‘Hearts of Stone’ and ‘Blood and Wine’
The customary development cycle for large-scale videogames in 2015 all but necessitates that the conclusion of working on a base title segues into working on downloadable content. That’s just how it works now. And, that’s what CD Projekt Red is doing with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt; however, it’s more proud of its add-ons than other many studios outwardly show.
The reason that the developer is touting its DLC so soon is because it’s said to be quite substantial. Today, CD Projekt Red announced two planned add-ons called Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. It’s estimated that Hearts of Stone — which is slated for an October release — will take approximately ten hours to complete; Blood and Wine is pegged at closer to 20 hours, and is aiming for the first quarter of 2016.
Company co-founder Marcin Iwiński played up the sheer size of these packs by saying “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 the money. Both our expansions offer more hours of gameplay than quite a few standalone games out there.”
CD Projekt Red’s offering an Expansion Pass for $24.99 that’s handy for nabbing the two expansions $5 cheaper than they are à la carte. Even though it’s already available (although the site is down at time of writing), CD Projekt Red has a refreshingly restrained approach to pushing the DLC. Iwiński says “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.”
