I'll be doing DLC reviews for the whole trilogy, generally condensing them into one review for the game they appeared in. The only exception is Pinnacle Station, which I pretty much said all I needed to back in my base review. Anyway, let's dive into this.
The sole piece of ME 1 DLC on the Legendary Edition, Bring Down the Sky is alright. It was the first time we got to actually see the Batarians after hearing about them as background boogeymen for the Alliance. Gameplaywise they're the same as any other generic enemy, but storywise they do bring something interesting to the table. The basics of their backstory is that they achieved space travel some time before the humans did, and had been trying to settle a region called the Skyllian Verge. Then humanity discovered the mass relays and began setting up their own colonies in the Verge. The batarians didn't like that, but the Council said the humans could stay. The batarians responded by withdrawing from the Citadel and funding several terrorist and pirate groups to attack the human settlements.
This mission involves one such terrorist group hijacking a large asteroid to crash into a human colony and wipe out all life there. As a terrorist plot goes it's certainly effective, although it won't do Batarian colonization efforts any good. But the leader of the terrorists, Balak, is such a zealot that he clearly has lost sight of the point of all this. There's a brief moment where his second-in-command can recognize this and offer to take some of the batarians and leave. You have the choice of either letting him do so or killing them for the XP- I mean, for being slavers and terrorists. The other major moral choice comes at the end when you can either let Balak escape to save some hostages he stuck to a bomb, or let the hostages die in order to kill Balak here and now. It's an interesting dilemma, as Balak is clearly going to kill more people if you let him go, but is sacrificing these people who need help here and now worth the potential lives lost later? That's a tough quandary.
Those are the highlights of this DLC, but I should note that they don't really factor in until the end. Mostly you're just battling through three of the same generic buildings you'd fight through in sidequests and shutting down the rockets moving the asteroid. If you're looking for some variety in gameplay you won't find it here. The story is neat, but feels largely disconnected from the main game, and only mildly impacts the other two. It's worth a playthrough, but I wouldn't call this one of ME's best offerings.
DLC: Bring Down the Sky Mini-review
I'll be doing DLC reviews for the whole trilogy, generally condensing them into one review for the game they appeared in. The only exception is Pinnacle Station, which I pretty much said all I needed to back in my base review. Anyway, let's dive into this.
The sole piece of ME 1 DLC on the Legendary Edition, Bring Down the Sky is alright. It was the first time we got to actually see the Batarians after hearing about them as background boogeymen for the Alliance. Gameplaywise they're the same as any other generic enemy, but storywise they do bring something interesting to the table. The basics of their backstory is that they achieved space travel some time before the humans did, and had been trying to settle a region called the Skyllian Verge. Then humanity discovered the mass relays and began setting up their own colonies in the Verge. The batarians didn't like that, but the Council said the humans could stay. The batarians responded by withdrawing from the Citadel and funding several terrorist and pirate groups to attack the human settlements.
This mission involves one such terrorist group hijacking a large asteroid to crash into a human colony and wipe out all life there. As a terrorist plot goes it's certainly effective, although it won't do Batarian colonization efforts any good. But the leader of the terrorists, Balak, is such a zealot that he clearly has lost sight of the point of all this. There's a brief moment where his second-in-command can recognize this and offer to take some of the batarians and leave. You have the choice of either letting him do so or killing them for the XP- I mean, for being slavers and terrorists. The other major moral choice comes at the end when you can either let Balak escape to save some hostages he stuck to a bomb, or let the hostages die in order to kill Balak here and now. It's an interesting dilemma, as Balak is clearly going to kill more people if you let him go, but is sacrificing these people who need help here and now worth the potential lives lost later? That's a tough quandary.
Those are the highlights of this DLC, but I should note that they don't really factor in until the end. Mostly you're just battling through three of the same generic buildings you'd fight through in sidequests and shutting down the rockets moving the asteroid. If you're looking for some variety in gameplay you won't find it here. The story is neat, but feels largely disconnected from the main game, and only mildly impacts the other two. It's worth a playthrough, but I wouldn't call this one of ME's best offerings.