As Nintendo have already announced, Luigi’s Mansion 3 will be receiving DLC at some point in the future. It’s unknown precisely what this DLC will include, but given the ScareScraper and Screampark are mentioned in online descriptions, we do know that said modes will get expanded on in some way or the other in it.

So in this article, I thought I’d give my own thoughts on the matter, and share a few of my own ideas for how DLC could improve Luigi’s Mansion 3. Everyone ready? Good, let’s go!

Main Story

Starting with some ideas related to the main story of the game. Or at least, the non multiplayer functionality of the same.

Since as fun as Luigi’s Mansion 3 is there, it has a fair few problems that DLC could probably iron out here. Like say, the lack of replay value…

Boss Refights

Which would probably be improved significantly with the option to refight any of the bosses you encountered in the game. These could then give you grades based on how well you did in the battle, as well as a nice reward for beating both individual battles and a whole medley of them.

For instance, imagine if you got a ghost description for beating the former. Like the ones present in the original Luigi’s Mansion game with its portrait ghosts. It’d be such a tiny amount of work to add in, but it’d be a neat way to give more of a backstory to the intriguing foes you face in the game’s story.

Meanwhile for beating the whole set, you could get a nice cosmetic achievement there too. Like say, a gem encrusted version of Gooigi to show off how cool you are in the Scarescraper, like with the crystal suction shot, Boo light and Poltergust Type-G already in the game. Or some other little detail that makes you feel even better about yourself.

Even that would add a decent chunk of replay value to the mix here.

But I don’t think it’d be enough to truly make the idea interesting. No, for that, I think Next Level Games would have to take some inspiration from the Mario & Luigi series and its battle rings. Or the Kirby series and its Arena.

In that you’d get a medley of boss fights to go through, complete with modified attack patterns and a nice little bonus boss fight at the end. These pattern changes could mean things like harder to dodge projectiles (like the swerving rocking horses in Chauncey’s battle in the first game’s Hidden Mansion), or huge changes to mechanics (like the Poltergust riding in the Boolossus fight in the same mode), but they’d add a bit more flavour to the setup, and provide a bit of extra challenge for people who’ve already mastered the fights in their base forms.

As for the boss here? Hard to say. Personally I’d like to see a revisit of another boss from the first game, mixed up to work in the latter one’s engine like Boolossus in the Scarescraper. Maybe it could be Bogmire this time around, with more of an aggressive attack pattern and proper lightning strikes to avoid. Or someone like Vincent Van Gore or Sir Weston dialed up to eleven with extra attacks and a ton more HP. Either way, an extra bonus boss would add a ton of replay value, and keep people going through the boss refight mode for days on end.

A Hidden Mansion

Yet as cool as it’d be, it wouldn’t be the most exciting feature addition NLG could bring to the table. No, that would be a whole new Hidden Mansion mode.

Complete with many of the changes found in the PAL version of the original game’s one. You’d have extra HP for the ghosts and bosses, with about a 50% increase all round. There would be a new S rank to unlock, complete with this mode being the only way to get it.

And the number/type of ghosts in each room would be switched up significantly too. Now powerful enemies would be encountered far earlier in the story, with the first ghost battle having the Goob bring in a Hammer and Slinker as backup instead of its usual allies. And this wouldn’t be a rare change either, no, powerful ghosts would be common throughout. Both the aforementioned types would appear in the Foyer, Basement 1 and RIP Suites, Trappers would debut the minute you get Gooigi and enter the Hotel Shops, and the mini variants would be early appearers too.

This would make things far more interesting for veteran players, and require anyone trying out the mode to actually get good at the combat if they want to proceed anywhere.

Add this to the updated boss attack patterns from the boss rush mode (as already mentioned above), and I think you’d have an easy way to add a good 12 more hours to the game for die hard fans.

An Updated Ending

Still, it’s not all about replay value here. No, sometimes it’s about explaining the non obvious too.

Since the ending to Luigi’s Mansion 3 is… underwhelming to say the least. It’s lovely to see the characters working together there, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered about the rest of the game, including the main addition to the game.

Aka the boss ghosts. At present, these don’t appear in the ending at all, with only Hellen Gravely and Polterkitty being shown in a capsule next to the one holding King Boo.

And this really baffles us to be honest. A huge part of the game’s story revolves around capturing these special ghosts, and they’re widely seen as one of the best things in the entire game. So where are they after King Boo is defeated? Were they also ‘brainwashed’ too, like the other enemies?

No one knows.

But it doesn’t need to remain that way, and I think a few tweaks to the ending could help there. Show the boss ghosts also being released from the capsule like their smaller brethren, and have them help rebuild the hotel too. Many of them had as much of a connection to the place as the Goobs/Hammers/Slinkers/Oozers did, and they’d probably be distraught to see their homes destroyed too.

So Next Level Games should show them here, and give us all closure to the story in the process.

Oh, and maybe give Morty a different scene based on if you captured him too. Would be great to see him realise Paranormal Productions is collapsing around him, and to see him interact with Luigi and co in the ending too.

Either way, that sums up my thoughts on how DLC could improve the main story mode. But don’t think the Scarescraper is escaping notice here…

ScareScraper

Since while the main game has a few wasted opportunities, the Scarescraper has thousands of them. The mode is great fun for the first ten or so tries, but the number of options being so limited makes it disappointing soon enough.

