By Nelson Schneider - 08/08/21 at 04:35 PM CT
Downloadable Content, a.k.a., DLC, has been with us for quite a few years now, really taking off during the PC/Console singularity period that was the tumultuous 7th Generation. With the 9th Gen in full-stride and a full slate of new hardware platforms competing against each other to, essentially, run all of the same games, DLC and add-ons can still be a contentious subject in gaming communities. It’s no wonder, considering that many gamers tend to conflate the entire concept of DLC with the loot boxes and microtransactions that have made mobile gaming an obscenely profitable but wholly unredeemable cesspit, and have tried – to varying degrees of success – to worm their way into ‘legit’ console and PC gaming.
My stance is that DLC and microtransactions are completely different things, and generally don’t even consider cosmetic purchases where ‘you know what you’re paying for’ instead of random pulls to qualify as ‘true’ DLC. No, to me, DLC should be used exclusively to discuss the larger post-release content drops for games that used to be known as ‘expansions’ in PC gaming circles before the line between PC gaming and console gaming was erased. Some of these full DLC packages have been incredibly good – occasionally overshadowing the base game they’re attached to – while at other times they’re just massive flops that sit atop an otherwise stellar game like a rabbit turd atop a hot-fudge sundae.
Here’s a short list of my personal favorite DLCs, followed by another short list of DLCs that completely miss the boat.
Top 5 DLCs:
1. “Minerva’s Den” (“BioShock 2”)
I really didn’t care for “BioShock 2.” The lumbering Big Daddy main character, generally crappy weapon selection, and the wet fart of a “twist” ending left me feeling ripped-off. Then I fired up the DLC side-story and found all of my concerns with the base game addressed and remedied in the best ways possible.
2. “Far Harbor” (“Fallout 4”)
The base “Fallout 4” is just a drab, boring game, it’s hard to believe Bethesda couldn’t come up with something with more personality by dredging through the ‘Fallout’ IP. In fact, their follow-up game, “Fallout 76,” proved that they hadn’t quite hit rock-bottom yet. However, glimmers of the quirky Post-Nuclear RPG franchise that made an indelible mark on gaming history can still be seen in the “Far Harbor” expansion, which introduces a quirky new environment, quirky new characters, and a wealth of ‘choices matter’ endgame outcomes that make the base game look even blander by comparison.
3. “Assault on Dragon Keep” (“Borderlands 2”)
“Borderlands 2” gets almost too much credit from series fans for having a “good” story and a “good” villain. Yeah, it’s a huge step-up from the non-story, non-villain, non-plot, non-character structure of the original game, but most of the main plot is just ‘okay,’ while the real gold lies in the comedic side-stories and neurotic characters. The biggest side-story of them all, though, is this Dungeons & Dragons-inspired DLC package in which one of the most deranged NPCs ever hosts a tabletop RPG for a crew of hardened Vault Hunters in order to work through her grief over the loss of a father figure. It’s heartwarming, tear-jerking, and poignant, while never straying too far from the bat-guano crazy that is a hallmark of ‘Borderlands’ humor. PUNCH THE INITIATIVE!
4. “Throne of Bhaal” (“Baldur’s Gate 2”)
The oldest relic to appear on this list, “Throne of Bhaal” was DLC before DLC was cool… or called DLC… because it came in a big-ass retail box just like its base game. However, it still deserves a spot on this list primarily because it was one of the biggest, boldest expansion packs of its era, adding a full game’s worth of new content, as well as a narrative ending for the series. Until Larian announced that Wizards of the Coast had given them the greenlight to make “Baldur’s Gate 3,” I always considered “Throne of Bhaal” to be the ‘third’ game in a trilogy of awesome.
