Dragon Age 2 - "Signature Edition" Preorder Upgrades

BioWare has announced an upgrade to the "Signature Edition" of Dragon Age 2 for those that preorder before January 11 2011. Their preorder link shows a handful of popular NA retailers so I'm not clear on the international situation. Here are the goodies:

Contains the full version of Dragon Age II plus $20 of additional content including:

• A download code for a bonus playable character and missions
• Downloadable game soundtrack
• Exclusive in-game digital armory featuring multiple weapons
• Additional downloadable items

More information.

Dragon Age 2 with twice the DLC.

And all that stuff is worth $20, really?

Originally Posted by azarhal
Dragon Age 2 with twice the DLC.

And all that stuff is worth $20, really?

Could be that the character is part of DA2's Project Ten Dollar addition (If you remember with DA:O, Shale was advertised in the exact same way - As was Warden's Keep with certain editions of the game), which would easily fill half of that requirement.

Soundtrack could be ~$7 (They're generally £7 on Amazon UK as MP3 downloads) and that leaves ~$3 for the items, which is seemingly in line with the existing ME2 item packs in terms of quantity : price ratio.

Here we go again !!! Just give every paying customer the same exact game. the in game exclusives and the DLC for this over rated game is rediculous.

Originally Posted by rich ruffo
Here we go again !!! Just give every paying customer the same exact game. the in game exclusives and the DLC for this over rated game is rediculous.

That is what I thought also when I heard about this.Its the same as the first one with different versions being released.

Originally Posted by rich ruffo
Here we go again !!! Just give every paying customer the same exact game. the in game exclusives and the DLC for this over rated game is rediculous.

Huh? The game hasn't BEEN rated - it's months from release!

The extra stuff costs $0 if you buy before Jan 11. Even when the price does go up, so what? Lots of games will give you extra content for extra $'s.

huh ! your slick! im sure u know what i mean If not … Anything that has to do with DA special edition,collectors edition,pre order exclusives for Best Buy,Gamestop,Amazon, unfinished ,half measured DLC=Gimmicks. Im tired of the certain game companies trying to take advantage of gamers . EA and Bio have alot of BS tied in with their marketing techniques. Zloth , NOTHING IS FREE .

Games are becoming a mainstream market, which uses every trick available to maximize profit. That is the nature of our capitalistic market.

Just like every other product available there will be true quality products available, but also a lot more trash to sift through to find the gems.

As for marketing: bullshit has been a part of marketing since forever. (Shampoo with dihydrogen-oxide! Wow, that must be good with such an exotic chemical inside it!)

Are you really suprised by this?

Hehe, this is EA being blatantly EA - and they've clearly taken over the "creative" spirit of Bioware - and I'm sure the leads are supporting this direction, convincing themselves it's for the better. I mean, more money is ALWAYS better - isn't it?

I wonder when they will release official bioware inks so i can tattoo Morrigan on my forehead .

Extra railroading missions sound like fun !

Fed up of waste of money DLC in DA1 and will wait for the complete edition.

Originally Posted by rich ruffo
huh ! your slick! im sure u know what i mean If not … Anything that has to do with DA special edition,collectors edition,pre order exclusives for Best Buy,Gamestop,Amazon, unfinished ,half measured DLC=Gimmicks. Im tired of the certain game companies trying to take advantage of gamers . EA and Bio have alot of BS tied in with their marketing techniques. Zloth , NOTHING IS FREE .

Collector's Editions (And Special Editions) have existed for many years. You're not required to buy them, and the only bonuses they generally give you in-game is limited to a few items, it's mostly out of game bonuses - Such as the soundtrack - that make up the bulk of the edition.

I find it hard to believe that this "mystery character" will be signature edition only - It's a waste of money, development time and effort. I would be very surprised if it's not DA2's PTD "benefit", i.e. this character is to DA2 what Shale is to DA:O and Zaeed is to ME2.

Pre-Order bonuses aren't this great evil that everyone thinks they are. If you want everything, then you have to stump up the cash to get them. I do think that releasing them after a number of months as a DLC pack is a good idea, yes, but I don't think it's necessary. If you don't fulfil the requirements of the offer, you don't get to benefit from it. Perhaps I should complain about Sainsburys having buy-one-get-one-free on crisps, even though I shop at Tesco? It's so unfair that they're putting them on offer, isn't it?

Originally Posted by coaster
Fed up of waste of money DLC in DA1 and will wait for the complete edition.

That's the correct reaction. As we've seen with DA1 it doesn't even take that long until it comes out. So just wait for a bundle you consider attractive.

There's definitely nothing wrong with creating a full game, and then breaking it up into smaller bits - to maximise profit.

That is, if you don't care about getting less for the same investment.

Naturally, the people on top who profit from this thinks it's a wonderful idea.

