Lovely

I hate DLC for all the standard reasons (inflated price, low value, focus on powergaming and fanservice). Actually, "hate" is probably a strong word for something that's easily ignored, which is exactly what I tend to do with DLC. If it comes with a preorder or something, that's fine. But I'm not going to spend extra money to supersize my gaming experience.

However, I made an exception for Leliana's Song for Dragon Age: Origins. Because it has a story and was generally well received, I've been somewhat interested in playing this DLC since it came out - just not interested enough to shell out the $7. I always knew I would pick it up at some point, though. Since it's set in Denerim at night, I wanted to see if there were some areas I could filch repurpose for minor locations in my Rotted Rose mod project.

I started up the game last night and, after being treated to some flashy cutscenes, immediately encountered a serious bug. The titular character - the one you play in the game - is a no-show. She doesn't appear in cutscenes, and her in-game character is represented by the bald girl above instead of the Leliana we came to know (and possibly love) from Origins. Modders will recognize the bald chick as the default appearance for female character models, which usually only appears when something has gone terribly wrong.

Here's the male counterpart. Creepy, eh?

A search of the Bioware forums yielded recommendations to "disable all mods" and "reinstall the DLC and/or the game itself." In other words, the default advice that's given when no one really knows what the problem is.

It's sad that mods are the first suspects anytime anything goes wrong. Sad, but also sadly understandable. Modders come with the full range of skills, from newbie to professional-level, and the quality of the mods follow accordingly. Besides, when you're working on something from the outside - something that is, in places, hanging in delicate balance to begin with - the potential for unforeseeable bugs and conflicts is high. In fact, I have to wonder if this is part of the reason game companies are sometimes reluctant to provide toolsets (Dragon Age 2 didn't include a toolset on release, and neither will The Witcher 2). They complicate things for customer support.

That said, I'm a lot more sympathetic to game companies when they actually try to solve the problem, rather than just pointing fingers. In this particular case, a number of players who've encountered this bug have reported having no mods installed in the first place, yet the problem persists. Others have gone through the rigmarole of removing mods and reinstalling, to no avail (although it seems to work for some). The DLC has been out for over six months, and the last thread reporting this problem was less than a month ago.

As for me, I have only a few standalone mods installed, and I can't really imagine how they would affect a standalone DLC. Given the lack of success other people have had in fixing this problem, I don't think I'll bother with any of the recommended steps. Instead, I think I'll just go back to ignoring DLC.