Many sites already picked up on the Dragon Age: Origins Collector’s Edition via a listing on GameStop that popped up last month, but BioWare is only getting around to making it official now. Even though this is old news for a lot of folks, this week’s unveil does come with a fancy new diagram outlining the CE loot. Seeing what the contents actually look like is a lot different than reading them in a list from a retailer page.
As pictured, the Dragon Age CE — which costs $75 on consoles and $65 on PC, by the way — includes a collectible steel case, a cloth map, a bonus DVD containing a making-of documentary, a concept art video, trailers, wallpapers, game hints and tips and a digital copy of the game’s soundtrack, and three exclusive DLC equipment pieces including a special staff, helmet and book. Buy an original retail copy of Dragon Age (standard or collector’s edition) and you’ll also get two more DLC bonuses: a special suit of Blood Dragon Armor for use in Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, and The Stone Prisoner pack including a stone golem named Shale as a bonus character with hours of new quests and content fleshing out its back-story. For those who hold out and get the game used, The Stone Prisoner pack will be made available separately for $15. So clearly this is BioWare’s way of combating used game sales.
But wait, that’s not all. Even more bonus in-game items are also being offered to pre-order customers. Reserve the game on your platform of choice and you’ll unlock the Memory Band, a ring that adds a +1% experience modifier when equipped and grants the player 1 bonus skill point. By pre-ordering at GameStop you can also get the exclusive Feral Wolf Charm, an item boosting armor and health regen. Other retailers are offering various other exclusive in-game equipment too, so check around. Amazon, for instance, offers a pair of Lion’s Paw boots, while the EA online store offers a ring called the Band of Fire.
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I am still unsure how I feel about so much content being held back and doled out for an additional fee. Of course, I have pre-ordered the GameStop version … but I find the trend disturbing.
Annoys the hell out of me too. It wasn’t too long ago PC games came with a lot of this extra stuff already, no extra cost or anything. Cloth (or at least poster-style) maps and those tin cases used to be standard issue, now you have to pay extra. Hell, I remember buying a number of games that came with little collectible coins or figurines, and they weren’t billed as these grand CEs with jacked up prices.
And the exclusive DLC stuff is even worse. Rationing out different items at different retailers is silly. In-game content held back for the purposes of making gamers pre-order or buy at a certain store is ridiculous. Before this generation a lot of what’s now released as DLC and exclusive pre-order items used to be stuff developers included as fun in-game unlockables right out of the box. Now games are more expensive than ever with content deliberately held back for use as DLC.
It’s a disturbing trend alright!
I don’t mind some stuff – it has really been a while since cloth maps came in ‘standard edition’ boxes … maybe NWN 1 in 2002?
Even offering an in-game weapon or ring or amulet for a pre-order bonus I don’t mind so much, since they are usually ‘level 1’ items taht give a small bonus for the first couple of hours but are soon replaced, meaning you aren’t missing much.
But I know when I grabbed my last CE – NWN2 in 2006, which I got because Best Buy screwed up my pre-order – the price was $10 higher than normal.
Now we have to pay $15 more, and while we seem to be gettig more for that money, some of the content is clearly positioned – as you say – to push folks into buying new games, and CE versus standard editions. It all feels like a money grab – trinkets are one thing (the NWN 2 CE came with a pair of metal rings, one for Lawful Good and one for Chaotic Evil … nice), actual in-game content being withheld … sorry, that just isn’t cool.
Not everything bothers me either. Most of the Dragon Age items aren’t a big deal since, as you say, they are just equipment pieces that really don’t have any major impact on the game. I have no real beef with special costumes and whatnot as bonuses.
I just don’t like the idea of in-game content being made exclusive to a certain segment of a game’s audience. Like the Army of Two pre-order bonus I just posted about. Withholding a full multiplayer mode like that, even for only a month, is just wrong.
Absolutely agree – there is a difference between ‘nifty extras’ and ‘withholding core content’.
And the whole anti-used game stance is also annoying. Empire: Total War forcibly ties the retail box game to your Steam account, thereby crushing used trade / sale … and now an attempt to get rid of Dragon Age makes it worth $15 less. Yuk.
If I didn’t want this game so much I would boycott out of righteous indignation … oh well.