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[est]

I just saw this story over at IGN about the DLC being made available for Dead Space and was kind of disgusted.  These packs don't really add anything useful to the game, and in a couple of cases give cheat-like upgrades to weaponry to people willing to pay for it.  I know that there are plenty of people who will buy these packs, but it got me thinking.  I mean, call me naive but I thought that DLC was supposed to be for y'know, useful things like new missions, new levels, or new playable characters where applicable.  What the fuck is this "Download the Astronaut Suit and Weapon Skin Pack, featuring an amazing Astronaut Suit and new skins for the Plasma Cutter, Pulse Rifle, and Ripper!" shit?

So yeah, what do you guys think?  I guess it's only $1-ish for each thing so they aren't killing anyone doing this, but I would definitely feel better about this if they had released say, new story/level content along with these things.  As it stands all of this shit could have been included for free at launch as user-customisable skins, and on the PC this kind of thing has been happening for free in many games for ages.  I don't see this as a good thing.  I see this as a new reason for game devs to discourage 3rd-party mods/skins so that they can release shitty DLC packs like this to scrape up extra change for themselves.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i've pondering this alot lately actually.

i actually just read an article somewhere (i forget where, exactly. Kotaku probably) that featured develpers actually considering making, say, the final boss/dungeon/whatever only available through DLC in some sort of misguided effort to stifle second-hand game purchases. i'm not sure how it was supposed to work exactly but it sounds kind of like a bad omen, to me.

[Blue Kitty]

The best DLC I have seen so far would have to be Bring Down the Sky for Mass Effect.  It didn't change the story line what so ever, but it managed to add a brand new adventure in and let us kill a species that has only been talked about in the encyclopedias.

But man, DLC for horse armor is shit.  If Molynuex announces that you can download new dogs for Fable 2 someone is going to die.

Here's the article SWM was talking about.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i've actually forgiven the Horse Armor fiasco because they actually put out some good stuff for Oblivion after that (though it took a while).

and yeah, Mass Effect is an excellent example of DLC done right.

[Melodic]

Downloadable content is just that -- extra content for the game. It's not part of the game, it's not a necessary addition or patch. It's just extra stuff. Given that context, it's reasonable for any developer to make anything for their game and charge a few bucks for it. Nobody is forcing you to download new skins or new models or new missions, it's just there.

Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine, both Oblivion DLC, were awesome. They added a whole bunch to the story and to the game. They weren't required, and plenty of people never picked them up. That's okay. It was just there. This was coming at a time where, trust me, better and bigger things were being made by the mod community.

[JD]

Guitar Hero can't screw up it's DLC, or they are idiots.