When it comes to downloadable content and Dante's Inferno, Visceral and Electronic Arts aren't messing around. In fact, according to a slip that shipped inside the retail game box, they've got it planned through at least through April.
February
Soul Packs
Poet Costume
Animated Feature Film Costume
March
Prequel Level
April
New In-Game Abilities
Trials of St. Lucia
The prequel level refers to the "Dark Forest," which PlayStation 3 owners can get for free (via a redeemable code found inside the game box). According to the description, it "includes a new costume, relic, and prequel level featuring two new enemies, an expanded storyline, and more than 30 minutes of new gameplay!"
"Trials of St. Lucia" is the biggie, though -- a full challenge mode expansion that will allow players to not only design their own challenges, but to fight through them with a second player who will control a second player, the female St. Lucia. Created levels can also be shared and download.
Dante's Inferno is out today, and if you're curious as to how it is, be sure to check out our review.
Contest:
8:20 AM on 02.09.2010
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"Look! We with-held content from your disc! Neener neener!"
I'm loving the Bioware model: "Buy our game free and support the developer, get some free shit day one", but this is just a slap in the face, and I'm sure will encourage more used sales.
Everything in February and March was finished :D
Hideki Kamiya would have included this day one, just like Bayonetta. Let's hope more devs follow suit, given the game's sales.
I think he is talking about the prequel level.
"Yeah. It's quite simple to explain, but I do think players are entirely right – if the content is on the disc already there's absolutely no justification for studios to offer DLC which is essentially an unlock key or something. But I guess what doesn't come across to some people is that when a game hits the shelves, it's probably been wrapped up for four or five months in any true sense.
The time between finishing the game and retail is usually spent on debugging – you can spend months and months just fixing errors and glitches to ensure the product is finished and ready for release. Then when you factor in the console approval and the manufacturing process, you're talking about a substantial part of the game's overall development time.
While all of that stuff is going on, it tends to free up resources at the studio, so they can make items that can be added on as DLC afterwards. I think people outside of that process assume that the development of a game and its DLC are executed in parallel, and that's really not the case."
My point is, a ton of Eastern Project Directors pack their games full of content. Kojima filled the MGS 4 blu-ray disc to the brim. Kamiya packs in a ton of content, to the point where Bayonetta is probably the biggest action game (content wise) of all time. Suda 51 does the same for the No More Heroes series, and the list goes on.
Why do Western action games have to be so bare-bones out of the box? An additional difficulty level, and that's it? And people are ok with that?
Seriously? "GO TO HELL AGAIN" isn't intimidating at all.
@ Magnalon- I'm okay with it, cause I judge games on what they have, not what they don't have. I don't go, "well, Bayonetta gave us more stuff, so I'm not going to buy this game that I'm already interested in."
"Why do Western action games have to be so bare-bones out of the box? An additional difficulty level, and that's it? And people are ok with that?"
Sadly, yes. It's the same thing with intrusive DRM measures on PC games. People continue to fork over their money, so the devs have little reason to fix the problem.
Rather than "Go to Hell... Again!" or "Go back to Hell!", I think a more appropriate tagline for all this already-completed-games-not-out-yet DLC would be "Suck it!"
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