Two story-driven installments have been announced for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Unlike the already announced DLC, which CD Projekt is giving away for free, these expansion due to their size and scope will come with a price tag and will represent "real value for money", according to CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwiński.
The first, Hearts of Stone, boasts a "10-hour-plus adventure" and ventures into "the wilds of No Man's Land and the nooks and alleys of Oxenfurt, where he'll [Geralt] try to complete a contract from the mysterious Man of Glass. Caught in a thick tangle of deceit, Geralt will need all his cunning and strength to solve the mystery and emerge unscathed." Furthermore, a second expansion entitled Blood and Wine will offer a "20-hour-plus tale" which will introduce an entirely new region known as Toussaint. CD Projekt Red describes the land as "untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret."
Speaking to IGN, Iwiński said the new area of Toussaint will look, "extremely cheerful and normal, perhaps even too normal during the day. However, there will be a big secret there." Hearts of Stone is expected sometime in October, while Blood and Wine is currently slated for release sometime in the first quarter of 2016. Both expansions will, of course, be available on all three platforms – Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 4 – with no mention currently of platform exclusivity.
That's a significant amount of gameplay, especially following on from the game's senior designer, Damien Monnier, revealing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will take players over 200 hours to finish if they "do everything". Iwiński compares the expansions above to add-on discs, significant expanded upon The Wild Hunt. "With the development of Wild Hunt coming to an end, the team has embarked upon the creation of two new really big adventures set in The Witcher universe.
"We remember the time when add-on disks truly expanded games by delivering meaningful content. As gamers, we'd like to bring that back. We've said in the past that if we ever decide to release paid content, it will be vast in size and represent real value for money." Some of Iwiński's comments indirectly refer to the 16 pieces of free DLC that have already been announced for the game. When they were announced Iwiński has spoke openly about the landscape “steeply priced†paid DLC, and how these small pieces of content where being offered for free to people who will have just picked up the game.
The expansions announced today clearly offer something much more substantial, a point emphasized by Iwiński: "Both our expansions offer more hours of gameplay than quite a few standalone games out there."
