Nintendo announces DLC ‘Expansion Pass’ for Breath of the Wild on Switch and Wii U
Nintendo has announced that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will have an ‘Expansion Pass’ available for the game on both the Wii U and Switch.
When the game launches on March 3rd you’ll be able to purchase an Expansion Pass for the game, essentially it’s a season pass. Nintendo says Breath of the Wild is so huge and that the game offers a rich canvas where additional adventures can take place.
The expansion pass will cost $30AU/$34NZ and when you pre-purchase the pass you’ll unlock some exclusive items to use in the game right away. They’ll appear as treasure chests in the Great Plateau.
- A shirt with a Nintendo Switch logo which Link can wear during his adventure, exclusive to the Expansion Pass.
- The other two items will be ‘useful items’.
The first content packed will be released this Winter in Australia, will include the addition of a Cave of Trials challenge, a new hard mode and a new feature for the in-game map.
The second pack will launch Holiday 2017 and will add new challenges, a new dungeon and a new original story. The Expansion pass is available for both the Wii U and Switch versions of the game.
“The world of Hyrule which we created for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is so large and vibrant that we wanted to offer more for players to experience within it,” said Nintendo developer Eiji Aonuma, the long-time producer of the series. “With this new Expansion Pass, we hope that fans will play, explore and enjoy the game even more.”
So what do you think? DLC for a Zelda game? What a world.
A Switch shirt to wear in-game?
Take my $30 right now.
That’s RRP a third the price of the game itself, so I’m expecting the DLC total to equate to another 33% of playable game much like the MK8 expansions were worth it (but not really anymore since we’re just repurchasing them when Deluxe launches).
New original story better be the whole game again but from Zelda’s viewpoint.
Harumph!
Need more information to decide if it is worth it. Based on what has been announced so far, it isn’t worth it.
Love it! It will give me a reason to revisit this game months after completion. Hope the new story is quite large.
I’m all for Nintendo releasing new content for Breath of the Wild as long as it’s worth it. The game looks huge and lovely, be happy to keep coming back.
Holding back content deliberately so they can charge more for a game. Don’t like it. At least wait untill the game is released for a week/month before announcing DLC. Sheeeesh.
Why should a company have to wait uni after a game is released to start work on new content? If they have to, large content DLC will never happen, as I won’t be ready for more than a year after a game is finished.
At least all three content backs are in one bundle, rather than the first one being dreaded preorder DLC. And that is then only one that could have been part of the game on release, no oher content in this pack could have possibly been included, not unless you wanted the game to release when the DLC packs are done.
Dumbest thing I have ever heard. Heard it a lot today… they are not Holding back this DLC. It’s not even there yet, its Months away. Zelda went gold a while back + it’s been pure bug testing for months. This is PURE added content…
Most other AAA games have done it, why not Zelda haha. Sooooo….will there be some GOTY edition for BOTW coming next year to milk it more?
It is good to see Wii U owners will also be getting this too.
Not exactly sold at this point – The first pack sounds like stuff that would normally be included with the game (hero mode, cave of ordeals) and the bonus pack doesn’t appeal. The second DLC does sounds more worthwhile though – I’d pay for a new story and a new dungeon.
Yeah, I’ll definitely get this.
It’s worth remembering that the time between development finishing, and the actual release of a game, is typically months and months (testing, bug fixing, publishing and production of media etc.). What this means is that the core game dev team (those responsible for the story, gameplay, dungeon creation etc) have not been idle since they wrapped, but have continued working on additional content (that would likely have pushed release past the launch window).
I’m all for Nintendo doing DLC, especially after the value that came out of the Mario Kart 8 DLC. However, this is very hard to judge on face value, whereas tracks, vehicles and characters are easy to quantify. We don’t know how big the extra dungeon is, how long the new original story is etc.
As for Hard mode, that’s a disappointment it’s not included in the base game for those that typically find Zelda games too easy. What should they do, not play it until the DLC launches?
Holding back hard mode sounds like a real scumbag move. Not happy with that at all. But the second pack seems pretty good, lots of seemingly cool content there. Definitely not purchasing it immediately though.