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Link can now travel by motorbike in new ‘Breath of the Wild’ DLC

Steven Petite
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Expansion Pass: DLC Pack 2 The Champions’ Ballad Trailer
Nintendo debuted the footage from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild‘s highly anticipated story DLC, “The Champions Ballad,” at 
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The Game Awards 2017 Thursday night. While the footage looked great, the best part about the reveal was “The Champions Ballad” will be available soon, as in Thursday night! Check your Nintendo Switches for an update , Zelda fans, because “The Champions Ballad” should be ready for you.
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The trailer, shown above, starts with Link holding a glowing trident in front of a shrine, and then goes on to show a montage featuring the four champions, Zelda, and a fresh slate of puzzle dungeons.

Judging by the description offered on stage, “The Champions Ballad” largely takes place before the events of Breath of the Wild. With the help of the four Champions — Mipha, Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa — Link took down Ganon. While the Champions had their Divine Beasts for protection, Link did not. That would appear to be the reason why Link was forced into a 100-year sleep while the Champions carried on in their respective kingdoms.

Link will be able to ride a decked out motorcycle, though (weird, right?). The Master Cycle Zero, according to Nintendo, unlocks after completing all of the DLC challenges, including a new dungeon. The story DLC also brings new costumes, a few of which were showed off in the trailer.

The story primarily centers on the backgroun

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Expansion Pass: DLC Pack 2 The Champions’ Ballad Trailer
ds of the Champions and Princess Zelda, but you’ll still play as Link throughout.

To play “The Champions Ballad,” you’ll need to buy the Breath of the Wild expansion pass for $20. The pass grants you access to the new story DLC, as well as “The Master Trials,” which launched in June.

“The Master Trials” added the Trial of the Sword, a 45-room gauntlet challenge in which enemies get stronger as you go on. You start with no armor or weapons, and can only use what you pick up throughout the trial. The first DLC also included a harder difficulty mode and a refined map system that tracks where you’ve traveled.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild expansion pass is available through the eShop on both Nintendo Switch and Wii U.

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Steven Petite
Steven Petite
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Steven is a writer from Northeast Ohio currently based in Louisiana. He writes about video games and books, and consumes…
One of Link’s oldest enemies returns in new Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ad
Link runs toward a ledge in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

A new ad for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom confirms that a boss from the original The Legend of Zelda is returning in the highly anticipated sequel, and the trailer even teases that there might be multiple variants of this enemy.

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Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo
Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years. 
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward. 
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." 
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To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
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Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?  
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision? 
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For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
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Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened. 

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Tchia glides through the air.

There are many big-budget games to look forward to in 2023, like Starfield, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. But after going hands-on with a much smaller indie title, I have a new most anticipated title of 2023. The game in question is Tchia, a vibrant, cheerful, and free-flowing open-world game about a girl exploring a tropical archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.
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Tchia first caught my attention in a hands-off preview of Kepler Interactive's Gamescom lineup last year, but it took me going hands-on to really understand the magic of Tchia. A freeing open-world game in the same vein as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, or Sable, Tchia lets players loose on beautiful islands in the Pacific and gives them tools to explore by climbing, gliding, possessing animals and objects, and sailing wherever they want. Its deep understanding and respect for the culture it represents enhance the experience too. If you're wondering what indie darling will wind up becoming this year's critically acclaimed game of the year dark horse, you'll want to keep an eye on Tchia.
What is Tchia? 
Tchia is an open-world game following a little girl (named Tchia) trying to find her missing father on an archipelago inspired by New Caledonia, a tropical archipelago in the Pacific Ocean where some of the game's developers are from. While players have the stamina to climb up buildings and trees, swing from them, and even swim, dive, and sail around these islands, they can also soul-jump into lots of different animals and objects. These each add even more gameplay gimmicks that enhance exploration and help Tchia solve puzzles.

I had the chance to play some main story missions during my preview where Tchia befriends a young girl and explores one of the game's biggest islands, completing various objectives and even hunting for treasure. The story was fairly light in what I played, but the gameplay really shined. Although I had some objectives, it was just as fun to climb up the trees near the starting town and fling Tchia into a glide to travel a longer distance.
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