We live in the age of DLC. Extra levels, extra story, extra costumes–horse armor! All of it for just a few bucks more to make sure that your games, and the studios that make them, hopefully don’t…
Well, okay, that is just not true anymore, is it? Well, anyway, I’m not talking about new games here. I’m talking about a pretty old game, Trine 2: The Complete Story. A game which I had played back on my PS3 and enjoyed. So, when I saw a bunch of the series on sale, I snapped it up, and replaying through the first game, it brought back a lot of those great memories. It’s got this story book presentation which still holds up, even with these newer, slightly polished versions. And it still has vexing but fun physicsy janky puzzles, and that’s just par for the course with Trine. That’s what you come back to these games for. They are cozy AF, as the kids would say.
And as I finished Trine 2, I got to the end, and I’d kind of forgotten that this is the Complete Edition. So, there are a bunch of DLC levels I had never seen before, and I was not prepared for just how cool they were.
So, as I said in the intro, DLC is the norm now. But in some ways, in the past few years, there’s kind of been a push back against it. I don’t mean to say that it’s this big movement, but from individuals to studios, I’ve been seeing, you know, some interesting things. One person I know of and respect said that they don’t play DLC at all, that they’ve almost never bought one. And even on games they loved. And on the other hand, you have big studios like Larian and Insomniac who just haven’t made DLC for some of their recent blockbusters because of how much time it takes, how much energy goes into it, and how much they’d rather just put that into the main game. And I can understand that. I can almost even support that because in some ways there’s this saying, and it’s true of many creative things, that when you make something, you’re the best at being able to make it at the end of that project. What I mean is that in the context of a game, the studio is really good at making that game when they finish making it, which is why you almost get always get better sequels than you do first games. Uncharted 2 is the perfect example. Uncharted one, great game. Uncharted 2, stellar game.
And same with Trine. Trine one is a really good puzzle game with a lot of charm. And then by Trine 2 to you can see them really starting to stretch their wings, try out new things, get into the flow of the rules they have set for themselves. And then comes the DLC where I’m guessing the studio, and they seem to be a Finnish studio, Frozen Byte, they really seem to have let themselves go in good ways during the DLC.
I’ll try not to spoil anything and the footage you’re watching won’t be from… it will be from the DLC but not you know too far into them. So, I’ll just show a couple of levels. And these are such gorgeous levels from the design standpoint, from the way they get out of that very traditional western fantasy story book look, which is a wonderful look. But yeah, they’re really they’re really cooking as they say. You know, this is where all the the stuff comes together. Even the puzzles in the DLC are better. They’re more inventive. They take certain basic tenets like the second level takes light into account. And the third level just because of the nature of it, the literal nature of it means that every platform you’re on, everything is shifting and slightly unpredictable in ways, but also has an organic rhythm. I think that’s fabulous.
I really liked these games back on the PS3. I did not know if I would love them anymore, but I thought, okay, they’ll be just nice, cozy little puzzle games. Uh, but after playing this trying to DLC, trying to complete edition, which is very frequently on sale as a whole bundle, and I suggest getting all of them because if this is what they were doing in Trine 2, well, there’s a Trine 3, four, and five to look forward to. And if there’s any evidence or a case to be made for DLC being worth it, this is it.
-VKB