CD Projekt RED has announced the first card expansion for their free-to-play Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. The Crimson Curse set features cards themed around Dettlaff van der Eretein, the vampire from The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine DLC. As you may already suspect, vampiric abilities, blood poisons, and bats figure heavily in the 100+ new cards. That’s enough new cards to make Sesame Street’s Count von Count (yes, that’s his real name) pause!
The Crimson Curse for Gwent will be available on March 28th.
Oh, no. I thought I was done with Gwent. I wasted hours of my life playing the addictive little card game in The Witcher 3. Hours I should’ve used to hunt monsters and search for my witcher daughter. Instead, I tracked down every special card and played every stinking shopkeep that smirked at me. I thought I was doomed when CD Projekt RED announced a standalone free-to-play version of Gwent, but thus far, the early access version hasn’t held my attention. Something ineffable is lost in Gwent as a pure competitive game. I was safe. Now, this. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a standalone single player Gwent game wrapped around a campaign story. I’m ploughed.
Early on in the The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion, a man is killed right in front of the player character and a chase ensues as the murderous “Beast of Beauclair” runs away. There is a fight, a complication, and the killer escapes. Instead of returning to the person that started you on the investigation to report what happened, or going back to look for clues on the body, (the victim is literally gone from the crime scene if you return to the site) the game instructs you to go wander off to meet an old friend or make some renovations to your new house. So goes Blood and Wine.
The Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming at the end of this month. You wanted to see some movies, enjoy some camping or sports, read a good book, and maybe even play some new games, but CD Projekt Red has other plans for your time. You’re going to be investigating murders and learning the ins and outs of the vintner trade. The Blood and Wine expansion is releasing on May 31st and it’s huge. It’s over 30 hours of monster-hunting set in the chivalric idyll of Toussaint which is less muddy and grim than previous Witcher settings, but no less deadly.
Along with a bunch of new quests and enemies, Blood and Wine features new loot, a new mutation system that adds high-level abilities to character customization, a new Grandmaster class of armor, dyes to color armor, and two hours of new music. One of the big additions is a home and vineyard that players can buy and upgrade. Geralt seems to have the temperament of a good sommelier.
Players that don’t purchase the expansion will still benefit from an extensive update to the game that will be free for everyone. The developers have revamped the inventory screen, improved performance, added options to disable the fish-eye effect from Witcher vision and automatic sword drawing when enemies are near, and increased the maximum character level to 100 in new game plus.
Blood and Wine is available as part of The Witcher 3 season pass, or separately for $19.99.
CD Projekt RED has released the first images of the Blood and Wine expansion for The Witcher 3. In the upcoming DLC, the wandering monster hunter leaves the muddy swamps and dark woods of the base game and travels south to the idyllic environs of Toussaint. It’s a nice change for the gloomy witcher. The Blood and Wine DLC is the second installment of the game’s season pass bundle and promises a substantial helping of new content in early 2016.
Blood and Wine is a 20-hour 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.
Check out the (rather large) new images after the jump.Continue reading →
Did you have your fill of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt? After spending 80 hours killing monsters, collecting Gwent cards, and giving people bad news, do you still have the need for more? Well, there is more. According to CD Projekt RED, there’s at least ten more hours of the adventures of Geralt of Rivia in Hearts of Stone, the upcoming expansion for the game. This time, the Witcher is tasked with killing Olgierd von Everec, a bandit captain, but chances are that it won’t just be straightforward assassination. The expansion brings new adventures, characters, monsters, and a “unique” romance. Is anything simple in the world of The Witcher?
Hearts of Stone, the first of two planned expansions for The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, will launch on October 13th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
In the open world of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, there are a few activities that can delay a player’s progress. The card game Gwent is one. Horse-racing is another. A flippant Witcher could waste a lot of time on these. Gathering crafting ingredients and reading books is part of a monster hunter’s job, but both have built-in checks to stop players from going crazy. CD Projekt RED wisely placed weight limits on Geralt’s inventory, so eventually even the most ardent herb-gatherer has to stop crouching at every bush in the wilderness. Thankfully, books go willy-nilly into the inventory and clutter up the space. No true bibliophile can deal with that. That’s all about to change.
Patch 1.07, coming this week, will eliminate the impact crafting materials have on the player’s weight limit, and it will add a separate tab in the character screen to organize books. These quality of life changes have the potential to ruin the delicate balance between the urge to vacuum up everything in sight and the onerous task of dealing with the inventory. Without that negative consequence, what’s to stop the obsessive gamer from pausing at every loose plant and bookcase? After the patch, this will be two more things that can easily disrupt your life of monster hunting!
This image is the essence of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. It’s all about giving sad people news they really didn’t want to hear. CD Projekt RED’s open-world RPG includes monster hunting, murder investigations, gang warfare, sailing, a collectible card game tournament, horse racing, and a search for a missing daughter, but this is what’s going to stick with you. The sometimes heartbreaking, almost always less-than-positive news you give people and the moments right afterwards. Someone has to do it, and it’s fallen on your shoulders to be the bearer of dark tidings.
