Highlights
- Nintendo has no plans to release DLC for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, according to producer Eiji Aonuma.
- Aonuma believes the developers have already done everything they can to make the latest version of Hyrule fun.
- While a third game in the same setting is a possibility, Aonuma states the next installment will be a completely new experience.
Nintendo might not end up making any DLC for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as recently suggested by Eiji Aonuma, the series' long-time producer. His insight into the company's future plans for the hit game—or lack thereof—also serve to shed a bit more light on how Tears of the Kingdom even came to be, and how that relates to Nintendo's reluctance to keep revisiting its latest rendition of Hyrule.
September 12 will mark the four-month anniversary of the newest Zelda game, which many fans assumed will receive post-launch content. Nintendo already set a precedent for such a move by treating Breath of the Wild to a well-received two-part Expansion Pass, so the notion of Tears of the Kingdom following suit with DLC of its own seemed like another golden opportunity for the company.
Yet the gaming giant doesn't appear to share that perspective, with Aonuma suggesting as much in a recent interview with Famitsu. Asked about the possibilities for Tears of the Kingdom DLC or a full-fledged sequel, the industry veteran clarified that the developer currently has "no plans to release additional content" for the hit game. The Zelda team also isn't eager to revisit the setting of the last two mainline installments, with Aonuma positing that the developers already did everything they could to make the latest version of Hyrule as fun as possible, according to a machine translation of his comments.
The producer did concede that a third game in the same setting isn't completely outside the realm of possibility if his team were to come up with good enough reasons to tackle yet another direct sequel. After all, that is precisely how Tears of the Kingdom came to be, the developer said. No matter what ends up happening, Aonuma concluded that the next installment in the Zelda series will be "a completely new" experience.
Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi also participated in the interview, but without offering much insight into Nintendo's future plans for the series, having merely stated that he doesn't know what his next project is going to be. The Tears of the Kingdom director did hint at a new Zelda game back in May, suggesting that he already has some ideas for another entry in the long-running franchise, but has yet to even share them with Aonuma.
In the meantime, this newly surfaced insight is a pretty strong indication that the latest Zelda game won't be treated to any post-launch content. While Nintendo could always have a change of heart, single-player games that receive DLC years after hitting the market are exceedingly rare. Then again, Nintendo has always been unbeholden to such industry trends, as most recently underlined by the surprise announcement of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Booster Course Pass which arrived half a decade into the game's release.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available now on Nintendo Switch.
Source: Famitsu (Japanese)
