In a recent interview with Kotaku, CD Projekt Red co-founder and CEO Marcin Iwinski discussed the company’s vision for downloadable content for the developer’s upcoming mega release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Iwinski’s words are very encouraging, and they make me excited to see what Red has in store for the further adventures of Geralt of Rivia.
I really like the idea of DLC for triple A console games in theory, but I am often let down in the execution aspect. I love the idea of extended gameplay and storyline chapters; but in the Arkham games, I still would have preferred more than the approximately 90 minutes to two additional hours of play. I love Dead Space 3, and Awakened has its good points. However, Awakened also felt like a gigantic kick in the pills after all I had been through with previous installments and Dead Space 3. Ubisoft did a great job with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a work of pure genius. I wish more developers would think outside the box with DLC releases like Blood Dragon.
Iwinski promises some “cool stuff” with DLC for Witcher 3, but he also considers the purchase of DLC as a long-term agreement between fans and the developer. In addition, his stance on the term DLC becoming “devalued” was absolutely refreshing. Another thing that is devalued concerns the release of incomplete game experiences and packaging DLC as an additional fix. Take a look at Mass Effect 3. Electronic Arts and BioWare basically released an unfinished project before releasing Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut as a way to placate enraged fans.
According to Iwinski, CD Projekt Red will only charge players for larger, big adventures over 15 or 20 hours in length. This is a great prospect, considering The Witcher 3 already has over about 100 hours of core gameplay time. Additional adventures to flesh out the vast world and characters of this franchise sounds fantastic, and it will not be a dinky, little 90-minute story chapter for $10.
The downside of this, however, is that I am now tempted to hold off on buying the game at launch. Surely some type of Game of the Year Edition, which includes all the DLC and extra content, will be released somewhere down the pike, likely with a better price. Then the main conflict will be my willpower and whether I can wait out the time frame of the release.
Either way, I hope this philosophy toward DLC is carried over to CD Projekt Red’s next big game release, Cyberpunk 2077, where it looks like the DLC possibilities could be literally endless. CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hits the shelves on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 24, 2015.