This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 was a stellar release for Nintendo last year, but one of the odder announcements was the fact that the game would be getting paid DLC for it’s multiplayer mode, rather than an expansion of the wonderful single player experience.

As it turns out, single player DLC was briefly considered before Next Level decided to focus on the Scarepark instead. Bryce Holliday explained in an interview with Kotaku that was due to Next Level Games’ love of multiplayer:

“Most people buying or even thinking about a Luigi’s Mansion game just want the single-player (or Gooigi-partnered) story experience, schedules dictated Story Mode had to be built first. However, at NLG, we love making multiplayer games, so this DLC is full of those experiences we wanted to share.
In the very beginning, there was an urge from NLG to do a single-player expansion, but it faded quickly. Making story mode games is a difficult and slower process, development-wise, than multiplayer modes, so we ended up pushing them [the multiplayer modes] to DLC. Multiplayer DLC development will be a fresh break for NLG and forces some exercise of our ‘Multiplayer brains.’ An additional benefit is that the cut single-player ideas can be saved for something else in the future.”

Given Next Level’s pedigree in the multiplayer space with the likes of Super Mario Strikers, you can understand the desire to add some modes that tap into that hilarity. Still, we’d hope that those cut single player ideas do crop up in future, even if it’s a Luigi’s Mansion 4.

As for the DLC, the first batch of that drops on 30 April 2020, with the second one arriving before the end of July. Other than that we’re a little short on details, but Nintendo did grant us some information at the end of last year.

Are you looking forward to the Luigi’s Mansion 3 DLC? Would you have preferred more single player content? Let us know down in the comments.

Source: Kotaku