Bioware's recent game, Dragon Age, had an immense amount of Downloadable Content at launch. I'm not specifically talking about the two extra quest lines: The Stone Prisoner and The Warden's Keep, which were both cut areas from the initial release of the game, and were offered free for those who actually purchased the game.. I'm talking about all the stupid items.
Nearly every first pressing of Dragon Age included the Blood Armor. Preorders from Gamestop included a Memory Band, Guildmaster's Belt, Feral Wolf Charm, and a couple others. Preorders from other places included a Dalish Ring, Lion's Paw, Band of Fire, and other crap. If you bought the Collector's edition, you were treated with a spell book, a helmet, and a staff.
Beyond that, if you created a Character through the PC Character Creator, you'd receive some charm necklace. There's also a Flash game available on DragonAge.com, that will net you 3 items throughout your playthrough.
It's all detailed in this GameFAQ: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/file/950918/58270
It's pretty ridiculous. And there's doing the exact same thing with Mass Effect 2. Preorders from Gamestop include some set of Armor. Preorders from other places will receive a different set of Armor. If you bought Dragon Age and received that Blood Armor, that's unlocked in Mass Effect 2 also.
Also, if you play through the Mass Effect iPhone game, you unlock something in the game too. I think one of the blogs around that time said you unlock an extra side quest where you meet the characters in the iPhone game. That would definitely be better than an item.
There's also this way:
Every specially marked bottles of Dr. Pepper will give you an unlock code. Enter this code at DrPepper.com, and you can choose from a pile of DLC from an assortment of EA games. Each unlock will be transferred to your EA account, and can be accessed from those games.
When I was refueling my automobile this evening, I entered the convenience store and bought the bottles shown above. Unfortunately, Mass Effect 2 unlocks were not available on DrPepper.com at the moment. Maybe that's because Mass Effect 2 isn't out yet? Or maybe, a whole lot of gaming nerds bought a bunch of Dr. Pepper and redeemed all the available codes. Probably the former. I think some blog mentioned there are 5 unlocks for Mass Effect 2 through this promotion. Each one a piece of Armor or a Weapon.
There are 2 other note-worthy pieces of news about the upcoming release of Mass Effect 2 that delight me. The first one is that Bioware has said they plan on supporting Mass Effect 2 through expansions and DLC over the next two years. They plan on doing this with Dragon Age as well, which has a expansion due in March which will add another 20-30 hours to the game.
The other tidbit is that Bioware has stated that they do not plan for the release time between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 to be as long as it has for the first release and next week. They specifically stated that Mass Effect 3 will be released on current generation hardware. It will not be on the Xbox 720, or whatever.
It seems that those "2 years" of expansions and DLC will lead up to the release of the final chapter in the Mass Effect Trilogy, which would be released sometime in 2012. Nice!
Anyways, Mass Effect 2 is released next week! Hopefully, it'll be the "Empire Strikes Back" of the Trilogy, and not "Attack of the Clowns"
I'm quite excited. Mass Effect is my favorite new game franchise spawned in this generation. Its soundtrack is very moody and Sci Fi. It's entire universe is very well thoughout, solid, and lends itself well to telling an interesting story without focusing on all the Science Fiction. It looks amazing. The art direction is diverse, sleek and sexy.
I think the one thing Mass Effect lacked were iconic characters. I really hope the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team talked to each other over the course of development. I think Dragon Age has set the bar for character interactions and distinct personalities. It would be a shame if Mass Effect did not have those moments were you truly feel for the other characters.
Maybe it's hard to build sympathy or empathy for an alien or alien culture? Though, I think District 9 and Avatar did an alright job... just make Humans the bad guys!
Anywho, I can't wait to see how Mass Effect 2 unfolds. ^_^