Post by lordofshadow on Feb 15, 2017 5:34:46 GMT
So Zelda: Breath of the Wild will have DLC, a first for the series. Read about it here.
I once hated DLC as a concept. Circa 2009. Almost as much as I loathed sleazy microtransaction models. They occupied the same conceptual space in my mind.
I was wrong. I now love DLC in many cases. I want a new DLC Smash Bros character every month. The DLC in Dragon Age: Inquisition was the best content in the game. I just bought DLC for Warhammer: Total War last night. Hell, I once wrote an article about why DLC is great for gamers and game developers.
But… there is a area where I’m still wary of it: masterful single player games with highly authored and carefully paced flow. It’s a narrow group, and it excludes a lot of cool stuff: match-based or multiplayer games, and games with a lot of emergence or player-directed goals.
Some examples: Shadow of the Colossus. Chrono Trigger. Journey. Undertale. Cave Story. Super Mario World. Bastion. Hyper Light Drifter. Braid. And Zelda games: A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and The Wind Waker.
These games are keenly crafted and meticulously composed. Every element is placed with intent, and interrelate to create a well-paced flow. They are defined as much by their boundaries as they are by the contents of their possibility space. They’re a great album, which isn’t improved by adding another song in the middle. Or a great song, where the silence between notes is vital. A well-crafted sentence, that omits needless words. They are complete and balanced.
Of course, reality isn’t that absolute. A great game experience is a conversation between player and game, and players will have myriad reactions to that authored content. No game in the AAA world has that much authorial intent because teams are too big and target audiences are too broad. And very few creators are actually satisfied with what they make; there’s always more tweaks to tweak and content to make. Many of the examples I listed have flaws that could be fixed. And, sometimes, the extended cut is just better.
So. DLC for Zelda games? I am cautiously optimistic, but I am sad to see one of the last, and my favorite, AAA franchise officially give up on making complete and unified statements at release.
I once hated DLC as a concept. Circa 2009. Almost as much as I loathed sleazy microtransaction models. They occupied the same conceptual space in my mind.
I was wrong. I now love DLC in many cases. I want a new DLC Smash Bros character every month. The DLC in Dragon Age: Inquisition was the best content in the game. I just bought DLC for Warhammer: Total War last night. Hell, I once wrote an article about why DLC is great for gamers and game developers.
But… there is a area where I’m still wary of it: masterful single player games with highly authored and carefully paced flow. It’s a narrow group, and it excludes a lot of cool stuff: match-based or multiplayer games, and games with a lot of emergence or player-directed goals.
Some examples: Shadow of the Colossus. Chrono Trigger. Journey. Undertale. Cave Story. Super Mario World. Bastion. Hyper Light Drifter. Braid. And Zelda games: A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and The Wind Waker.
These games are keenly crafted and meticulously composed. Every element is placed with intent, and interrelate to create a well-paced flow. They are defined as much by their boundaries as they are by the contents of their possibility space. They’re a great album, which isn’t improved by adding another song in the middle. Or a great song, where the silence between notes is vital. A well-crafted sentence, that omits needless words. They are complete and balanced.
Of course, reality isn’t that absolute. A great game experience is a conversation between player and game, and players will have myriad reactions to that authored content. No game in the AAA world has that much authorial intent because teams are too big and target audiences are too broad. And very few creators are actually satisfied with what they make; there’s always more tweaks to tweak and content to make. Many of the examples I listed have flaws that could be fixed. And, sometimes, the extended cut is just better.
So. DLC for Zelda games? I am cautiously optimistic, but I am sad to see one of the last, and my favorite, AAA franchise officially give up on making complete and unified statements at release.
