What if Destiny was $60 with 2 FREE expansions? (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 20:26 (3787 days ago) @ Ragashingo
edited by Cody Miller, Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 20:32

Brood War is a great example of an expansion done right, with it's good new story campaign along with it's changes to multiplayer, but I don't think it's the only way to make an expansion. The single best piece of DLC I ever bought was Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC. It added very little in the way of new or novel gameplay, but it was extremely worth it to me because of the new, fun locations I got to visit, the characters I got to met up with again in completely different (non-combat) circumstances, and the wonderfully humorous, in-joke laden storyline it provided. In all it added three or so short combat missions and was 100% incidental to Mass Effect 3's main plot even though it was set well before that game's final missions. What I take from the Citadel DLC is a good expansion neither has to add new gameplay or affect the overall story to earn "good expansion" status.

The fact that it is optional though, means that it's integrated less than if it were part of the whole package. If it were part of the game as sold, then it could be woven even more closely into the story. Since it is optional, it cannot, or else it wouldn't make sense.

It's the difference between a new adventure every episode, and a show like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. With DLC, you get something like Star Trek TNG. Sure each episode is great, but you're more limited than if you can run all the episodes together in a complete story. Breaking Bad was praised precisely because the narrative was tight, without anything superfluous, which is only possible if every episode is tightly integrated into the narrative. Remove anything, and it suffers greatly.

Remove DLC, and nothing suffers. Because you never had it at first anyway.