Soooo....Mass Effect 3

[Lissa]

I see the new trend on the Lounge is start threads with "So,..."

Mass Effect 3 is a double-edged sword with me. I adore the first two games, but like many, I have serious doubts about the 3rd. It's a full-on EA game, and look what they did to Dragon Age 2. Don't tell me that Bioware's image isn't seriously damaged after that debacle. Let's look at some other factors, as well:

• Multiplayer - why? The obvious cynical answer is to combat piracy. Introducing a multiplayer component into a game that has absolutely no need for it, and for which its fans don't want it, is a classic EA move. Want to make a multiplayer Mass Effect game? Then make a multiplayer Mass Effect game. The intellectual property that Mass Effect represents allows for an endless stream of spinoff games (RTS, FPS, you-name-it). Don't mess with what works, though - your single-player Mass Effect game trilogy. EA claims that development effort on multiplayer won't affect the single-player part of the game. Bull. Then later, they say that multiplayer activities will have some (small) impact on the single-player storyline. Call me a crusty curmudgeon, but go f*** yourselves, EA.
  
• DLC. Let's say you hear about this awesome thing called Mass Effect 2, and you go out today and buy it for $5. Hey, it's an old game, they're cheap now. You play it and go "wow, that was awesome! I want to play more!" So, you look around for DLC and discover this treasure trove of gaming additions: Kasumi, Shadow Broker, Overlord, great bonus missions and new content to see. Want to get them all? That'll be $42 for years-old content. EA's new policy is clear: they will want you to shell out $50-$60 for Mass Effect 3, and you know there will be anywhere between $50-$100 of DLC released afterwards. Once again, go f*** yourselves, EA. Not buying your game, sorry. The very mechanism that EA uses to milk more cash out of a game is the same mechanism that makes me not buy it to begin with. Your DLC should be F-R-E-E as a bonus on your Origin platform for people who legitimately purchase the game. If you come out with some huge new content patch that you want to release as an expansion, fine. But don't release small 2-hours-of-gameplay patches for 10 bucks and never lower the price even when the full base game costs only half that now. They don't seem to realize that this drives away business, especially when it becomes apparent the DLC is made up of things they just cut out of the final release so they could charge for it later.
  

If you couldn't tell, I'm not buying ME3 when it comes out. And I'm a huge fan of the first two games.

I don't know where you've been looking of late with the DLC, but if you wait, much like with the game on occassion, you can grab a large bundle of DLC off Steam for a really good price (there was a deal some time back on the original Dragon Age where you paid $20 and got everything for DA 1 -- main game, awakenings, stone prisoner, the keep, Lilianna's Song, etc. You can also find bundles that EA does. But there is a downside as well, sometime the DLC is really a miss such as the final DLC for ME 2 which was way too short for the price they wanted. It filled in a lot of the story and set the stage for 3 for sure, but was it worth the money they wanted, not really.

And the piracy isn't what they're really trying to stop, that aspect was already handled in the prior ME 2 and DA 1 and 2 requiring a persistent internet connection. The real culprit here is that of the secondary market, selling used versions of the game where EA gets nothing. I agree that this is kind of a pissy thing to do, but that's what they're trying for with the multiplayer aspect by requiring each person to have a "pass" and the "pass" comes with a new game and the code will allow you to play multiplayer, but if someone has registered the multiplayer pass, you can't play multiplayer in the secondary market. Think of it as using the MMO model where the disks are effectively useless once you use the key.