Okay, the BEST gaming news I’ve heard all day also happens to kick me in the tender bits (ouchie!) because it’s a blast of sci-fi nostalgia mixed with the modern retailer insanity many gamers despise that shuts them out of bonus content. Anyway, the good., no, GREAT news is the announcement on the official site (and over on IGN, which ran a brief video announcing the news) of some incredible DLC for Alien Isolation that bumps the standard edition up to the Nostromo Edition and allows for players to dive into an enhanced mission based on the first film.

Even better, this mission has the voices and faces of all but one of the actors from the original film. Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley), Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), and Yaphet Kotto (Parker) are all on board in the “Crew Expendable” DLC, with Ian Holm’s Ash being portrayed by a sound-alike.

So far, so good, right? But of course, here comes the claw to the throat…

According to the press release, the “Crew Expendable” DLC allows Ripley, Dallas and Parker to be played in a scenario that takes place after the death of Brett. While this mission expands upon the film’s plot, it’s not following the film’s story exactly as it allows you to do a bit more than what occurred in the movie. Of course, I’m SUPER interested in getting this DLC, but I hate pre-ordering games in general because with few exceptions, most games can be bought simply by walking into a shop and this practice can be shifty with certain AAA titles that get different DLC for the same game that forces users who don’t want four or more versions of the same game to choose one and hope they’re not missing something “important” in that choice.

And speak of the devil in in the details, as I was jumping up and down on my chair at this amazing news, I read on and promptly fall off my chair. It’s a good thing I have a hard head, folks. It looks like the ugly practice of retailer-exclusive DLC rears its head once more to spoil things for a select few (or many, depending on who counts these days to game publishers). GameStop pre-orders get an additional mission called “Last Survivor” that lets players hop into the shoes of Ripley as they try to make it through the ship, activate the Nostromo’s self-destruct sequence and get the hell off before the ship explodes.

So, yeah – the ONLY way to get BOTH missions is to pre-order the game from a retailer that, while hugely popular, has no stores available outside of North America last I checked and isn’t a favorite spot to buy games from for some here in the U.S. of A. for a number of reasons. The thing is, as a huge fan of the original ALIEN film, I’d want BOTH missions to play BEFORE I start the main game, as they’d be the jumping off point for the new game where Ripley’s daughter, Amanda sets out to discover exactly what happened to her mother.

Of course, Sega can always wisely agree to let this DLC loose (for a small fee of course) at some point after the game is released and I’m SURE developer The Creative Assembly absolutely wants as many people as possible to see all the hard work that went into this content on ANY platform they buy it for. But in general, the practice of retailer exclusive DLC is a pain in the neck for people like me who prefer either getting everything on a disc at once or at least knowing that content will be around forever and not vanish from the internet into the digital ether like other limited time DLC has. This particular game and that particular content should be seen as “evergreens” of a sort, especially as nearly every bit of press I’ve read about the game has been highly positive.

 
Nope, this isn’t one of those “I hate Gamestop!” posts at all, foks. Just a plea for more common sense in making sure everyone who wants to buy a game like this is getting EXACTLY the same content. Hell, CD Projekt RED is doing that with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt across the board, so let’s hope more developers and publishers realize they can actually make MORE money by letting everyone have the same experience.