Last weekend,Remedysurprise dropped Night Springs,Alan Wake 2’s first expansion. The story-focused DLC is composed of three episodes, all of which draw on the series’ Twilight Zone-inspired in-universe TV show called, you guessed it: Night Springs.
What Happened To Single-Player DLC?
Over the past decade, this kind of DLC has mostly fallen out of fashion. Rockstar put out multiple single-player expansions forGrand Theft Auto 4but, withGTA 5, it instead put all of that energy into the game’s live service component,GTA Online. It also did the same withRed Dead Redemption 2.
This trend has played out across the industry. Naughty Dog followedThe Last of Usup with Left Behind, but didn’t develop any DLC forThe Last of Us Part 2.The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildgot two pieces of DLC andTears of the Kingdomgot none. Even in cases where studios are still releasing expansions, likeCyberpunk 2077, they’re making fewer and launching them longer after the game’s initial release. CDPR made two meaty expansions forThe Witcher 3, and both were out within about a year of the game’s launch, but Cyberpunk’s sole expansion,Phantom Liberty, arrived nearly three years after the base game.Elden Ring, similarly, will get its first, massive expansion this month, two years after launch.
This is in keeping with larger trends in game development. Games are bigger, longer, and prettier than ever and, as a result, take much longer to make. DLC is no exception.
Why Does DLC Matter?
Which is why I respect the hell out of Remedy for keeping the old way alive. Night Springs is the first of two planned DLCs for Alan Wake 2 and is arriving just nine months after the base game. It’s a small addition, just three hours long, which you can access from the menu or discover in-world. I’ve only played the first episode so far, which stars Rose Marigold, the waitress at the Oh Deer Diner, but I finished it in about an hour. There were very few new assets, with the episode reusing environments and character models from the main game. This first installment didn’t knock my socks off, but it was nice to be back in that world and, because Rose gets an automatic shotgun, to not have to worry about running out of ammo. And, you know what? It served the intended commercial purpose, too — I spent 20 bucks to upgrade to Alan Wake 2’s Deluxe Version so I could play it.
Remedy has been keeping the DLC flame burning for a while. Control got two expansions, and so did the original Alan Wake.
There are practical reasons that DLC fell out of favor. Workers assigned to DLC necessarily aren’t spending that time building the studio’s next project. DLC historically doesn’t sell especially well either, since it tends to only appeal to the players who cared enough to play the game all the way through and are still hungry for more. If you’ve seen Steam completion stats for a popular game, you know that’s a small portion of the audience.
Ubisoft has historically been consistent about releasing single-player DLC, too.Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorahas its first of two expansions out next month.
But DLC is still worth making for a number of reasons. Developers often say that you don’t know how to make a game until you’re done making it, and DLC is an opportunity to put that earned expertise into practice. It also provides crucial experience for the developers working on it, often providing an opportunity for staff to step into leadership roles for the first time. Since DLC usually gets less attention than a full release, it can provide a way for workers to get experience leading a team with lower stakes than a full release. Stepping up to be the creative director on a new game is less intimidating if you’ve had the chance to ship an expansion.
More selfishly, I like DLC. When a game is really good, I welcome the opportunity (and/or excuse) to revisit it. And Alan Wake 2 is a really good game.
