Last year, Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion earned a lot of praise, and it found itself being nominated for more than a few 2023 awards, which garnered quite a bit of attention and criticism.
This year, Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree is likely to find itself in a very similar situation.
But do expansions deserve to be nominated against full games?
On the face of it, I would probably say no. But thinking about it, back during the 7th generation, there were loads of examples of games that were released, that were largely built on the same technology as the game that came before it. The Mass Effect trilogy, Gears of War 1 - Judgement. Assassin's Creed 1 - Revelations. Halo 3 and ODST. All of these games were iterations on what came before, compared to these days where there is some kind of pressure that every game needs to be a massive leap from what came before it, and so development cycles have become massively protracted because of it.
But comparing something like Shadow of the Erdtree or Phantom Liberty to something like Halo 3 ODST or Assassin's Creed Revelations - is there really a massive difference in terms of scope? I would argue maybe not.
I think that with development times getting longer and longer, we might be seeing a lot more of these large-scale expansions, and the industry is going to have to get comfortable with the expectation that these games might be showing up in Game of the Year lists.
This year, Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree is likely to find itself in a very similar situation.
But do expansions deserve to be nominated against full games?
On the face of it, I would probably say no. But thinking about it, back during the 7th generation, there were loads of examples of games that were released, that were largely built on the same technology as the game that came before it. The Mass Effect trilogy, Gears of War 1 - Judgement. Assassin's Creed 1 - Revelations. Halo 3 and ODST. All of these games were iterations on what came before, compared to these days where there is some kind of pressure that every game needs to be a massive leap from what came before it, and so development cycles have become massively protracted because of it.
But comparing something like Shadow of the Erdtree or Phantom Liberty to something like Halo 3 ODST or Assassin's Creed Revelations - is there really a massive difference in terms of scope? I would argue maybe not.
I think that with development times getting longer and longer, we might be seeing a lot more of these large-scale expansions, and the industry is going to have to get comfortable with the expectation that these games might be showing up in Game of the Year lists.
