Witcher 3: Blood and Wine expansion gets colorful first images
The first images for the acclaimed RPG's second expansion are out.
Blood and Wine will also include new gear and enemies, as well as characters who are "both new and dearly missed." CD Projekt Red also promises that both expansion packs are "crafted with maximum attention to detail and quality."CD Projekt Red has released the first images of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's upcoming Blood and Wine expansion. Published on Twitter, the images show off the colorful, expansive world that players will explore in 2016.
Blood and Wine will also include new gear and enemies, as well as characters who are "both new and dearly missed." CD Projekt Red also promises that both expansion packs are "crafted with maximum attention to detail and quality."
What you're seeing in these images is the all-new region of Toussaint, which is where Blood and Wine's content takes place. CD Projekt Red isn't yet talking specifics, saying only that this content will "take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret."
Blood and Wine is expected to offer around 20 hours of gameplay, which is double what October's Hearts of Stone had for players.
"2015 is almost behind us. It's a great year for open-world games and a fantastic time for The Witcher," game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz said in a statement. "A year of intense work for the team and a time filled with many personal victories for everyone involved in a project that received more than 300 awards so far (wow!). We overcame so many obstacles to get to this point, and we've always done it with gamers rooting for us. It's your year, too! Blood and Wine, the second expansion for The Witcher 3, is on the horizon. It's a massive new land to explore, visually unlike anything you saw in Wild Hunt or Hearts of Stone, and it too is brimming with stories we want you to discover."
CD Projekt Red has criticized paid DLC in the past, but co-founder Marcin Iwiński said in April that Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine are truly significant add-ons that could rival some full, standalone games.
"We remember the time when add-on disks truly expanded games by delivering meaningful content," Iwiński said in a statement. "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."
Blood and Wine was first slated to arrive in Q1 2016 (January-March), but has now shifted to the first half of 2016 (January-June). A specific release date for the expansion has not been announced.
The Witcher 3 was released in May this year behind rave reviews, including a 10/10 from GameSpot. Just recently, the RPG took home the overall Game of the Year award at The Game Awards, while CD Projekt Red won Developer of the Year. As of August, The Witcher 3 had sold 6 million copies.