The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Expansions and Expansion Pass Announced

CD Projekt RED has sent out a press release to announce the development of two expansions for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. The first expansion, Hearts of Stone, is slated for a release this year, and promises around 10 hours of content split between Oxenfurt and No Man’s Land. Blood and Wine, on the other hand, sounds far more ambitious, as it should offer about 20 hours of content in the all-new region of Toussaint, and it’s as a result planned for a 2016 release. Players will be able to pre-purchase the expansions via an “expansion pass” that bundles them and costs €24,99/$24.99.

Here’s the full press release:

CD PROJEKT RED, creators of the open world RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, announce two massive expansions — Hearts of Stone & Blood and Wine

The Witcher is a story-driven, next-generation open world role-playing game, set in a visually stunning fantasy universe full of meaningful choices and impactful consequences. In The Witcher, you play as Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer tasked with finding a child from an ancient prophecy.

(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,) says Marcin IwiÅ„ski, CD PROJEKT RED co-founder. (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 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. Caught in a thick tangle of deceit, Geralt will need all his cunning and strength to solve the mystery and emerge unscathed.

Blood and Wine, a 20-hour-plus tale that will introduce the all-new in-game region of Toussaint, will take Geralt to a land untainted by war, where an atmosphere of carefree indulgence and knightly ritual masks an ancient, bloody secret.

(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,) IwiÅ„ski concludes.

The upcoming expansions will offer gamers new adventures, gear and foes and will feature characters both new and dearly missed — all crafted with maximum attention to detail and quality by the joint forces of CD PROJEKT RED’s Warsaw and Cracow studios.

Hearts of Stone will premiere in October, while Blood and Wine is slated for release in the first quarter of 2016.

Both expansions will be available on all three platforms: Xbox One, PC, PlayStation® 4.