What happened to holiday themed expansions in games? More specifically, what happened to Halloween themed expansions? There are a few I can name from the PlayStation 3 era such as Infamous: Festival of Blood and Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, but I can only think of the Jack the Ripper expansion to Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate from this generation.
To celebrate the spookiest time of year, I’ve come up with five games that deserve Halloween themed expansions.
Dishonored 2
This should be obvious as the game already features black magic, witches and the occult. The team at Arkane Studios can really do no wrong at this point, and I wish they’d pour some of that creative genius into a darker and scarier title in the Dishonored universe.
Some of the themes of the Dishonored lore are already quite dark, particularly in the first book ‘The Corroded Man’ where human bodies are dug up so that their bones can be carved into makeshift runes.
Similarly to the Jack the Ripper expansion where you get to play as the titular villain, a horror infused Dishonored game where you play as Delilah could be an amazing experience. There’s so much potential with her character, and so many warped and wicked endeavours she could get up to that would make this game an absolute must for me despite my well known cowardice with the horror genre.
Infamous: Second Son
Another fairly obvious one as Sucker Punch have already proven more than capable of making a Halloween themed Infamous game with Festival of Blood. Similarly to First Light, the Halloween game wouldn’t feature Delsin Rowe, and should instead have Eugene Sims, the Video conduit, in front and centre stage. The simple reason for this is as he can create apparitions of pretty much anything, and is shown in the game to be a cowardly nerd, he’d be the perfect protagonist to be thrown head first into a scary adventure.
The game could lean more into the Heaven and Hell themes as it did with the fight against Eugene in Second Son, allowing Eugene to conjure angels and demons to battle whatever creatures Sucker Punch decided to make the antagonists of the game. DM me Sucker Punch, I’ve got plenty of ideas!
Spider-Man
OK hear me out, picture this: Zombies invade New York and Spider-Man fights them. A very simplistic idea but I bet you’d play it if you could. We have already seen recently that the Miles Morales game will allow you to be assisted at times by Spider-Cat. I’m not joking, and I love the idea.
With eccentric additions like this, is a Spider-Man Halloween game really that difficult to dream up? Let me know in the comments!
Shadow of the Colossus
While the lack of DLC for Shadow of the Colossus is in keeping with the story and theme of it, I think new Colossi to battle introduced later on would have been a great idea. There was originally going to be 48 Colossi in the game before that number was scaled back to accommodate the PlayStation 2 hardware restrictions of the time, but now that it has been remade for PlayStation 4 surely the time is now for more to be introduced.
The theme of this feature is about Halloween expansions so I think you can see where I’m going with this. Let me fight a zombie Colossus! Even if you forget what I’ve said about adding brand new Colossi, let one of the gentle giants that Wander / Wanda / Wanderer has slain come back to seek vengeance on their killer. Personally, I’d like to see what happened if the first Colossus took the fight seriously and didn’t just try to paw Wander away like an exhausted parent trying to get some sleep.
Ghost of Tsushima
I was convinced for most of the time between Ghost of Tsushima’s announcement and release that it was going to include supernatural powers. This was likely down to an assumption on my part as the game was in development with Sucker Punch, already featured on this list, as they made the Infamous games.
Now that Ghost of Tsushima is out and has received all the praise and tummy rubs it deserves (including by me *cough* LINK) and a multiplayer component has just been added, could we next get some supernatural goodness thrown in, preferably sticking with the Halloween theme? While Lord Shimura would argue it isn’t ‘honourable’ to fight a ghost I’m sure we can all agree him and his morals have no place here.
There are lots of reference to fictional entities in-game, I mean, the game is even called GHOST of Tsushima so it’s not much of a stretch. I would love to fight anything Halloween themed (except the sweets of course) in Ghost of Tsushima, and once again the insolent child in me is stamping its feet and demanding Sucker Punch do what it wants.
On that note, that’s enough Halloween ramblings from me and I hope you have enjoyed it. Sound off in the comments below or over on my currently Halloween themed Twitter @Malice VER about what games you want to see themed expansions for in the future. Thanks for reading, happy Halloween and I’ll be back next week.