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E3 2013: Defiance DLC (Hands-On)

by: Chuck -
More On: Defiance E3 2013
At E3 last week Trio rolled out a much smaller presence than they had in previous years.  Instead of a large on the floor booth they had a quiet meeting room upstairs up and away from all of the E3 hullabaloo.  Honestly it was a little depressing in that the company had rolled out very large booths at the last few shows.
 
Inside the room they had stations setup for ArcheAge their new MMO (Travis will have more on this later) and the upcoming DLC for Defiance, the action online game they released earlier this year.    There's not an official name for the DLC but it will be out later this month for the reasonable price of $9.99.
 
For your money you'll get one new race, the uber pale Castithans as well as their signature weapon, the Castithan Blade.  Which if you watch the show it's the blue blade that Datak Tarr menacingly wields  in most of the episodes.  Folks who don't have the DLC will be able to randomly pick it up in drops but those that purchase the DLC will have the ability to bypass the loot grind and buy it directly from a merchant.  The blade does have a nice area of attack mode but you'll still want a gun handy as a backup. 
 
The new DLC also adds the Volge, the big hulking things from the show's pilot.  Not only do you get the Volge but you'll also get some of their weapons as well. 
 
From a gameplay mode the DLC adds a Capture and Hold mode where you and a gang of other people who have purchased the DLC will try and capture points on the map against increasingly stronger and stronger hordes of enemies.  The game does dynamically increase the difficulty based on the number of people playing the mode but it also ratchets up the loot to maintain a good risk/reward balance for players.
 
Other additions include a new four person vehicle, an arena mode, and a new Monolith Arkfall events that will allow more players to experience the joy of trying to take down one of the games harder bosses.
 
I spent about 20 minutes playing it and it does seem like a decent deal for the money.  I'm not sure it's sold me on buying a copy of the game but if you already own Defiance then this is probably going to be worth the $9.99 investment.