00:00During my first half hour in Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree, I couldn't stop whistling Liquidator by Harry J All-Stars.
00:06Picture me slouching down the broad, crumbling concrete walkway that leads to Castle Ensys,
00:12my shield rays slaying shambling foes and dodging a barrage of arrows with this tune stuck firmly in my head.
00:17And then picture me speeding down a late 60s London thoroughfare in my Austin Powers-inspired Union Jack-adorn Jaguar E-Type rip-off
00:25en route to blow up the Queen's Park Rangers football team bus with the song blaring at my car's radio.
00:30The connection?
00:31GTA London was the first video game expansion I ever played, and the first I fell in love with.
00:36Liquidator is burnt into my brain as a result, and to be honest, I'm hardly complaining.
00:41Shadow of the Erdtree is the latest expansion I've played on the other hand, and the latest to make me fall in love.
00:45Casting a wider critical eye of expansions more generally, I'd confidently say there are five that have changed the face of video games spanning the last 25 years.
00:54In chronological order, here's how they changed the conversation, the legacy they left, and why they're still so relevant to this day.
01:01Given the internal impact the series would go on to have, it seems almost prescient that the first ever PlayStation expansion was for the original Grand Theft Auto.
01:09Launched into a console world already occupied by the likes of Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Tekken, GTA landed with a bang amongst some great expansion-worthy company.
01:17Still, it was DMA Design's crime simulator that was granted that honour, and the 30-year time hop and transatlantic pivot worked ever so well, offering latitude for different language, outfits, weaponry, cars and indeed soundtracking.
01:29This was an expansion as it should be, an iteration on an original idea that built on its key beats without revolutionising enough to enter sequel territory, years before Sega's Dreamcast first introduced the idea of console DLC.
01:40Better still, GTA London showed what was possible for this series, and that the action could easily spill beyond the bounds of the OG Liberty City and its chaos-driven boroughs.
01:49The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion needs a little introduction, but it's easy to underplay what this game owes to the industry the best part of 20 years on from its original release.
02:00Improving on just about every foundation laid by Morrowind, Oblivion pushed every traditional RPG convention to its limit while simultaneously rolling out entirely new ones.
02:09Not least, fully voiced NPCs, which in turn leveraged a broader, more mainstream appeal.
02:14The roleplaying genre has always been synonymous with PC players, however landing on PS3 and Xbox 360 helped dispel an association that's pretty much non-existent today.
02:24After a string of uninspiring cosmetic-facing DLC packs, the less said about horse armour the better, Bethesda launched Knights of the Nine, a decent but short expansion that was good if not great.
02:35On March 27th, 2007 however, Shivering Isles knocked it out of the park as a fully-fledged extension of Oblivion, adding a totally new location in a magical realm,
02:43more than 30 hours of added game time, new quests, baddies, bosses, armour, spells, and more, and what was easily one of the, if not THE, most sophisticated expansions ever made to that point.
02:54We didn't know it then, but Shivering Isles was but a peek behind the curtain at what Bethesda was capable of, while pushing the boundaries of the hardware it was working with.
03:02Single-player Grand Theft Auto DLC has become a bit of a white whale in recent years, but back before the GT Online boom, the quote-unquote fourth crime sim instalment was given two of the best offshoot stories the series has ever seen.
03:15The Lost and Damned came first, followed by The Ballad of Gay Tony, each focused on a peripheral character featured in the base game, Johnny Klebbets, vice-president of the Liberty City chapter of The Lost MC Motorcycle Gang,
03:26and Luis Fernando Lopez, a former drug dealer, now bodyguard of nightclub owner, and socialite Anthony Gay Tony Prince.
03:34Each story affects the other, and while running concurrently with the main game protagonist Nico Bellic's primary exploits,
03:40each expansion offers fascinating crossover, and extra insight into the goings-on in Liberty City's central narrative.
03:45Arguably, The Lost and Damned's biggest, most revolutionary, or controversial point of note, however, had nothing to do with its mechanics or overlapping storylines.
03:54The Lost and Damned was an Xbox 360 timed exclusive, first launched in early 2009 for Microsoft's then-flagship console,
04:02and not arriving on PS3 and PC until well over a year later.
04:06Timed exclusives are relatively commonplace in the modern landscape of video games,
04:10but this was the first time a series so big in stature had frozen such a sizable portion of the console market out for what was a pretty significant length of time.
04:18Suddenly, timed exclusives had entered mainstream consciousness.
04:22If something as big as Grand Their Daughter could do it, then any series could.
04:28With Blood and Wine, there was a clear sense that CD Projekt Red wanted to give players more of what they loved,
04:34without paying any of The Witcher 3's base game issues, well, any mind at all.
04:38For the vast majority, it worked, leaving us with what is undoubtedly one of the best narrative conclusions to any video game ever.
04:45One of The Witcher 3's crowning features, and indeed one of CDPR's central tenets in their approach to worldbuilding,
04:51is its deep and engaging side quests, whereby missions off the beaten track had the same scope and narrative focus as those contained within the primary storyline.
05:00Blood and Wine, in essence, was a full expansion dedicated to these narrative loose ends,
05:04that brought story threads full circle, galvanised existing lore, and added new context to characters as their arcs wound down just before the credits rolled for the final time.
05:12If I'd had my way, Shadow of the Erdtree would be s**t.
05:18Well, maybe not that bad, but I wanted From Software to adhere to the same speedy development timeline it had stuck to in the past,
05:25whereby DLC would land six to eight months or so after the launch of whatever game was in line for an expansion.
05:30Which is to say, if things had gone my way, the first, and likely only, Elden Ring expansion would have been rushed out the door,
05:37less than half the size of what we have now, with a quarter of the features, foes, and weapons, and, yeah, let's just say I'm glad the developers didn't listen to me.
05:45Quintessential isn't a word I tend to use lightly, but it's without question the right one here.
05:50Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree is the quintessential expansion.
05:53Not only that, it's in essence a game unto itself.
05:57It's massive, masterfully designed, brimming with character, god-awful baddies,
06:01and some of the hardest boss battles to feature in any video game, even by From Software standards.
06:06My jokes aside, From Software was under immense pressure to release Shadow of the Erdtree sooner,
06:11given the demand for the DLC, but broke from its traditional schedule pattern and stuck to its guns.
06:16What's come out the other end is nothing short of remarkable,
06:19and as close to perfection as I think we can hope for at this point with regards to great games delivering great expansions.
06:25Through all this, a new standard has been set, for From Software and for the rest of the gaming industry.
06:31If you can think of any other DLCs that are worth noting, I for sure can.
06:34Let us know in the comments, and for more, make sure to check out GamesRadar.com.
