This may just be the nostalgia talking, but I can’t help but feel like expansion content (or expansion packs, as they were called in the dark ages) for games used to be bigger, badder, better before the days of digitisation and DLC. Publishers back in the early 2000s weren’t going to go through all the effort of printing and distributing CD’s, creating packaging and instruction manuals, just for an extra game mode or some skins, were they? Nope, back then expansion packs weremeaty: full-on campaigns forDoomorHalf-Life, whole new regions to explore inMorrowindorBaldur’s Gate(something which, in fairness, Bethesda has kept up in its later games).
Those kinds of expansions do still exist, with Horizon: Forbidden West - Burning Shores being a prime example, but they’re almost certainly fewer and farther between now that devs can release content in a more bitty, piecemeal way.
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An Expansion-Packed Year
But 2024 looks set to roll back the years in this regard, because while the games line-up doesn’t look nearly as formidable as 2023, it should be anexcellentyear for substantial story-led expansion content.
The first one we’re likely to see is the long-awaited Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for our 2022 Game of the Year,Elden Ring(rumoured for a February release). FromSoft has never messed around when it comes to post-launch content, with the expansions for all threeDark Soulsentries andBloodbornerepresenting their respective games at their very best, and usually filling in key story details left hanging from the main game.
According to data miner Lance McDonald, Shadow of the Erdtree was originally planned as two DLCs, (like Bloodborne’s Old Hunters) so the fact that it’s now being merged suggests we’re in for a substantial adventure as we return to the Lands Between.
I have complete faith in Remedy at this point to deliver satisfying slices of mind-bending weirdness.
We already know thatAlan Wake 2’s DLC’s will be titled ‘The Lake House’ and ‘Bright Falls.’ Remedy have confirmed that Bright Falls will be set in the Twilight Zone-like in-world TV show, casting us as multiple characters from the show (which sounds zany and brilliant), while The Lake House will once again go for the Saga-Wake dual-protagonist setup as you explore and FBC facility on the shores of Cauldron Lake, which could lead to more overlaps withControl, which is part of the same universe. It all sounds great, and I have complete faith in Remedy at this point to deliver satisfying slices of mind-bending weirdness (like they did with the Control DLC).
Diablo 4is one of those games that ran out of steam a bit throughout 2023. Following a solid start,the Season-based content was a tad underwhelming, but the series has excellent form for expansions (with Lord of Destruction and Reaper of Souls for Diablo 2 and 3 breathing a ton of life into the respective title). With that in mind, the confirmed Vessel of Hatred expansion is an opportunity for redemption, taking players to new jungly climes, with Blizzard tellingPolygon in an interviewthat they’ll be using it to include some ideas that didn’t make it into the base game:
“We have a lot of story, and a lot of places we want to go. And so when we get to do an expansion, that’s really a big opportunity for us to pick up some of those pieces and explore them to the fullest.”
–Diablo 4 Associate Game Director, Brent Gibson
Then there are the ‘unconfirmed but almost definitely’s.’ For all their dated design philosophies and creaky engines, Bethesda have an excellent track record when it comes to expansions, which usually start coming out some six months after the base game. Based on past form, we should see cool story-led content start emerging forStarfieldin the first half of 2024. Will it be enough to address the growing number of players complaining about boredom and a lack of compelling content in the main game? Who the hell knows, but it’ll be fun finding out.Back To Baldur’s Gate?
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And finally, there’s the distinct possibility of expansion content forBaldur’s Gate 3. All we have to go on so far is Larian sayingin an interview with IGNback in August“We want to do more. We don’t know what yet,”while reiterating their commitment to updating and improving the base game. This is an interesting one, because Larian didn’t release major expansion content for either of theDivinity: Original Singames, so we can’t gauge how it’d look based on past form. I for one would love to see something along the lines of the excellentDragon Age: Origins- Awakening, where your decisions from the main story affect how you set out on an all-new quest, with new companions (some Dwarf/Gnome/Halfling representation, please!), and a new region to explore.
So you can keep your fancy new games and blockbusters. With 2024 promising expansions for some of the best games of the past couple of years—which inevitably won’t take up hundreds of hours while giving us an excuse to exploring fascinating worlds like the Lands Between or Faerun more deeply—then I’m all set. Let’s expansion-party like it’s 2001 again.
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