Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Selling Me on DLC!

The concept of episodic content is hardly new to video games. Half-Life 2 popularized the concept with their incredibly spread out six hour experiences which took as long to develop as an Infinity Ward game (which totally showed in their exceptional storytelling, pacing, and tech). Downloadable content has now expanded the concept of iterative development and release cycles, although glorious failures such as Sins: Episodes have proven that it is a method best left to already successful properties In a very real way episodic content is changing boht the way we buy and release games.

Borderlands is an excellent example. Downloadable content for that game can now potentially cost more than the original game did, assuming you bought it at a package price. What’s more it contains features that, by all rights, should’ve been in the original product. Things like item storage, PVP arenas and small, self-contained narratives that might keep casual players interested in the game until the end have all been inserted by the many various DLC packages offered up by Gearbox so far. And who knows how many more they’ll release? Much love to Gearbox, but they way they’ve attempted to monetize their well deserved success has been nothing short of blatant. Still, at least their content is packaged and delivered in a convenient way for their customers and is clearly advertised.

Compare this to Mass Effect 2, a game that launched with DLC in the box. As someone who played Mass Effect 2 on the X-Box (almost entirely so that I could carry over the many playthroughs I’d earned in the previous Mass Effect) in order to use content that I’d purchased with the game I would have to hook up my X-Box Live subscription, which involves generating a new identity since I can’t use my existing Live ID to sign in, since it was created on a computer, download content to my normally offline X-Box and then hook it up to the internet for verification each time I played. All this so I could explore one extra area, get a few scraps of armor, a shitty gun and a lackluster character.

The real goal behind this procedure is to make sure I’ve done the legwork of establishing a conncetion to Mass Effect 2’s virtual storefront when additional content launches later on this year. Bring Down the Sky’s lackluster sales (which likely contributed to Bioware’s decision to stop producing new content for the first Mass Effect) have probably put Bioware into damage control mode as they attempt to find a way to successful sell work they’ve spent a lot of time and effort on to people they know want it, but I find this particular pretty frustrating. In order to access content I’ve already purchased I need to engage a virtual storefront which punishes me for being a PC gamer first and an X-Box gamer second. I understand that they want brand exclusivity but everything on my gaming rig is already stamped with Microsoft’s brand of corporate approval.

Perhaps I’d have the same complaints about Dragon Age if I’d purchased it on the X-Box. But, as with most games I can do so with, I chose to play Dragon Age on the PC, and my DLC experience has, as a result, been considerably less painful. Sure, I once had my install drop all of my downloaded content from a sixty hour experience and refuse to reload it, preventing me from talking to my favorite character and removing all of the epic armor that I’d sunk so much time and money into, but at least it never made me drunkenly slog through menu screens for an hour and a half before informing me that I couldn’t link my X-Box Live account to my Games for Windows Live account, or even to the email which my GFWL account was created under.

Instead I used Steam’s shell to access all of the content and, for the most part, had a chance to enjoy it as intended. While this didn’t inure me enough of their systems to try purchasing the Return to Ostagar expansion, worth 400 Bioware points where each Bioware point is a piece of your soul to be revalued at a later date of Bioware’s choosing, it did make me perk up when the Awakening expansion emerged from Steam’s wondrous bowels. Sure, it cost as much as some full price games (four times as much as my beloved Flotilla!) but Dragon Age: Origins was an iincredible experience, and damnit I’m willing to throw down money to encourage people to make more of them, especially when I do so through a service that remembers my credit card information.

I’ve had precious little time to spend with Awakenings so far. It has been a busy week and social and literary commitments have kept me from spending my requisite 80 hours a week playing games. But three hours in I have to say that it is everything I enjoy in Dragon Age. It features a nice mix of new and old characters, a nice reboot that establishes the stakes of Dragon Age’s world and the sort of people it encapsulates quickly and deftly. Instead of bringing out a “best of” of Dragon Age it offers some nods to previous decisions you’ve had to make. I’ve already seen the fruits of my labor in Origins appear in this game when an old friend paid me a visit and let me know how he was doing.

What’s more impressive is that Awakenings has come so soon after Dragon Age: Origins, and promises so much content. While I haven’t seen an hour count I’d imagine a forty dollar expansion promises at least an additional sixty hours of content, using math derived from the fiirst game. The timing, in fact, is almost perfect. The rush of the new year has ended and I just now feel ready for more Dragon Age. I’d forgotten the quiet catharthis of chopping my way through hordes of Darkspawn with my badass close combat specialized rogue.

What I’m trying to spit out is that Awakenings seems to be the best piece of DLC I’ve seen to date, even better than Half Life’s incredible episodes. Tonally it has hit all the right marks so far, and while its price tag is a bit high I’ve spent enough time with Bioware to know that this is a promise that the game will not fail to deliver. Bioware has never asked for my money without good reason (I assume they needed drugs or something when they released Jade Empire, which is a good enough reason in my mind) and a forty dollar game from them will usually have more content than a sixty dollar game from most developers.

DLC has been a bit of a four letter word of late. Companies have been using it to try and squeeze already tight dollars out of consumers for seemingly asinine pieces of products that would make their gaming experience “more complete.” EA in particular has been bad about this, selling products that impact the balance of multiplayer experiences with a seemingly total lack of concern for their consumers. But Dragon Age’s quasi-expansion has given me hope. While it is clearly an addition and not a standalone product it is, in the tradition of Half-Life’s episodes, more of what made the game released, sooner and for less money. And while my opinion of the product may change as I delve deeper into it, so far it seems to be exactly what I’ve wanted: a larger version of the episodic expansions that let me keep enjoying Half-Life 2 despite the absence of any sort of Half-Life 3.