5punk

I may be late on this, but been trying to check details.

Release date is March 6, 2012, make that March 9, 2012 in the UK.

The game will not be available on Steam (or from Game), but via Origin for digital download, or all the other shops for boxed copies.

Origin's pre-order prices are £35 for the Standard Edition and £55 for the Digital Deluxe Edition. Details are sketchy, but the bonuses included in the DDE are listed as:
70-page Digital Art book
Limited Edition Digital Mass Effect Comic by Dark Horse Comics
Exclusive 4x6 Lithographic print.
N7 - Arsenal Pack
Mechdog Companion
Squadmate Alternate Outfit Pack
N7 Hoodie
Digital Soundtrack
N7 forum collection

With in-game 'pre-order only' items for both versions listed as:
N7 Rifle
AT-12 Raider Shotgun
M55 Argus Assault Rifle
N7 Armour

How a digital picture can be any way lithographic is beyond me, as is how they can justify £20 extra for a bunch of purely digital shit - but telling is that there's no mention at all of the extra companion (other than the dog) rumoured previously.

There doesn't seem to be any sign of a physical collector's edition on PC. Console owners can pick up a collector's copy, with real art books from around £60, which compared to their base-game price of around £40 doesn't look quite so ridiculous, if unlike me your art books won't get dumped in a box somewhere and forgotten about.

Retail prices for the PC edition of the standard game are around £30, and the pre-order bonus is limited to the M55 Argus Assault Rifle.

If you actually log in to Origin, the quotes are that with the Standard game pre-order you get "All available pre-order items" and with the DDE you get "All available bonus content".

This shit is just ambiguous and it's pissing me off. It smells like 0-day DLC (for the rumoured companion) but they don't want to outright say it. Possibly DDE buyers will get that for free, but it isn't guaranteed anywhere. Regular Standard-buying punters would have to pony up, no doubt - but prices are only guesses right now.

As it stands from the information they have provided, for someone like me who doesn't give a flying fuck about art books or extra items, only game story content, there's absolutely no reason to either pre-order from Origin or buy the collector's edition. Which surely can't be what they intended.

I've stated previously I'd pay 150% for game-changing extras present in an enhanced version of a new release, but the Origin prices make this 157% as well as breaking the £50 barrier, which is not something I can justify to myself as a single-game purchase, no matter how awesome it might be.

So, without any benefits I'm at all interested in from preordering, and the question mark over DLC, I'll be grabbing a retail copy at a reasonable price once all the dust has settled and somehow have to muddle through the game with my already utterly awesome Kitty Shephard without any bonus items. Actually, I'll probably just wait.

Marketing fail.

I had been trying to get hold of a collectors edition of ME3 for some time now and as soon as I heard that the order from GAME were not being honored I did the right thing and dived straight into zavvi and collared myself one of the now nicely free'd up copies. Ace for me, sucks to be some poor bastard at work who doesn't get the information until he gets home.
The bits I am interested in are the art book and the pic and the box to go with my other special editions.

Pffft, Digital Deluxe Editions are bullshit, what a con. If I was invested in this game I'd be quite annoyed by all this, even without the assumption the 0-day gameplay/character DLC. I did really enjoy the previous ones, but I'm not desperate. Like FJ I'm happy to sit back and wait. As there's always the alternative digital download options I'm sure I can play the whole package if I wanted to, without the ludicrous price tag, legal and moral implications aside.

If EA aren't careful they're going to destroy any trust for the Bioware brand.

The collector's edition seems to extremely elusive, I had a thread that listed all the sellers in all the regions but I lost it. Play.com still has some though, that's where I pre-ordered mine.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0vrJ-y2zM[/media]

TotalBiscuit is a bit of a drama queen.

Personally, his argument falls at almost the first hurdle, as one of the things he is stating as fact is more just his opinion. "This is a very important bit of the game, and means they have cut content before release to be able to sell it. This means that the product on the shelf is not feature complete" (or words to that effect, I cant be bothered to go back and get an exact quote. Its close enough). I have a couple of problems with this statement.

1) How the fuck does he know how important to the game this is? Has he played the whole game yet? This game that isn't out yet? It sounds to me more like something that, whilst very interesting and no doubt adding to the overall story, is *not* an essential bit of the game. It doesn't sound to me like not having it will mean that the story makes less sense, which is what he is making out, and I cant see how he can have any proof to the contrary.

2) Why does the fact that its coming out at release mean it was "cut"? Cut implies that it was supposed to be in there and has been removed. Why does he think that it wasnt always planned to be like this? It all sounds very "side mission" to me, which means it may well be something they added late in development as a fun bit of bonus lore.

Actually, listening on a bit more, he has said more things I think are wrong:

"Everything that is complete before launch should be available to everyone who buys the game. What you do with things you make after launch is up to you".

What? Thats just absurd. How is what you can charge for related in any way to when you made it? The only logical reason I can think of is that he thinks that if the people working on paid DLC had not been doing that, they would have been working on the main product instead, but that's a rather naive view of business: If the people working on paid DLC were not doing that, they probably wouldn't be working. Or they would be working on a different game. Or they would be working on the main game, but it would just be in development for slightly less time. Less DLC doesn't automatically mean more main game content.

Ah, listening a bit more, he has expressed his reason for thinking its so important to the story. As I expected, its all entirely hypothetical. Without going in to detail for those who havent watched and dont want spoilers, imaine that instead of Mass Effect we are talking about Skyrim. Now imagine that the DLC he is talking about is...oh, say a companion dragon. His argument is that it must be super important to the story, because Skyrim is all about dragons. Which is retarded.

In short: TotalBiscuit is being a bit of a tit.

Wait, the digital deluxe edition has an N7 hoodie? What, a digital one or a real one? I'm decreasingly interested in the game thanks to all the pre-release bollocks, but I think if you buy the hoodie on its own it's about £50, so I'd buy it for that alone.

I understand where he is coming from. When I realised that I would have to buy an addon pack to get the same game content as the collectors I felt a bit exploited, when I started comparing prices for DDelux and the (at the time) out of reach collectors I was very pissed off - I'm still pissed that the price is so much for digital things. Day 0 DLC is annoying and exploitative but in no way are we "entitled" to any of it, there TB has it totally wrong, Bioware could pull this game tomorrow never to be seen again and we could do nothing.

Joose wrote:TotalBiscuit is being a bit of a tit

again

All that shit about weapons and stuff does kinda make sense, but fuck that! I worked to get a full 30pt hall of monuments in GW - I want special shit in GW2, and I want it shiny and killy - I worked for it others didn't. Buying it is a bit, um, yeah. If you allow it in single player people then think it is OK in multiplayer (not ME specifically, it is coop after all) and that is definately not so. Oooh, soapbox...

Dog Pants wrote:Wait, the digital deluxe edition has an N7 hoodie? What, a digital one or a real one? I'm decreasingly interested in the game thanks to all the pre-release bollocks, but I think if you buy the hoodie on its own it's about £50, so I'd buy it for that alone.

Hahaha, nope. It is part of Shepherds on ship wardrobe

Dog Pants wrote:Wait, the digital deluxe edition has an N7 hoodie? What, a digital one or a real one?

Digital, or I would be tempted to get that.

As far as Day 0 DLC and the like is concerned, I'm not sure I understand why people find it quite so upsetting. Its only exploitative if you let yourself be exploited, surely? There is nothing *forcing* you to get it. I'm going to follow my normal method of ignoring it entirely and enjoying what will probably be a perfectly good enjoyable game in its own right. Its what I've done with every other day 0 DLC so far, and its served me pretty well.

In fact, that's made me think: Day 0 DLC is not uncommon now, and everyone always goes on about how it ruins things, but can anyone name me a game that was good with the DLC, but bad without, thereby spoiling the game if you didn't fork out? I'm struggling to think of any myself.

I suppose it's just indicative of the gaming community's sense of entitlement when it comes to game content. It's reared it's head particularly this time because we got so much ME2 content for free, some people expect that same degree of charity this time around too. On that note, i think the Prothean DLC will probably carry the same weight as Zaed did, mildly inconsequential at best. I'll have to hold off on getting this game anyway for money reasons so maybe there will be some good deals when i can afford it.

I think there is a massive misconception about day 1 DLC packs. When you have to deal with Microsoft's certification process, you have lots of time between finishing your game and getting it certified and hitting launch day. Pretty much all day 1 DLC is created after the main game is 100% done and sent off to be certified/manufactured/shipped/sold.

A digital hoodie?

Dicks.

A few people on OcUK have completed this already - reports are the ending is a little disappointing/confused. Apparently comes in around 20 hours. I didn't really rate ME2 much but I'll wait for a few more opinions - probably going to be sale job for me, though.

Yeah, I think I'll be picking it up on a Steam sa... wait, it's not on Steam is it? I probably won't end up getting it then. I only tend to get pre-order purchases on disk. Sorry ME3, your own bad publicity has put you out of the runnings for my money by the looks of it.

I liked the others, so I ordered the cheapest version on disc and will be playing it (once, probably).

I played a few hours last night, game is pretty fucking great so far. They shift back a lot of the character stuff towards Mass Effect 1. I think it's a good middle ground between the ridiculous loot of ME1 and the utter lack of loot in ME2. You pick up the base versions of different weapons and weapon class mods (i.e. SMG mods, Assault Rifle mods). Each gun is upgradable.

Extra Creditz took a look at the Day 1 DLC phenomenon.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/mass-effect-3-dlc

I do love that series, its very informative and intelligently written. I wish they would stop making the presenter sound like is Helium Man though.

I wonder if TotalBiscuit has watched that...