There’s no universal answer to the often-asked, increasingly tiresome question of whether the advent of DLC is good or bad for video games. Depending on the personal experiences of those you ask, its existence can either be attributed to being a product of the Devil, an unnecessary, but no less welcome, prolonging of a game’s lifespan, or single-handedly the best invention to come out of the digital age.
In truth, there’s no definitive answer. As with near everything on God’s green Earth, attempting to evaluate anything in a vacuum is a pointless exercise. Is DLC a way for publishers to monetize content that would otherwise be free? Not always, but it could certainly be argued to have happened. In those cases, sure, greed is a leading factor, but one bad experience should not be repurposed to become a sweeping statement.
For every shipped game that’s discovered to have content on the disc locked behind a paywall, so too, are there those that make genuine strides to expand the scope of their worlds with ideas that perhaps didn’t quite make the cut for launch day. Several examples of the latter are what you’ll find waiting for you on the next page, all of which deserve recognition for making already spectacular games even better.