There have been a number of industrious gamers who have
dug into the code on the actual
Mass Effect 3 discs and have found evidence that the ‘From Ashes’ DLC may have been coded into the original game and then removed.
The nature of the day-one DLC is also problematic. The extra mission adds a new crew member: a Prothean named Javik. Protheans are an ancient race, and their history and technology play a crucial role in the series. Javik is the only Prothean in the entire trilogy, and excluding him from the game’s release raises serious alarm bells, especially since you probably want the context and the crew member on your first play-through of the game.
BioWare may argue that this is why they released “From Ashes” on the first day – so that fans could play that side mission alongside every other – but that doesn’t make any more sense than simply releasing that story-line as part of the main game itself. Some critics
have said that only “fanatics” will really care or be impacted by the day-one DLC.
But doesn’t that just translate into “biggest fans?”
In other words, if only the game’s biggest fans would care about this, then BioWare is effectively punishing them by charging more for content only they would care about. One can quickly begin to see how fans might feel screwed over. Especially the game’s “fanatics.”