Welcome to Games for Breakfast, a new feature series here on BagoGames!
Games for Breakfast, written by Features Editor Angelo De Bellis, is a daily opinion piece of about 250-500 words—I gotta keep it brief—that engages topical game news. Every new post will go live at 9am EST so that you can grab your cup of coffee and read a brief account of a particular gamer’s take on the latest goings-on in the industry.
Big news in the Zelda world: yesterday Eiji Aonuma took to the web to announce an expansion pass for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you follow Nintendo at all you’ll know this is huge for a company dedicated to shipping “whole” games and who’s been outspoken in the past about DLC models.
At first, unlike I assume many Nintendo fans felt, I decided to do away with the negative thoughts. Instead of “Nintendo is scamming us!” or “Nintendo were the good ones!” or “Now that Nintendo is doing it, there’s no hope left for the gaming industry!” I thought about the good it could bring to the series. Considering Nintendo handled the Mario Kart 8 expansions so well—a reasonable price for plenty of quality content—I thought, well maybe this will turn out the same. Unfortunately that was before I saw the announcement video in its entirety with the information sheet of what is included with the expansion.
It’s not pretty, at least not in my opinion. Certainly the asking price of $19.99 is not bad at all, but when you see that plenty of its contents—chests with rare/exclusive goods, additional difficulty modes, and a supposed “Additional map feature”—are things that would have just been included with past Zelda titles, it’s disappointing. The only worthwhile content, the stuff that adds to the game, are the things coming with DLC Pack 2: a “New original story,” a “New dungeon,” and “Additional challenges.”
Perhaps these items alone could have been sold as part of the expansion, once more details are given, and at a discounted price of $14.99. As far as I’m concerned, the contents of the Expansion Pass Bonus and DLC Pack 1 should have been free. What do you think? Will you be picking up the expansion pass? Do you think there is more to the earlier DLC that Nintendo has just not explained well that will make it more worth your money?
