The Witcher 3 expansions "almost the size of The Witcher 2"

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With The Witcher 3's free DLC program nearly at an end—albeit slightly delayed thanks to that upcoming patch—eyes now turn to the game's planned expansion packs. In an interview with GameReactor, CD Projekt Red's Konrad Tomaszkiewicz explained just what the studio means by 'expansion'—revealing that, as it currently stands, the combined expansions are almost as big as The Witcher 2.

"The expansion packs will be whole new storylines with all elements you got in the main story: cutscenes, new characters, new items, new Gwent cards and many more," Tomaszkiewicz said. They will be quite long. The first expansion will be around 10 hours, and the second expansion will be around 20 hours. I think it's possible they will be bigger, because it's always like this—we plan some time of hours and it's twice or something like this—but I'm not promising anything right now.

"Even now, if you sum up these 10 and 20 hours and you compare it to The Witcher 2, it's almost the size of The Witcher 2. It will be cool. It will be new stories, and it will be emotional stories. I think that people will be happy."

CDPR are certainly making all the right noises about these upcoming additions. Who knows, between this and that recent Baldur's Gate announcement, maybe we're seeing a revival of the true RPG expansion.

The Witcher 3's first expansion, Hearts of Stone, will be released in October.

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.