27 January 2010

Poet Costume DLC in Dante's Inferno: More DLC the World Doesn't Want/Need

Started playing Dante's Inferno this week. The game, despite high production values and highbrow source material, isn't all that surprising or exciting. (More on the game itself when the review airs in a couple weeks.)

A few things that occurred to me while playing:

1. Will future lazy college students play this game instead of reading the Cliffs Notes of The Divine Comedy?

2. Will you be interested in purchasing the Poet Costume when the DLC becomes available in February? No? Then how about you, sir? No again?

3. I understand that games, like this one, are expensive to make, and that DLC can extend the life of a game. But if publishers are selling Poet Costumes, and--glancing further down the list--"New In-Game Abilities" (could they be more vague?), maybe game makers are pushing too hard to create things that no one wants, or needs.

The last time I bought DLC was for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

I played through the extra levels, but I barely remember what I did in them, or who I did it to. The levels had none of the narrative gravity of the original game. They were well made, but were also forgettable, barely qualifying as diversions. They were a few hours of white noise that did nothing to enhance--or detract--from the original experience.

When I want more The Force Unleashed, it's the main game I think about and crave, and not the DLC.

I realize that consuming DLC is a completely voluntary enterprise. But how much of it is necessary? How much of it needs to be in the world?

Have you tried watching Deleted Scenes segments from DVDs? The reason those scenes were cut from the final product are usually painfully obvious.

Or imagine if Coppola suddenly decided to add 20 minutes of footage to The Godfather II. We'd be curious about it, and we'd all want to see it, but would it enhance the original in any tangible way?

Ditto for most DLC. It's cool in theory, but if the DLC was truly an integral part of the main game, it would have been part of the main game.

You know who I feel bad for? I feel bad for the guy who has to show up at Visceral Games on Wednesday morning, February 10th, still hungover from the Dante's Inferno launch the night before.

The poor guy has to munch some Advil, then get back to work on that "Poet Costume" the world doesn't want, or need.

10 comments:

  1. I agree with you on the DLC, as I often feel very plotted against to take my money by the game companies. The Force Unleashed is a good example, as there was no way I could possibly not get the extra content despite its disconnect from the story. However, laying some smack on Boba Fett, and although slightly internally conflciting, on Obi Wan. sorry to hear about CG, i really liked that site...lots of hours at work passed...glad to be able to still read your stuff on the web and of course on reviews on the run.

    Jason

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  2. DLC in Fallout 3 was a game changer. That's the key, I think. You can't just tack on a new room with eight dudes in it. They have to be new episodes.

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  3. To be honest I think you're being far too picky, the ammount of effort and programming that goes into these games on the whole, i think It's an added bonus that the programmers actually sit around after their finished and decide, yes we want to write miles and miles of more boring incomprehesible code that will mean gamers can squeez that little bit more out of the game. Be grateful, or write your own games...

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  4. I want the damn poet costume!

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  5. uhhhhmmm..PS3 owners get the DLC for free :S

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  6. i've already been screwed over by dlc TWICE. i bought the killzone wasteland bullet map pack a month after it came out. it was the biggest pain in the ass to find people playing the map pack. i'd be lucky if i found a game that was 3 vs 3. then just a few days ago i was stupid enough to buy the resistance 2 multiplayer map pack. i had played the game after a long time and was enjoying the multiplayer so much that i decided to log on to the psn store and see if they had more maps. well after paying 6 bucks and downloading a precious 1 gb worth of addon content (i have a 40gb ps3 which is filled to the brim with content) i was annoyed to find that NOBODY was playing the godamn maps at all. after creating a game on the new maps and sitting around for 10 minutes i was able to find one person to play a game with. moral of this story is that you shouldnt ever buy multiplayer dlc if the game isnt call of duty or halo.

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  7. play fable 2 with DLC and it is much better

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  8. Yeah, I can agree with you about a lot of DLC, but then there is some that's really well made and I couldn't do without. I think someone already mentioned the Fallout 3 DLC. Also, the DLC Bioware has been producing as of late has also been rather top notch. I bought and enjoyed every single content pack released for Dragon Age. These are the DLCs that this current download system has been designed for.

    I remember when I was a little boy, playing my Nintendo and SNES. After beating certain games (FF2 for instance) I would have a whistful feeling, wishing there was someway I could have more of this excellent game. Well now there is such a way. What sucks is, so many game makers use this system to milk players for what they got with what you said, DLC nobody wants or needs. Or worse yet, Dante's inferno now has a way to buy Experience points for use in game. That's just terrible.

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  9. Dante's Inferno is game to much interesting to left playing in this moment, when I saw the game for the first time I think in Kratos and Jericho Cross in a same game, you know if you see the abilities of Dante in this game are almost the same than Jericho and the action in the games is similar to god of war.
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