

Last holiday, Nintendo and Monolithsoft released the latest entry in the developer’s long-running Xeno series, Xenoblade Chronicles 2. While there have certainly been a number of AAA titles that have contributed to the current foul taste in the gaming community’s collective mouths with regards to these passes, myself included, there have still been those which give me hope for the future and keep me purchasing them at the time that I pick up their respective main title. Gamers are becoming increasingly trepidatious of any game that announces a paid pass for additional content, especially when some of it seems as though it should have been in the game in the first place or, worse yet, is literally already coded into the game but simply locked until the requisite DLC pass has been purchased. In an era of gaming wherein virtually every game that releases has its own expansion pass, a number of season passes, or even the hotly-debated loot boxes, it can seem difficult to feel as though we are truly receiving our money’s worth when we shell out sixty bucks or more for a new release.
