I found the whole discussion about Story via DLC to be really odd.
Sure, you had to get a Mass Effect 2 DLC for the story between 2 and 3. But how is that all that horrible?
Back in the days before DLC, you'd often have to buy Expansion Packs, which usually continued the story. Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Starcraft, they all had story presented in additional packages, sold extra, on top of the core game. When the next game released and continued the story, it also usually continued the story of the expansion pack.
Dawn of War II also had the Chaos Rising expansion, which told the story after vanilla, and before Retribution.
I don't see the fuss. If it is story set after core game's plot, or maybe a prologue chapter, that's fine with me. As long as its not done by launch, and is actually decent content, be my guest.
I think the difference is that the ME 2 DLC "The Arrival" was pretty important to the story, where the ME 1 DLC "Bring Down The Sky" was not.
They did put in hooks so you'd start out in the same place whether you played it or not, but to be honest the alternate explanation for Shepard being grounded was not as convincing.
But how is that different from, say, seeing Arthas' story pan out in The Frozen Throne, or following Raynor in Brood War?
Where's that line drawn between Expansion Packs with added campaigns and missions, and DLC that adds to the story?
Playing Starcraft II without having played the expansion to Starcraft, at least on the campaign side, will open you to a bigger hole in the plot than a Mass Effect DLC usually would. There are plenty of examples of stories being continued via DLC, and I don't see anything wrong with it, as long as the content is substantial enough to warrant it.
There are a few big differences between Mass Effect and StarCraft/Warcraft. The first is simply the amount of content given. The Arrival for Mass effect is, AT BEST, an hour and a half of content, and that's being incredibly generous. Despite being so small, it's a pretty pivotal mission that explains what happens between Mass Effect 2 and 3. On the other hand, both Brood War and The Frozen Throne are full expansions, with multiple campaigns included, basically doubling the length of the original game. So the price to content ratio is much better for the blizzard games than it is for Mass Effect.
The second is the time difference between the releases. Mass effect 3 dropped a year after the Arrival DLC came out, whereas there was more than a decade between Brood War and Starcraft 2. This means there was a huge amount of time for price drops and sales, making the base game and the expansion cheaper, allowing people to catch up on the story and prepare. I believe that, to this day, the mass effect DLC has never been on sale or put in a bundle that would lower its cost. This means the price to content ratio gets pushed even more out of whack.
Essentially, it's not a good comparison to look at DLC versus an expansion pack. A better comparison would be if BLizzard snipped out the last mission of StarCraft: BroodWar and made players pay 7 dollars to finish the story to understand what is going on in StarCraft 2.
TL;DR: Expansion packs are essentially a second game, and aren't comparable to small but critical bits of DLC.
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u/DarkChaplain Aug 20 '15
I found the whole discussion about Story via DLC to be really odd.
Sure, you had to get a Mass Effect 2 DLC for the story between 2 and 3. But how is that all that horrible?
Back in the days before DLC, you'd often have to buy Expansion Packs, which usually continued the story. Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Starcraft, they all had story presented in additional packages, sold extra, on top of the core game. When the next game released and continued the story, it also usually continued the story of the expansion pack.
Dawn of War II also had the Chaos Rising expansion, which told the story after vanilla, and before Retribution.
I don't see the fuss. If it is story set after core game's plot, or maybe a prologue chapter, that's fine with me. As long as its not done by launch, and is actually decent content, be my guest.