5. “Awakening” (“Dragon Age: Origins”)
‘Dragon Age’ was supposed to be BioWare’s grand return to Fantasy Role-Playing after taking a few years off to dick around with ‘Star Wars,’ martial arts, and ‘Mass Effect’ (a.k.a., Not-Quite-Star-Wars). But in my experience they completely flubbed it. The console versions got the royal treatment, with excellent modern controls, while the PC version felt like an afterthought. Of course, technical presentation aside, nothing could save “Dragon Age: Origins” from its lame plot, uninspired custom setting, and feeling of railroaded linearity. It seemed like BioWare just couldn’t make a good Fantasy RPG without a D&D scaffolding to prop it up… but then the “Awakening” expansion was released, and it was so much better than the base game it didn’t even seem like it should be possible.
Bottom 5 DLCs:
1. “The Next Generation” (“Star Trek: Bridge Crew”)
“Star Trek: Bridge Crew” is mostly a pile of broken promises and untapped potential. While the basic concept of running through ship-based missions in an authentic ‘Star Trek’ game world is great, the base game had a shocking dearth of content. Surely DLC was the solution, right? Just have some scriptwriting intern churn-out a new mission every week, send it up through the editorial ranks, and have the programmers and artists slap together some new assets, and viola! After about a month, you should have a mission pack that you can sell for a few bucks. But, alas, that’s not what happened at Ubisoft. Instead they left the game to languish without content updates, cut voice control features because the networked AI that parsed commands was too expensive to maintain, and, finally, pooping out a DLC pack that’s mostly just a reskin with a handful of procedurally-generated mission archetypes instead of hand-crafted content. How lazy can you get?!
2. “Flashpoint” (“BATTLETECH”)
“BATTLETECH” is not a particularly good TRPG on its own, largely due to the oppressive feel of the in-game economy. But the extra-game economy is a disaster in its own right. Instead of giving the player a full-blown DLC expansion with new story arcs or goals, the Season Pass package for the game consists mostly of microtransaction-sized packs that contain a couple extra mechs that may or may not appear in the player’s game. “Flashpoint,” however, is actually supposed to provide more content in the form of procedurally-generated missions and mission archetypes… but in my experience it actually did nothing, since the afore-mentioned oppressive economy actively discourages players from exploring too far from the beaten path and herds them toward the core story missions, since those are the only ones that pay.
3. “Fractured Worlds” (“Victor Vran”)
Uh-oh! Are we noticing a theme here? “Fractured Worlds” is an ‘endgame’ procedurally-generated blob of ‘content’ created to give the grind-obsessed Hack ‘n Slash genre fans some way to perpetually engage with the game. While the Crew played through “Victor Vran” and its other DLCs as a team, none of us ever bothered to finish “Fractured Worlds” simply because the content was bad and uninteresting. Combine that with a Live Service-inspired system where the player’s ability to make meaningful progress in “Fractured Worlds” is time-gated, and requires daily engagement, and we were just done. Playing a crappy game and getting it over with in one sitting is one thing. Being forced to engage with crappy gameplay on a daily basis for a non-negligible number of days is just untenable.
4. “Tales of the Tiers” (“Tyranny”)
Much like “Flashpoint” earlier in this list, “Tales from the Tiers” adds a number of small, meaningless random encounters to the base game. And that’s it. None of these encounters lead to any great gameplay or story segments, nor do they reward any fancy loot. They’re just little bits of fluff that are supposed to make the game world feel more ‘alive,’ but instead come off as a waste of time for the developer and a waste of money for the buyer.
5. “Hours of Darkness” (“Far Cry 5”)
The base “Far Cry 5” is a typical Ubisoft-style Sandbox FPS with gobs of non-linear content, memorable characters, a unique narrative, and a twist ending. The DLC packs for the base game, though, doesn’t tend to add much to the base game, but instead exist as stand-alone mini-FPSes that… are completely unlike the base game. “Hours of Darkness” is the least like a ‘Far Cry’ game by merit of being the most like a typical Military Shooter. While it does tie to the base game’s narrative tangentially, being the Vietnam experience of an NPC of minor importance, functionally, it’s the last thing I wanted tacked onto my ‘Far Cry’ experience. It’s linear, it’s dull… in general it just feels like a crappy FPS from the early 2000’s.
