Burnout Paradise Island DLC Breaks New Ground… And Some Promises, Too

Mon, Dec 1, 2008

Two weeks ago, GameCyte brought you news that Burnout Paradise's "Island" still existed -- but today, Criterion has made it official. Featuring palm trees, a multi-level suspension bridge, a huge cylindrical, climbable tower, a construction zone with loads of ramps, and a general area the size of the game's Downtown region, "Big Surf Island" will drop in 2009.

Thing is... even though Criterion promised otherwise... you're going to have to pay for it.

Early this year, having voiced their intent to become known as "the world's friendliest developer," Criterion Games began crafting what is now almost certainly the most expansive collection of free official DLC available for any game ever made. Not content to quit after fixing the game's bugs or balancing the gameplay, Criterion added new vehicles (including motorcycles), new modes, new objectives and even new immersion through the addition of day/night and weather cycles.

And to be fair, we knew it wouldn't last. In March, creative director Alex Ward told VG247 that the company would indeed charge for some future DLC, and both Criterion and EA have spoken in recent months about a "Year of Paradise," after which the companies would begin to charge for premium content.

What we didn't expect was for that premium content to include the Island itself.

How does Criterion account for the discrepancy between their promises and this actuality? Well, according to the official announcement, it's simply because the Island is more "ambitious" than they had originally supposed:

We never expected to create anything this ambitious for the island, but as it progressed we got more and more excited about what it could become.

But on the Criterion forums, Alex Ward offers a slightly more satisfying explanation, and an apology as well:

Nothing we ever do is taken lightly. As the creators and developers, we're pretty much the biggest fans of our game there are.

I've read many threads where individuals will attack me personally because I once posted, on this very forum, that the Island - and future Islands would be free.
At the time of writing, that was absolutely our intention. And we wanted to share that with you.

But, it's been a very interesting year. We've experimented a lot in all areas of business and travelled to the bleeding edge of console gaming downloadable content. It's changed the way we work a lot.

Our original plans were just an Island pack and three vehicle packs IIRC. But the original Island was very focused on Stunt Run and it was lacking a certain something. So we threw it away and started again on what has become "Big Surf Island." Then we decided to really go for it and stretch ourselves by developing motorcycles and doing that work in a very short period of time. Then we started to really get useful Telemetry and that pushed us to develop what became known as "Cagney" and then "Davis" (after Bette Davis) "Eastwood" and "Fairbanks."

So our plans changed a lot. As we've written countless times before, we not like too many other development groups. We don't tend to do one single thing and stick to that no matter what. In the discussion about one thing, we usually try to do five other things as well.

We do hope that too many of you aren't disappointed. Sorry if you are. But we hope that many of you are with us, have been blown away by the content we've added to the game over the year, and are excited to try some of the premium content that we have got in the pipeline. I know that I will definitely be playing Party in 2009 and enjoying the special hover conversion on a certain vehicle.

If you're not able to buy anything we offer, then we hope you got great value for money with the game we created in 2007 and released in 2008. If you bought the game from Amazon in the USA on "Black Friday" - then we think you've got the best value videogame for $20 out there!

And if you are able to purchase the content, then get set for some great new gameplay in 2009.

At GameCyte, we don't take broken promises lightly, but Ward does have a point -- at $20, or even $30, there is tremendous value to be had in Burnout Paradise.

Also to be found in the Criterion Forums: an explanation of how premium DLC will work. On PS3, Criterion's Matt Webster has announced that Burnout Paradise will feature an in-game store that will be tied to players' PSN accounts to enable purchases.

If they're bothering to enable an in-game store, well, you just know there's even more premium DLC on the way.