Ubisoft may have ditched its game-breaking always-on DRM requirements, but the company is still driving the pre-order exclusives into the ground. For Assassin’s Creed III, players who pre-order the game from GameStop will receive an exclusive, day-one DLC mission called Lost Mayan Ruins.
Today Ubisoft released a trailer for the bonus level, and it looks way more boring than its name suggests. No enemies are shown in the ruins, so it appears to be a simple climb-and-fetch mission slapped together so that Ubisoft didn’t just give GameStop pre-orderers the real object of the mission: the Sawtooth Sword. The sword is evidently the long lost treasure of Captain Kidd. If it’s as amazing and “legendary” as the video makes it out to be, it might be game-breaking.
No matter how many times gamers are subjected to retailer-specific, day-one DLC and add-ons it, unfortunately, seems the scheme is here to stay. Even Nintendo is getting in on the action, at least in a small way. As long as gamers keep pre-ordering from brick-and-mortar stores for the chance to have their game character, during the American Revolution, travel all the way to Mexico to retrieve the sword of a Scottish privateer, then retailer-specific DLC will be here to stay.