According to IGN, CD Projekt Red announced today that two story-driven pieces of downloadable content will be coming to The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt after its release. This comes in addition to the 16 pieces of free DLC already announced for the title. CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcin Iwinski defended the new price tag, stating that this content will represent “real value for money.”
The first piece of DLC, entitled “Hearts of Stone” will be 10 hours long and will take place in “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.”
The second expansion, “Blood and Wine,” will clock in at around 20 hours and will introduce an entirely new region known as Toussaint, a place “untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret.”
CD Projekt Red is targeting an October release for “Hearts of Stone,” while “Blood and Wine” is scheduled for an early 2016 release. Both expansions will be released on all three platforms, with no mention yet as to platform exclusivity windows.
Iwinisk elaborates on the team’s vision for this paid DLC, arguing that, “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.”
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt releases on May 19, 2015 for Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC.