My view on DLCs

[Anthile]

Various RPGs taught me the harsh lesson to never store stuff in containers that don't explicitly belong to me.

[Grizzly]

What do you mean "integrated with the main campaign"? Broken Steel is the only one you need to play through the main game for, whereas the other four can be attempted at any time - but "mid level" is recommended, with Point Lookout really needing a fairly well-developed character as it's fairly hard.

The problem is that the Fallout DLCS are not well implemented into the campaign at all. You basically get tons of pop up messages when you leave the starting area, and have 4 extra radio broadcasts (I understand that Lonesome Road is meant specifically for you as the character personally, but I had this problem with FO3 and Oblivion as well, so I just installed the DelayDLC mod after five minutes of playing, and thus have not really listened to Lonesome Road stuff yet).

[Smashbox]

Incidentally, any word on what form Skyrim's DLC will take?

[Wizardry]

Various RPGs taught me the harsh lesson to never store stuff in containers that don't explicitly belong to me.

Yeah, but that's just old technology (with severe memory and storage space limitations) causing areas to reset every time you re-enter them. And in the Infinity Engine's case, where the engine is so rigid that any significant graphical change in a zone requires a complete new zone to be made to replace it, causing items to be lost during the switch.

None of those problems should be relevant today.

[Althea]

The problem is that the Fallout DLCS are not well implemented into the campaign at all. You basically get tons of pop up messages when you leave the starting area, and have 4 extra radio broadcasts (I understand that Lonesome Road is meant specifically for you as the character personally, but I had this problem with FO3 and Oblivion as well, so I just installed the DelayDLC mod after five minutes of playing, and thus have not really listened to Lonesome Road stuff yet).

Oh, that's definitely true. They're not seamless at that moment in time and one could argue that they just "hang" over you until you've done them, but I'm not sure how else they could really integrate them beyond the BioWare method of adding an NPC that you interact with. I liked how the NV stuff in particular was made up of four different locales which almost visibly took you out of the Mojave wasteland. To me, that was pretty cool.

Incidentally, any word on what form Skyrim's DLC will take?

As far as I know, it's going to be the usual Bethesda stuff, i.e. mega-great value story packs.

[Kadayi]

That was a massive design flaw in ME2. All of the non-N7 armour sets have non-removeable helmets - Inferno, Terminus, Cerberus, Collector, Blood Dragon (DA:O set).

Yeah I really don't even understand why they bothered tbh. The armour was never viable from a gaming perspective.

He was there from release. Warden's Keep was Day 0/1 DLC.

There was something vaguely egregious about it nevertheless because it broke the 4th wall in terms of the experience.

[deano2099]

The flaw was that chests weren't chests in Dragon Age: Origins. In Baldur's Gate, for example, chests were things you could repeatedly interact with. You could take items out of them just as you could put items into them. You could leave items in any random chest, leave the zone, come back 10 days later and retrieve them all. Dragon Age: Origins had this terrible streamlined design where chests were merely item collection points.

But how often did you actually use that functionality? Or did you just have 1-3 chests where you stashed all your stuff (because, of course, chests being infinitely big is wonderful classical design while chests being infinitely small is terrible).

[Wizardry]

But how often did you actually use that functionality? Or did you just have 1-3 chests where you stashed all your stuff (because, of course, chests being infinitely big is wonderful classical design while chests being infinitely small is terrible).

I didn't need to in Baldur's Gate because of the small number of worthy magical items. In Baldur's Gate 2 I used that functionality a lot. My stronghold was filled with treasure. I used multiple containers as a way to sort the items, even though each container was effectively limitless as you said.

And yes, infinitely large containers is better than infinitely small containers. Why? Because infinitely small containers means no containers at all. Dragon Age: Origin had containers. They weren't infinitely small because you could find items in them. It's just that they effectively became infinitely small as soon as you took all the items out of them.

In a perfect RPG all containers will be limited by their size. But as it stands there's just no way anyone can claim that Dragon Age: Origin's container system is better than what we had as far back as 1990 (when persistent worlds started becoming feasible).