Not only is the first 15 minutes of The Witcher 3 available for your perusal, but CD Projekt have just announced that they are making two sizable DLC expansions to follow after release. They estimate they will add about 30 additional hours to the already epic-length RPG.
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According to a press release, the first of the two expansions, Hearts of Stone, “will take Geralt on an all-new, 10-hour-plus adventure into the wilds of No Man’s Land and the nooks and alleys of Oxenfurt, where he’ll try to complete a contract from the mysterious Man of Glass.” It will be released in October.
The second expansion, targeted for early 2016, is called Blood and Wine. It takes place in Toussaint (you may remember endless bottles of Toussaint Red in the first Witcher). It’s “a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret.”
Already sounds like there are some shocking twists over the course of Blood and Wine’s 20 or so hours. Who could have foreseen that Geralt would end up in a place harboring ancient, bloody secrets beneath a veneer of civilization?
All this can be yours if you buy the Expansion Pass, currently selling at GoG for $25. However, CD Projekt aren’t giving anyone the hard sell.
“While we’re offering the Expansion Pass now, we want to make one thing clear: don’t buy it if you have any doubts. Wait for reviews or play The Witcher and see if you like it first. As always, it’s your call,” said CDP co-founder Marcin Iwiński concludes.
As someone who can never get enough of the squalid realism of The Witcher, I’m probably going to end up getting these expansions, both of which sound pretty meaty. I do kind of wonder whether they will be using the Mass Effect 3 model, in which later DLC adventures were inserted into the main game’s timeline, or whether The Witcher 3 has an open ending that sets up lots of DLC adventuring and Witching. I’m okay with Geralt turning into a fantasy Man with No Name.
I just hope that, with a supposed 230 hours of Witcher action on tap, CD Projekt have retained the pretty tight pacing of The Witcher 2. I don’t need another Vizima-like adventurer’s purgatory.