Nintendo is bringing additional content to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild via an expansion pass. The official details are as follows:
“Starting when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launches on March 3, players will be able to purchase an Expansion Pass for $19.99 USD, granting access to two new sets of downloadable content for the game when they become available later this year.
Immediately upon pre-purchase or purchase of the Expansion Pass, three new treasure chests will appear in the game’s Great Plateau area. One of these treasure chests will contain a shirt with a Nintendo Switch logo that Link can wear during his adventure, exclusive to the Expansion Pass. The other two will deliver useful items.
- The first content pack is scheduled to launch this summer and 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 content pack will launch in Holiday 2017, and adds new challenges that will let players enjoy a new dungeon and a new original story.
The Expansion Pass will be available for both the Nintendo Switch and Wii U versions of the game and are identical. Content packs cannot be purchased individually.”
While $20 does seem to be a fair price point for the content within the pass, some fans are not pleased about the DLC being announced prior to the game’s release. Also, major complaints seem to be geared towards the “new hard mode” and “additional map functionality” stating that both of them could have already been a part of the game; but since we really don’t know much about these features at the moment, it’s hard to form an opinion on. However, it’s not the first time Nintendo has introduced DLC into their mainline game franchises (Splatoon, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros are good examples of DLC done right) so there’s little to worry about.