Mass Effect 2 – Zaeed: DLC Or Already On Disc?

*Spoilers ahead*

Last August at Gamescom OneLastContinue delegates Simon Williams, Kapil Bhatt and myself were able to get an early look at Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 and whilst it’s an understatement to say we were blown away, it was what lay beneath that really gave us reason to gasp.

The reason we were so surprised at Mass Effect 2 was due to Simon being able to access the debug menu of the title simply from two face button presses, and on the public show-floor debug unit no less, giving us access to a wide range of information such as a character lists, locations, and weapons.  We spoke to EA last August with regards to this information and we came to what you may call a Gentleman’s Agreement, promising that we wouldn’t divulge the information so far in advance so that “we wouldn’t screw” with their plans for promoting the title.  Therefore we sat on this information since then, and whilst the game hasn’t been released yet we’re mere hours away from the worlds first reviews coming via the Internet so it’s fairly safe to say that we aren’t stepping on as many toes as we could have been.

In my original write up for OneLastContinue, since abandoned, I wrote:

“As you can see on the image posted there are ten possible characters who you are able to ‘acquire’ as the menu puts it, and as the character of Grunt was recently confirmed at Gamescom there’s no way that the names could be placeholders.  The debug menu also tells us that this build came from May 20th 2009 so it seems we have a genuine character list on our hands. We were also able to grab a closer screenshot of the names which you can see below.”

One of those names, as you can see, is the recently announced DLC mercenary character Zaeed. Whilst we were browsing the list at Gamescom we knew about Thane, Grunt had been recently revealed, and we were glad to see the return of Garrus and Tali.  Slightly disappointed not to see Wrex but as the three of us had different feelings on him we let that one slide.  What we did realize is that we were actually looking at the squad roster, as it was set, from May 20th 2009.  What’s the big deal you ask?  Zaeed has been announced as free “day one DLC” for first hand buyers of Mass Effect 2 with access to the Cerberus Network.  Sure he’ll be available for $15 to those who get a second hand copy of the game but is that really enough?

My main problem lies with whether or not Bioware are merely unlocking a character already present on the disc, or have removed him completely in order to prevent consumers from having an excuse for waiting on the game appearing on the second-hand market.  I have no problem with Bioware and Electronic Arts taking precautionary measures with regards to the Cerberus Network in order to make sure that the consumer who gets the most value for money is the first time buyer, as well as maximizing profits of course, more it’s the method employed in doing so that gets me.  I’ve emailed EA’s press team to try and find out if he’s actually DLC, or unlockable content., and if it is indeed the latter should second hand buyers have to pay for content they already own on disc?  If you recall Namco faced much anger from the 360 community for the DLC debacle surrounding Beautiful Katamari, and rightly so.  On another note, if you’re interested in looking at a list of weaponry you can look at, and watch that here.  And for those who think this information may just be fake then here’s an incredibly short in-game video taken that shows the debug menu, albeit in slightly blurry format.

Until then start thinking who the characters of Kasumi and Jack may be.  They’re not Miranda and Jacob as they were in the playable demo, named as such, during the Gamescom demo so are we looking at future DLC, or unrevealed characters?

*UPDATE – I didn’t catch on that Subject Zero was Jack, not sure how that slipped past me, but as commenter Reece pointed out Kasumi is indeed a playable squad member in the game.*