It's not about the content being integrated into the game, it's about what the content is. It's really not difficult to understand.
I mean, I shouldn't have to make absurd examples to get across the idea that some elements of a game or story are more central and necessary than others. When people bring up the idea of the ending as DLC, this is what they're making a point about: there are some specific things that, by their very existence, make the nominal "core game" incomplete, even if the base package technically includes "enough" content judged solely by the numbers.
As I talked about in the last thread about this, the idea of hard budget limits here is extremely implausible. Mass Effect is a big game, with an extremely large budget and a pretty decent amount of room to flex on the exactitudes of that budget. Squadmates, especially storyline-important ones, would be one of the very first things locked down and budgeted around. For this particular content to be part of the game and then cut because of budget concerns it would speak to rampant incompetence on the part of the development staff -- far from further excusing the behavior, it only makes the situation worse.
If you read my original post, you'd see that it was a hypothetical - I said that I was not implying that a hard dollar budget limit was what actually happened, rather I was curious to see if people thought they would have been happier if this character was just excised from the game entirely. I actually agree with you that a hard dollar budget limit was unlikely, which is why I had all the disclaimers saying that I was not trying to imply that that is what actually happened.
I haven't played Mass Effect 3. I probably sound like I'm on the Bioware defense force but honestly, I get what you are saying, it sounds like this is an important character and part of the game, and I understand the outrage.
I have played a fair amount of Mass Effect 2, however. If it's structured similarly, then each character has their dialogue, etc. with other characters, and that character has it's unique mission, where you built their loyalty up with you.
It's not hard to come up with a scenario where they had budgeted time and money for this character from the beginning, but then they ended up running out of time and this character's unique mission was not going to make it onto the disc for launch day. What are your options at that point?
1. Release the game without him or his loyalty mission, then add him in as DLC.
2. Release the game without his loyalty mission, but leave him accessible, then add it in as day one DLC.
3. Cut him from the game entirely since his mission won't be ready and the game will be inconsistent compared to the other characters and release nothing and speak nothing further of him.
4. Delay the game another 4-6 weeks to get him onto the disc. Note that this would push the game out of EA's fiscal year and would screw up all of their financial projections.
(I can think of another scenario where they ran out of disc space on the 360 and/or couldn't find a good place to put his mission on one or both of the discs. Someone more motivated than I am should be able to prove/disprove this scenario, but it is my understanding that if you push the 360 disc size to the limits, it has a very real impact on the efficiency of game testing. I think this is less likely, though.)
Of course, I think a lot of the ill will would be gone if this DLC was free. But I think someone made a business decision that this content was going to make the Collector's Edition more premium in order to make lemonade from lemons (and if it were free DLC, then it hurts the perceived value of the CE).
In all fairness I think captainnapalm's post about how it just feels dishonest rings true - it does feel like a promise broken...but I can see why it happened. Not sure what the best thing to do about it is, though...