When we have players supporting it, and clapping their hands - we make this kind of thing that much easier to get away with.

The real issue, though, is that you can never "prove" that's what they're doing, because you have no idea what they're doing "behind the scenes". Maybe they're actually creating a full separate game, and then they start developing this extra content with a team afterwards. Maybe it was never planned to be broken up, and so forth.

So, it comes down to trust and common sense. Personally, I see very little in the way of current DLC content that's worth the money. Also, I see most of them as something that's either complete crap and superfluous, or something that should definitely have been part of the original game. Mafia 2 is an excellent example, where the creators (or publishers) themselves have been caught lying about what was part of the original game.

I'm not sure why other people think it's a nice approach to take out aspects that would make the original game feel "complete", and selling them off separately.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
There's definitely nothing wrong with creating a full game, and then breaking it up into smaller bits - to maximise profit.

I disagree. To me, this would be as if we had a novel, but got the chapters beyong the first one only much later, and we'd have to pay for it.

The result - if you project this development into the future - will be a much fragmented market of much fragmented products, so to say.

At one point, EVERYTHING will be delivered [like] in puzzle pieces - until the people get either used or bored to/of it.

The fashion - if we consider DLCs as a fashion right now - might go back like a pendulum that goes back at one point. In the fashions industry, they say that no fashion is gone forever, but instead they ALL come back sooner or later.

Which might mean that at one point, when the "Alleinstellungsmerkmal" , the "unique selling point" of a DLCs is gone, companies might seek something *new* to attract customers - as customers are *always* attracted by *new* things (like this blood & gore thing in Dragon Age, which hasn't been there in *that* form on the RPG market, except for Funcom's barbarian MMORPG, maybe), so, they (the companies) might believe at one point that a non-DLC-game package might be something NEW, then - after 1-2 decades, maybe.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Are you really suprised by this?

Hehe, this is EA being blatantly EA - and they've clearly taken over the "creative" spirit of Bioware - and I'm sure the leads are supporting this direction, convincing themselves it's for the better. I mean, more money is ALWAYS better - isn't it?

Oh, I think this is clearly Bioware's doing.

They've done it since Jade Empire (Bonus characters with the limited edition) and back then they were still independent as studio (It was months before they joined Pandemic in that investment co-op and two years before EA bought up the co-op) but did have a publishing contract with Microsoft. EA wasn't in the picture then.

Originally Posted by JuliusMagnus
Oh, I think this is clearly Bioware's doing.

They've done it since Jade Empire (Bonus characters with the limited edition) and back then they were still independent as studio (It was months before they joined Pandemic in that investment co-op and two years before EA bought up the co-op) but did have a publishing contract with Microsoft. EA wasn't in the picture then.

I really have no idea who's to blame, and I wouldn't be surprised.

But if I had to take a guess who's the "inspiration" for this kind of decision, it would be a combination of EA and Bioware top people. Top people at big houses share the same desires, and I guess that's why they let themselves be bought in the first place.

Originally Posted by JuliusMagnus
Oh, I think this is clearly Bioware's doing.

They've done it since Jade Empire (Bonus characters with the limited edition) and back then they were still independent as studio (It was months before they joined Pandemic in that investment co-op and two years before EA bought up the co-op) but did have a publishing contract with Microsoft. EA wasn't in the picture then.

Actually, one of the 4 co-founders of Elevation Partners which "owned" BioWare and Pandemic, John Riccitiello, was the CEO of EA when the deal happened: EA gave $860 millions in shares, about 40% or the company, to EP to acquire the two studios. And closed down Pandemic.

The BioDocs totally trust Riccitiello too, it's why they accepted EA's deal. I have no idea when Riccitiello started to "hang" around the BioDocs, but I suspect that it might have been months before BioWare got "merged" with Pandemic.

I recently purchased ESCHALON:BOOK 2 its a little empty but its a really good rpg, i checked there web site to see whats going on and they just anounced an expantion pack 5-10 hrs long and it really is free . When book 3 is released they will certainly have my buisness. Everybody knows the ride that DA took with customers ,even die hards were tired when they released the Ultimate Edition . Look … the company and devs can do what they want to make money, all im saying is customers get tired or smart to it and start making better choices on games and im not cheap when it comes to my hobbies and feel better giving Basilisk my cash then i do Bio.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I disagree. To me, this would be as if we had a novel, but got the chapters beyong the first one only much later, and we'd have to pay for it.

That is exactly how the book publishing industry works nowadays. When I really started reading SF&F back in the 70s there were actual stand alone novels. Sometimes multiple books were tenuously linked by taking part in the same universe but as for actual trilogies (or whatever-ogies) well, there was Lord of the Rings. Now it is pretty much standard practice that *every* book is going to be a trilogy at least and most of them could be cut down to a single book without losing any real reading value.