PC (and has only been released on the format recently) so more of it would be great. For me, it's not really a case of being more bothered about ME, just a nice addition that I'd enjoy.
Duke @ Aug 7th 2008 5:43PM
The point in DLC is to inspire people to play the game some more after they have put it down. You seem to miss that idea.
jetenginejesus @ Aug 7th 2008 5:48PM
I'm pretty sure the point of DLC is to wring a little bit more money out of gamers by asking them to pay for content that should have been included (for free!) in the game in the first place...
*coughMASSEFFECTcough*
Haggard @ Aug 8th 2008 10:22PM
I got the free DLC as a PC gamer.. but I've still not been arsed enough to replay the whole game to get at it. I guess you only appreciate things when you've paid for them.
MikeO. @ Aug 7th 2008 7:05PM
jetenginejesus...
Guessing by your first comment... if you don't care to pick up and play Mass Effect after new DLC is available, why complain about it coming out?
The game was a full experience with plenty of hours of gameplay... just because they want to further add to that value doesn't hurt you in any way.