No Downloadable Characters In Dragon Age: Inquisition

According to IGN, in an interview with OXM, Dragon Age Inquisition creative director Mike Laidlaw said there will not be any post-launch add-on characters in the latest Dragon Age title.

"“Because of how deeply enmeshed in the system companion characters are, we can’t just add them on the fly, part of them has to be shipped on the disc,” he said. “[This] has led to criticism that we’re forcing people to pay for content they already own.“It’s not the case, but we’ve decided this time to not go that route. There will be no DLC party members.”"

This does not mean you will be limited to a small party, however, as it’s been confirmed that Dragon Age Inquisition will have nine party members to choose from. No word on how many in a party at any given time, but given Bioware’s history, yourself and two companions is a pretty safe bet. Already confirmed for the game are Cassandra, Iron Bull, Sera, Solas, Varric and Vivienne along with rumors that Alistair will be back as well but if he’s still a party member is up in the air if indeed he does return.

Bioware certainly has a history with add-on characters, such as Sebastian in Dragon Age II and Javik from Mass Effect 3. While they can certainly add more to the story, these have more often been criticized for trying to squeeze more money out of gamers for something that is already included in the disc, as Laidlaw said.

Personally, I’ve never had a huge problem with DLC that’s already on the disc as long as you aren’t cutting off access to a completely necessary chunk of the game. I can’t speak to every case but I’ve played through pretty much every Bioware game released on consoles, and while additional characters certainly added depth to their respective games for the most part, it certainly never felt like the game would be missing something essential if you never got them. Reacting negatively to that seems mostly to be a kneejerk reaction with no real basis behind it.

What do you think, Gamesided readers? Yay or nay on on-disc DLC? Let us know in the comments!