I'd like to thank lead systems designer Georg Zoeller for taking the time to post the following comment in response to my complaint about additional inventory space being part of the DLC for sale for Dragon Age.

Hey Tom,

For what it's worth, 'EA' has nothing to do with this (apart from being the parent company of BioWare).

The game was designed with limited inventory for a number of reasons, the least of which being to limit savegame size and therefore loadtimes.

Originally there was a small storage chest in the party camp, until we realized that due to the fact that there are several versions of the camp area (for reasons evident in the story) and that people were losing their items (as they were stored in the area).

By the time this problem was discovered, we had not enough time to fix the problem, plus, we decided that it was not really necessary anyway since the item limitation was rather generous compared to the initial designs at least.

The game was finalized tested without a storage chest. The item limit was never questioned or brought up during the QA phase, after all, it was part of the design.

The 'storage chest' in Warden's Keep DLC was added by the DLC team as part of their 'hey, what would be a cool feature for your own keep' brainstorming.

I'm fine with you being upset about the item limit design in the game - and fine with you being upset about the chest being included in the DLC, but I must protest the 'Oh, EA is pushing the limit for more money' tagline, because that's just not what has happened.

I categorically reject that any features or game systems in this game were designed or removed to 'bilk users for more money'

-- Georg
Lead Systems Designer
Dragon Age
georg@bioware.com

It's a fair point that I have no insight into the motivations for how the game was built, so I I apologize for taking the cheap and easy "they did it for the filthy lucre!" approach.

However, I still have questions. If the inventory space limitation is an intentional design feature to reduce saved game sizes and load times, why can't the solution applied to the DLC also be applied to those of us who don't buy the DLC? And if it's an intentional design feature to force hard choices about what to keep and what to sell, why is that feature being subverted only for people who buy the DLC?

Furthermore, Mr. Zoeller says it was part of the design team brainstorming about cool features, but Bioware producer Derek French has publicly said it was a response to press feedback about the lack of inventory space. I'm surprised the QA folks didn't offer similar feedback.

The bottom line is that I really really like Dragon Age. It's a smart RPG system, a rich and imaginative game world, and a triumph of storytelling. I hate to make a big deal out of a relatively minor issue when I'd much rather be talking about the things I love in the game (stay tuned for more of that). But for whatever reason Bioware is doing it, selling additional inventory space for real-world money stinks.