Mass Effect DLC: Bring Down The Sky impressions

*may be spoilery!

So this morning I downloaded Bioware's first downloadable content for their space epic RPG. For 400 MS points or about $5, you get an extra mission that introduces a new race and about 90 minutes of game time.

I was looking really forward for this, and for the most part, it does not disappoint. The mission involves Shepard and his crew stopping a runaway asteroid, set sail by a band of Batarian
extremists. The setup is the same like most of the game's side missions, travel to a new star system, land on a planet, or in this case, an asteroid, drive around looking for the bad guys while finding minerals to survey and ancient artifacts to discover.



It was nice to see new locales in the game. While the exteriors of the buildings looked pretty much the same, the interiors somehow looked better, with better lighting and new textures.

The mission itself is pretty fun, but there are some nagging issues though. Usually when you receive a new mission to go on, Admiral Hackett calls you up on the space-intercom thingie, and briefs you on the task at hand. In BDTS, there is none of that, just a circle on the map that highlights the star system you just downloaded. Your chosen companions on this mission, who usually have something to say when you click on them or not, are stoic and silent. Like mindless drones following you blindly into the firefight. Even Joker (played by Seth Green), the candid and confident pilot of the good ship Normandy, is replaced by a female robot voice. The whole thing does take you out of the experience a bit, knowing that it would've been much cooler if they had the voices in.

Obviously, Bioware either couldn't get the original voice-actors for these new missions, or they could not get it into the code and transfer it on time. My bet is on the former. I would think getting these actors back to record just one or two more lines on dialogue would be difficult. I hope they can remedy this in the next DLC.

Either way, it's still a cool feature to have DLC released regularly for such a cool game. Looking forward for more.