EA responds to Mass Effect 3 controversy: Some content “had to be put on the disc” for seamless integration

BioWare had repeatedly denied that the Mass Effect 3 DLC called ‘From Ashes’ was already available on the disc. Now, a player had found proof that this was not the case, and the DLC character could be unlocked by easily modifying the PC version of the game.

EA has released a statement saying that it’s not a new practice, and they’ve done that before with Zaeed and Kasumi in Mass Effect 2 to ensure proper integration.

Here’s the video showing how you can unlock Mass Effect 3’s DLC character with complete instructions:

EA has responded to this video and the general controversy surrounding the day 1 DLC practice via GameInformer, and this is what they said:

From Ashes is a 600 MB+ download with all new content, including the mission on Eden Prime, new dialogue options and conversations with Javik, new cinematics, the Prothean weapon, and new appearances for all squad members. All of the above content was completed while the main game was in certification and are not available on the disc.

As stated previously, in order to seamlessly integrate Javik into the core campaign, certain framework elements and character models needed to be put on disc. We did something similar with Zaeed and Kasumi in Mass Effect 2.

Please note that you have to download approx. 500MB of data to get the ‘From Ashes’ content, which means that only the DLC character was available in the main game — his mission and dialogues are not available.

This seems to be a really interesting issue and it is difficult to take sides. Earlier Christina Norman who used to work at BioWare had defended the day 1 DLC practice at GDC. She said, “there’s no point in releasing DLC a year after your game has come out when most people have already sold your game back to GameStop three times.”

Where do you stand on this issue? Tell us in the comments section below.