Nintendo May Be Responding to a Major Arceus Complaint With Their Controversial Pokemon Legends: Z-A DLC

The newest major installment in the Pokemon franchise, Pokemon Legends: Z-A, is almost here. But ahead of the game’s October 16th release, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company shocked fans with an unexpected announcement. Specifically, the September Nintendo Direct featured a trailer for a brand-new Pokemon Legends: Z-A paid DLC. Yes, a DLC for a game that hasn’t been released quite yet. For many fans, this was a frustrating move that felt like a blatant cash grab. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since, trying to puzzle my way into understanding why Pokemon made this move at a time when the fanbase is already uncertain about Z-A.

These days, it’s not unusual for a game to release alongside a few paid DLC options. Many games offer cosmetics as part of a pre-order incentive, and sometimes, you can also opt to buy these extras on their own as DLC. This is always a bit of a gamble, as the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 backlash has shown. But Pokemon Legends: Z-A‘s new Mega Dimension DLC isn’t quite that. This add-on is already been advertised, despite the game not being out yet. It won’t release at the same time as the game, so the decision to tell us about it so soon felt for many like a blatant cash grab. Some fans fear that crucial postgame content has been cut out of the base game and is being sold back to us as DLC. But perhaps that’s not the full story here?

Pokemon Legends: Arceus Never Got True DLC, Even Though Fans Wanted It

The legacy of the first Pokemon Legends game is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, many fans absolutely adored Pokemon Legends: Arceus for how it dared to change up the Pokemon formula. With few trainer battles and plenty of PokeDex missions to grind, it’s the ultimate cozy Pokemon installment. Despite its strange status as something between a spin-off and a main series game, Legends: Arceus performed pretty well both critically and commercially. This led many fans to hope we’d see more from the game in the form of an expansion.

True post-release DLC is a relatively new phenomenon for the Pokemon franchise. Pokemon Sword and Shield launched onto the scene with its Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra expansions, and Pokemon Scarlet & Violet simlarly followed suit with two paid DLC. These DLC added new areas for players to explore and more story content, and many fans hoped to see the same from Legends: Arceus. But after one smaller free update, Game Freak left the game behind for good to focus on Scarlet & Violet. And for many fans, that’s a big disappointment.

When people love a game, they want more of that game. And after Sword and Shield let players have more Pokemon after the game was “finished” many fans wanted to see the same from Legends: Arceus. Though the story itself is technically finished, some players wanted to see a bit more of a true conclusion. After all, our character is displaced across time and space, and we never really get to see them restored to their proper time. Do they live out the rest of their days in Hisui, or are we eventually granted a return? Apparently, we’ll just never know.

At this point, it’s pretty clear we’re not likely to ever get DLC for Pokemon Legends: Arceus. But it’s possible that seeing fan reactions to this nonexistent expansion has informed The Pokemon Company’s strange choice to announce Legends: Z-A add-ons so early.

Legends: Z-A DLC Early Announcement Left Fans Frustrated, But Could It Be a Good Thing?

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Pokemon Legends: Z-A Doesn’t Feel Like a Pokemon Game (& I’ve Played It)

Legends: Arceus was the first of its kind. But in Pokemon Legends: Z-A, the Pokemon Company is poised to set some kind of precedent for what makes a Legends game. Whatever similarities the two games share will likely become expectations for any future entries in the series. So, Legends: Z-A is releasing under some pretty big pressure. And from what we’ve seen, it’s not actually all that similar to Legends: Arceus, save a few key details. The two games both revisit prior regions rather than introducing new ones, and they share a few quick-catch mechanics. But one thing they won’t have in common is no DLC.

One reason fans were disppointed to not see DLC for Legends: Arceus was a simple matter of expectation setting. As the first main series-ish release after Sword and Shield, many expected it to continue the DLC pattern that prior game set. Even if Pokemon never promised us an expansion for Arceus, many fans expected one. That means not receiving any add-ons became a bigger disappointment than it might’ve been. And maybe The Pokemon Company wants to set some clearer expecations for Pokemon Legends: Z-A.

Yes, announcing Mega Dimensions DLC this early feels a bit unsavory. It feels like we’re already being asked to pull out our wallets to add more content onto a game we haven’t played yet. And it suggests, to some, that the game itself won’t be fully finished at all, with endgame content pulled out of the main game to be sold to us at an additional price. This could all be true, of course. But it could also be that this announcement came so early as a way of letting fans know that this Legends game will be getting an expansion, even though Arceus did not.

Perhaps, the announcement is partly a way of giving us more to look forward to. This time, when we roll credits on Legends: Z-A, we already know our story with Team MZ will get another installment, like the expansions we’ve seen for Pokemon Scarlet & Violet and Pokemon Sword and Shield. If this was the impulse behind the early announcement, it’s clear it didn’t quite land how The Pokemon Company hoped it would. Even so, it does ensure we won’t have to wonder if having no post-game expansions is part of the core Legends game experience.

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