Which is why I think the game’s DLC should rethink a ton of this aspect of the game.

ScareScraper Options

Like say, the lack of options for floors and difficulty. In Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon, you could choose 25 floors to play through, or even keep going until you mess up with endless mode. This is completely gone in the third game.

And it’s a weird exclusion if you ask me. 5 and 10 floors are way too limiting here, and I feel the longer versions kept things interesting with communities on Discord and internet forums.

Hence improvement one would be to add them both back.

Whereas the second one would be to add the difficulty modes back in as well. Again, the last game had normal, hard and expert modes, with the second one being roughly equivalent to 3’s version.

Yet again, 3 doesn’t have this. This makes it extremely challenging to play alone, and a bit too easy with four players.

Fix this, add the difficulty selection back in, and bring back the variety present in the last game.

But don’t stop there.

Room/Floor Theming

No, ScareScraper in both Dark Moon and 3 is only about 1/10th as good as it could be here. Why? Because for whatever reason, Next Level Games decided that only a basic hotel theme should be present here.

Yet the main games don’t just have that. They have multiple mansion/floor themes, all with their own creative concepts and puzzles.

So why not bring those over to the ScareScraper too? Make it so every few floors, the theme changes too, with areas like Castle MacFrights, Twisted Suites and yes, even the Boilerworks represented here. Take some of these room concepts, mix up the furniture, shove in some randomly chosen ghost combos and you’d make it significantly more interesting immediately.

Unique Boss Ghosts

Which would also be the case if another aspect of the main game was brought into the ScareScraper. Namely, the boss ghosts.

Yeah, you heard me here. The boss ghosts from the main story mode should be included as random foes in the ScareScraper too.

With the boss used for each five floors being entirely random. Obviously some would need a bit of tweaking here, since multiple players would need a role to play here. So each boss ghost would now have at least two tails (letting two players take them down faster), and would come with a whole bunch of hazards. There’d also get new attacks to use here, since with a few exceptions (Amadeus Wolfgeist, Ugg and Captain Fishook), most wouldn’t last ten seconds against a prepared team.

It’d be an amazing way to add extra variety to the mode, and provide a lot more interesting battles than a bunch of regenerating Goobs or bomb throwing Hammers.

Trappers

And while you’re at it, Trappers should be added to the ScareScraper too. These ghosts are woefully underused in the main game, and they’re completely missing from the ScareScraper as well.

Which to some degree does make sense. If you get hit with the ‘your Poltergust teleported away’ trap, then you have no access to Gooigi and getting caught by one of these guys would basically be a softlock.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Perhaps these ghosts could disappear if your Poltergust gets teleported. Or only appear on doors leading from one internal room to another, in places with multiple exits. That would keep them balanced, and add a bit of variety overall.

Extra Modes

Another thing I’d love to see here would be extra modes. Especially, ones from the original game.

Like Rush Mode. Or a Polterpup catching esque mode, except with Polterkitties instead. Because only having capture the ghosts, collect the money, save the Toads and defeat the crows gets old fast.

Add a few more, make things a bit less predictable. Simples!

ScreamPark

Either way, that’s it for the ScareScraper ideas. What about the ScreamPark? Well I’ll be honest; I’ve never played this mode. It’s local multiplayer only, and the chances of me finding enough people interested in Luigi’s Mansion 3 to try it out are roughly one in five hundred million.

Still, since it’s named as being a mode that’s going to get DLC in some form, I may as well give some ideas about what said DLC might offer it, since it’s a bit less obvious than the main game and ScareScraper.

Extra Modes

Okay, scratch that. It’s also bloody obvious what the DLC might be for where this mode is concerned.

With the most likely and more interesting option being extra modes/mini games inspired by various parts of the main adventure.

Since hey, at the end of the day, that’s what the Screampark games are. Bits of the main game taken out and randomly shoved into a side mode to give the illusion of extra content. The one with the floaties is basically the Boilerworks boss fight minus the boss after all…

Caption: Which probably explains WHY a survival horror/action adventure set in a haunted hotel has a mini game involving you collecting coins while riding a lilo in the swimming pool

So what parts of the main adventure could potentially inspire a mini game? Good question actually.

Maybe something inspired by the death traps in the Tomb Suites area? A shell game esque setup inspired by the Twisted Suites boss battle? Perhaps something based on one of the movie scenes in Paranormal Productions?

Hmm, maybe the chainsaw in Garden Suites could be turned into something unique too. Like ‘destroy as many things as possible with a chainsaw/lawnmower to get a better score than the other team’.

Not sure. Nothing really takes my fancy there.

But hey, maybe the folks at Next Level Games can think of some sort of novel way to reuse old mechanics in a new multiplayer mini game.

Online Multiplayer

What I do know however is that for the Screampark to actually get used more than once in a blue moon, it needs online multiplayer of some kind. Seriously, there’s no way around it. This is just built for competitions on Discord/Reddit/internet forums.

So you may as well go all out, and let people play online with friends and randoms. Make it something of a competition with tournaments or leaderboards too.

Either way, those are my ideas for DLC in Luigi’s Mansion 3. But what do you think? Do you agree with them? Feel like some of these ideas could significantly improve the game overall?

Or do you have a bunch of other ideas that could work even better?

Tell us what you think in the comments below, or on the Gaming Latest forums today!