CD Projekt Red has announced that the upcoming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which pretty much has the month of May all to itself, will have at least two "massive expansions" entitled Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.
Now, there's always controversy whenever a developer announces DLC before the base game is even released, as if the DLC was meant to be a part of the game in the first place. But co-founder Marcin Iwiński ensures that this is isn't the case:
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.
Hearts of Stone, which will release in October, will be a "10-hour-plus adventure" that will see Geralt take a contract from the Man of Glass that will take "all his cunning and strength to solve" as he travels through No Man's Land and Oxenfurt.
Releasing in the first quarter of 2016, Blood and Wine doubles that time with a "20-hour-plus" storyline which brings the seemingly peaceful area of Toussaint into the already humongous open world of The Witcher 3.
An Expansion Pass will be available that includes both expansions, but Iwiński wants to ensure that you "don't buy it if you have any doubts." In fact, he wants you you to "wait for reviews or play The Witcher and see if you like it first." How nice of him.
The Witcher 3 will release on Xbox One, PC, and PS4 on May 19, 2015.
