Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC Pass Clarified by Nintendo

When Nintendo announced that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would be receiving a DLC Pass for $20, fans were predictably annoyed. Nintendo’s Bill Trinen took the time to clarify why a DLC Pass is happening though.

Speaking to IGN, Trinen noted that the decision was tough, “Because we actually had a lot of debate in terms of do we announce it, how do we announce it. I think one of the things that’s unique about the way Nintendo develops games is when we’re working on a game, and certainly just knowing the history of Nintendo games, you guys know that it’s essentially we use every last minute to make the game as good as we possibly can, and really what that means is that the dev team was working on the main game, finished the main game, and as they’re starting to get to the very end and wrap it up, really they said, ‘You know we’ve made this massive world of Hyrule, we’ve spent a long time building it. It would be a waste to just make one game and have that be it.'”

He further noted that, “We want people to be able to enjoy exploring this world, and so they started thinking about, ‘Well, if we were going to do DLC, what would we do, how would we do it?’ And you can see that in the fact that it’s not…the DLC is not launching the day after the game or the week after. It’s coming out several months later in the form of the first pack and then several months after that in the form of the second pack. And that’s because the content is in development.

“If you’re a Zelda fan buying Nintendo Switch at launch and really you’re buying it for Zelda, I mean how happy are you to know that hey, I’m going to be able to play more Zelda in this world again later this year.”

As such, the DLC plan isn’t all that different from Mario Kart 8’s. There will be a complete game at launch but those who want to revisit it later can do so with new content.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is out on March 3rd alongside the Nintendo Switch. What are your thoughts on the DLC Pass? Let us know below.