After the jump, you’ll have to make the best of a bad situation. Continue reading →
The Witcher 3 has a serious problem – for some people. The epic fantasy roleplaying game from CD Projekt RED is suffering from an XP bug that can cause players to stop getting experience from some quests. According to the developers a fix is on the way, but the patch has been delayed to next week. In the meantime, players should enjoy the game because the issue doesn’t impact normal progression in “any significant way” and their monster-hunting characters will finish the game “within the threshold” of the character level the designers planned. Unfortunately, for many RPG players, knowing that a bug may be denying them that max level, that even a teensy bit of the XP bar will remain unfilled, is unacceptable.
After the jump, why you should or shouldn’t care about The Witcher 3’s XP bug!Continue reading →
Destiny’s second expansion launches on May 19th. The House of Wolves will add a second social hub for players to run around in, so they won’t just be hanging out in The Tower. The expansion from Bungie also adds more “epic” story, another high-level raid, and new Crucible maps. Like The Dark Below expansion, veteran players can expect some nigh-impossible scenarios that will be mastered in a matter of days by the truly hardcore. House of Wolves will be $19.99 on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One if purchased on its own. The expansion is included as part of the expansion pass.
Savvy readers will note that May 19th is also the multi-platform launch date of The Witcher 3 from CD Projekt RED. This sums up my feelings on the potential scheduling conflict. That’s not even figuring in the fact that Grand Theft Auto V for PC launches later tonight with the exclusive cinematic editor.
Update: Bungie has clarified that House of Wolves won’t include a new raid. It will instead add a new battle Arena called The Prison of Elders.
Geralt of Rivia may not be a great monster hunter because of his beard, but the folks behind The Witcher 3 will make sure static facial hair isn’t to blame for any failures. The Witcher 3 features beard growth. According to CD Projekt, Geralt’s manly whiskers will show the passage of time.
The beard has several “states” and these states determine its length – the longest is really long but it’s not Gandalf-long.
That’s too bad. Imagine sexy-time with hobo-bearded Geralt. The Witcher 3 will launch on May 19th for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
CD Projekt RED has published the system requirements for the PC version of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. The game will take up at least 40GB, and require DirectX 11 and a 64-bit Windows 7 or 8 operating system, which isn’t crazy for a modern game, but the rest of the specifications may call for some upgrading.
Minimum System Requirements
Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz
AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 660
AMD GPU Radeon HD 7870
RAM 6GB
Recommended System Requirements
Intel CPU Core i7 3770 3.4GHz
AMD CPU AMD FX-8350 4GHz
Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 770
AMD GPU Radeon R9 290
RAM 8GB
For comparison, the average gamer’s system according to Steam’s hardware survey has a 2.3 to 2.69GHz processor, and 1GB of video memory. Of course, you can always opt to play the game on Xbox One or PlayStation 4 if your PC isn’t up to snuff. The Witcher 3 is scheduled to launch on May 19th.
Gwent is a card game in the fictional world of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. According to lore, it was invented by dwarves and is played in taverns across the lands. Players of The Witcher 3 will be able to sample Gwent in-game, but only buyers of the Xbox One Collector’s Edition will get a physical set of cards to play the game in real life. Distributor Bandai Namco and developer CD Projekt RED announced the Xbox One exclusive also includes a physical cloth map. CD Projekt RED co-founder Marcin Iwinski explained that the physical version of the card game was made a reality with Microsoft’s help.
“Now we’ve got Gwent in every copy of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an in-game experience for free on every platform, and a physical version in the Xbox One CE, how awesome is that?”
The Collecter’s Edition content that will be shared across platforms are the game itself, a medallion, an art book, a steel case, and a statue of Geralt of Rivia making best friends with a griffon. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launches on Xbox One, PS4 and PC in early 2015.
Another MOBA? Sure! Why not? Step over here and join the line of real-time top-down multiplayer hero combat games in development! This time it’s CD Projekt Red working with Fuero Games to bring The Witcher: Battle Arena to mobile platforms later this year. Players can use popular characters from The Witcher franchise like sexy sorceress, sexy dryad, sexy female warrior, or a sexy dwarf to battle other players. Matches consist of 3v3 hero combat with no creeps to get in the way. Just madly tap on your touchscreen to fight! Is it free-to-play? Of course it is!
Everything in the game is unlockable for free, just by playing the game. Our system is honest, well balanced and doesn’t keep you playing for ages to unlock something. If you want to get something unlocked faster, you can purchase it for a reasonable price. It’s that simple.
The only thing that seems to be missing is a certain sexy white-haired Witcher.
Before CD Projekt Red gave us The Witcher in 2007 and blew our minds with collectible sex cards and foul-mouth dwarves, there was a very different digital version of Geralt of Rivia. Adrian Chmielarz, formerly of People Can Fly, told Eurogamer that he was working on an adventure roleplaying hybrid based on the sexy monster-slaying Polish hero in 1997 that never got completed. His version, which he worked on for Metropolis Software, featured all the witchy stuff fans have come to love like grey moral choices, monsters, and combat, but the game was limited by the technology of the time. Chmielarz says they got as far as signing TopWare as a publisher and completing the first chapter of the game before the project fizzled out. I need that purple outfit for Geralt in The Witcher 3.
