Fast Jimmy wrote...
Il Divo,
I agre and concede that you don't need all or any of the Companions in DA:O aside from Allistair or Morrigan. I also think the game would have been an utter failure without them.
An utter failure? No, probably not. But it would have likely made itself less appealing, especially to consumers who find interacting with Bioware characters to be enjoyable.
But the point is that, for a consumer, any sale is a balance of cost/benefit. I'm guessing you consider DA:O to be worth the $60 you paid for it. We could play a game where I keep raising the cost of the game by a $1 until we eventually reach a point where you would determine that the game's cost doesn't justify your entertainment. Here, the process is happening in reverse: stable game cost, with a bit less content. But I doubt that if you asked a DA:O fan whether the absense of any one character would have ruined DA:O, they would say "yes".
We never get to see Orlais in DA:O. We never get to visit the Qunari homeland. We never get to see Antiva. Do you know why people are clamouring for these locations? The descriptions and vivid detail those companions gave us. For a series that says it is all about the world of Thedas rather than a set character, if they wanted to scrap people falling in love with said world, then, by all means, monetize every companion.
See above. Monetizing a companion is not monetizing every companion. Sure, Bioware could do the latter, but then they run a much greater risk of people re-analyzing how much the base game is worth to them. But removing any one character doesn't make or break a Bioware game for most people, even if we all have our favorites. Hell, if you want a point of comparison, even with these day 1 dlc issues, DA:O, ME2, DA2, and ME3 all still managed at least as many, if not more, companion characters to interact with than ME1 did. No dlc and no EA, ME1 managed less companion options than any other Bioware game before it (NwN aside).
My point is that people upset because of not getting a complete product is a smokescreen. There are a million industries where we gladly throw money without getting all the accessories/utility out of a product. The complaints should be entirely oriented around whether you think you would enjoy a product for a given price. Magically throwing on (or removing) an extra character or mission probably isn't going to change our perception of that.
Ex: I think G.I. Joe 2 looks like a waste of time. I am not going to pay to see it. My judgment of its worth does not require that I take into account the extra $3 for 3D, because the base product is so lacking that it's not worth the cost/benefit analysis.
No companion is worth fifteen dollars. It's just not accurate. People will PAY it, sure. But in a game with over half a dozen companions, dozens of locations and dungeons, nearly a hundred quests and plenty of story, no single mission is worth fifteen dollars, either. If you were to parse up the game like that, a companion would be worth MAYBE three bucks. A full fledged mission with new locations would be worth an extra three, maybe. Although I am working off a full retail price, which obviously is inflated for packaging and retail cuts, which it wouldn't be for a downloaded segment.
A companion (much like a game) is worth whatever people are willing to pay, no more, no less. Personally, I would have thrown down $20 for Javik. I would have done the same in hindsight for any of the DA:O companions, given how much I like them. DA2 characters? Not so much.
Hell, a few posts ago, you admitted that you would pay $100 for a quality game. If DA:O had embraced a day 1 dlc approach for Shale, even at $10-15, that puts you lower than you would have paid for the entire game, everything included.
Bioware has, in my opinion, not made a good base game since DA:O. ME2 was fun, but it had many parts that left a sour taste in my mouth that caused me to not even think about playing more than once, as opposed to ME1, which I played over half a dozen times. DA2 was a much less critically acclaimed game and I believe it critics speak for themselves. And the same goes for ME3.
And this illustrates the core problem: it's not day 1 dlc. You don't like the games Bioware is making, which (for the consumer) should be the real issue. Hell, I hated ME1 with a burning passion and looking back would not have paid the $60 I did at launch. But Bioware having day 1 dlc doesn't magically change the quality/crappiness of ME1 any more than it changes how you feel about their later products. Of the ones you listed, not a one suffer from being unable to understand the narrative or awkward character introductions.
Sebastian is integrated with the same approach as the rest of the DA2 cast (a side mission), ME2's Kasumi and Zaeed benefitted from the recruitment style approach of ME2, and while Javik is interesting as hell to interact with, he offers nothing to stopping the Reaper threat, beyond combat advice.
Modifié par Il Divo, 15 août 2012 - 01:52 .
Retour en haut
