Looking good, Noah
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 launches in just two weeks! Like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 before it, Xenoblade 3 offers an Expansion Pass, with four waves of DLC set to release over the next 18 months, some small and others big. While we’ve had those DLCs detailed in the past, Nintendo just showed off some visuals of what to expect in the first and second waves. Let’s go through it.
The first wave of DLC launches on the 29th of July, the same day as the game itself. In it, you’ll be gifted a bundle of helpful items, presumably to help you through the early game a bit, as well as some equippable accessories, and alternate-colour outfits for playable characters, which you can see below.
Wave 2 of Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s Expansion Pass is set to release before the end of the year, though the exact timing is still not yet known. The second wave will bring a new recruitable hero – which, by extension, gives a new quest, weapon type, and outfit – as well as a feature called Challenge Battles. Nintendo has also previously said that there’ll be new quests and outfits included in this one, but it’s unclear at this stage if that refers to the Hero quests and outfits or additional ones. The image Nintendo shared of these are interesting, with the hero’s silhouette looking very curious, and the Challenge Battle arena looking very very similar to Xenoblade 2’s Land of Challenge — not surprising at all, but it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
As previously detailed, Waves 3 and 4 of the Expansion Pass aren’t due out til next year, with the third wave arriving sometime before the end of April, and the fourth arriving sometime before the end of the year (but presumably after the third wave in April, for obvious reasons). By all accounts, it seems like Wave 3 will be very similar to Wave 2 in terms of scope, also offering Challenge Battles, a new Hero quest, and outfits and quests (though again, it’s unclear if these are covered by the Hero thing or not). Wave 4, on the other hand, is a little bit more interesting. As the final wave of DLC, it’ll be arriving a lot later than the others, and Nintendo has only described it so far as a “brand new story scenario”. That’s very similar in language to the final wave of Xenoblade 2’s Expansion Pass, which brought us the frankly huge Torna: The Golden Country, more or less a whole new (if smaller) game in the series, which was also available separately. It remains to be seen if this “new story scenario” for Xenoblade 3 will be similar in scope, or if it’ll be available separately, but Monolith Soft has form, and they’re always going above and beyond. We’ll have to wait and see.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and its Expansion Pass, launches on the 29th of July. You can read our in-depth, hands-on preview by clicking here, or you can score yourself a bargain in our Aussie Bargain Roundup.
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