There was a time when "bigger," in videogame terms, was synonymous with "better." But more recently, it's not unusual to hear the opposite sentiment: That gamers just don't have time for 100-hour epics, and that an awful lot of effort is being wasted on huge games that only a tiny slice of players ever actually finish. CD Projekt Visual Effects Artist Jose Teixeira doesn't agree with that sentiment, however, telling MCV, "If anything, The Witcher 3 proved the point that players are more interested in longer games."

Teixeira was describing how the Witcher 3 achieved major mainstream success, well beyond the first two games in the series, despite being a game that by all appearances should only appeal to a relatively niche—and therefore, small—market. "We are still amazed at how many people played The Witcher 3, because it s a game style that is usually reserved for hardcore audiences," he said. "People actually loved it, especially more in the casual audience, which we re really impressed with."

It also, he explained, demonstrates that those more "casual" players aren't necessarily put off by games that demand big time investments. "Now, especially, you hear so many people talking about how the triple-A games industry is there and nobody wants that experience anymore, and here you go—a nice, well-written single-player experience," he said. "There s no multiplayer, there s no microtransactions; you get a game, you play the game and enjoy the game, and it s a great success."

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was undeniably successful, but it also bears noting that, according to its Steam achievements, less than 25 percent of people who own it have actually finished the thing. Even so, CD Projekt isn't giving up on big experiences: Teixeira said its next project, Cyberpunk 2077, will be even bigger—"far, far bigger"—than The Witcher 3. It's an interesting contrast to the approach taken by Activision in the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, which developer Treyarch recently announced would launch with all campaign missions unlocked from the very start, enabling players to skip to any part of the game, at any time—even the very end, if they choose.

Speaking of big games, CD Projekt recently added some bulk to the Witcher 3 with the release of its first expansion, Hearts of Stone. Read our review right here.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 1.10 patch is now live, and it's what you might call a big one—as in, the biggest yet.

"All told, it packs a pretty impressive six hundred changes," CD Projekt's Marcin Momot wrote on the Witcher 3 forums, "including fixes for a load of quests, optimizations that'll make things smoother on PC and consoles, over one hundred fifty stability improvements to iron out hiccups, additional conversations with key characters that will enhance your relationships with them as well as the story as a whole, and a major and much-awaited fix that should take a good bit of the pain out of dealing with items in the Inventory by improving how items are ordered and sorted."

A full breakdown of the 1.10 patch is available in a 13-page PDF file, which you may download here. There doesn't appear to be any one major, must-have fix contained therein, but it does cover a tremendous breadth of material. The list of updates to quests alone takes up a full six pages in the PDF. Somewhat surprisingly, the list of changes apparently isn't complete, according to Momot, who noted that while it's detailed, "it's hardly exhaustive."

It's also, as you might expect, a whopper of a download. Momot said on Twitter the download will clock in between six and 15 GB in size, depending on your distribution platform.

One thing you can't deny about CD Projekt: It gives good trailer. Killing Monsters, A Night to Remember, Go Your Way, and even the old Cyberpunk 2077 teaser and Witcher 2 intro are fine bits of digital cinema that I enjoy watching entirely for their own sake. The launch trailer for the Witcher 3 expansion Hearts of Stone is a little different from those, since it's more focused on a specific element of Geralt's adventures, but that also makes it more interesting because it's a much more specific look at what he—that is, you—will be getting into. 

We got some hands-on time with Hearts of Stone last month, and between the giant frogs, wedding crashers, the return of Shani, and a guy who's surprisingly hard to kill (even though he's not named Geralt), it sounds like a lot of fun. And that's just the first two hours! But high-level monster-hunters only, please. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt "Hearts of Stone" comes out on October 13.

You can do so much in the bath: read a book; listen to music; pretend to be a mermaid; or invent whole new card games for use in your upcoming RPG. At least, that's what The Witcher 3's senior gameplay designer Damien Monnier did with Gwent.

In an interview with Kotaku, Monnier says that he was given one weekend to come up with a new game for The Witcher 3 to fit where the dice poker game had fit in The Witcher 2. On Sunday evening he had a bath, and while he was in the tub the basic idea washed over him:

"You have a number that's higher than the other person's number, then you have things that will affect that number. Some cards double it, some cards lower it, and ultimately the challenge comes from the initial hand. So, it's about managing your initial hand and bluffing."

By the time he was done with his bath, he had the basic rules. He mocked up some cards and took them into work to play with the studio director Adam Badowski, and it was a hit.

The interview also has some more interesting tidbits about the game itself—apparently it was originally going to be three-player but it didn't look right in the game, and while the physical version is fair the digital version gives the player an unfair advantage—but the bath bit is definitely key here. Clearly baths are very important to game development.

Unfortunately we don't get any details as to the specific kind of bath Monnier had, but if you too want to be a successful game designer you should probably start experimenting with water temperatures and bath products tonight. As you can see, the witcher himself favours a freestanding wooden keg variety. Let me know when you hit on the formula for success.

This article contains spoilers for the Family Matters quest in The Witcher 3. The story was originally published in PC Gamer issue 283 and published online in 2015. We're repromoting it now in celebration of The Witcher's release on Netflix.

When Geralt of Rivia arrives in Velen, searching for his adopted daughter Ciri, he finds a war-ravaged no man’s land. Dead soldiers litter the fields—the aftermath of a bloody war between Temeria and the invading Nilfgaardians—and deserters hang from trees, bags over their heads, swaying gently in the breeze. Yet despite this horror and devastation, Velen is also a place of startling natural beauty, of lush forests and rolling hills. This contrast is mirrored in The Witcher 3’s most emotional and disturbing quest, Family Matters, and in the complex, conflicted character at the centre of it: the Bloody Baron.

“We needed a character that personified Velen, with all of its beauty and troubles,” Paweł Sasko, designer of the quest, tells me. “The Baron is a soldier, much like we have today, who comes back from war with PTSD and alcohol issues. He’s unstable and unpleasant, but he also has positive traits. He loves his family and would do anything for them.”

The roots of Family Matters can be traced back to Sasko’s childhood, growing up in a poor village in the Polish mountains. “I saw families destroyed by alcoholism and violence,” he says. “I saw parents fighting with each other and beating their kids, but they were also in love and loyal to their family.” Fascinated by this complexity, Sasko went to university and took a PhD in psychology to help him understand people better.

The Baron knows where to find Ciri, but won’t tell Geralt until he helps him find his missing wife and daughter. “The Baron was created as a parallel to Geralt,” says Sasko. “They’re two fathers who have lost their loved ones; two men with blood on their hands; they both have personality issues; they’d do anything for their families.”

It’s clear they don’t entirely trust each other, and their relationship is uneasy, but these similarities mean Geralt connects with the Baron on a personal level—whether he likes to admit it or not. On the surface the Baron is charismatic, likeable, and quick to make a joke, but there’s a dark side to him that slowly unravels. You find yourself sympathising with him one moment, and cursing him the next.

“That was one of my goals when I designed him,” Sasko says. “There are very few people in our lives, even if we love them, that we’ve never felt conflicted about. That’s what makes a character real.” By making you feel torn between loving and loathing the Baron, Sasko says, he was able to give extra weight to your decision-making in the quest. “You hesitate when presented with a choice. Family Matters was intentionally designed to show both sides of the Baron, to highlight how tragic his story is.”

Geralt explores the Baron’s fort, Crow’s Perch, using his witcher senses to trace the missing family. But in doing so, he finds signs of domestic violence and spilled wine that suggest there’s more to the story. They didn’t go missing: they left after the Baron got drunk and assaulted his wife, causing her to miscarry their unborn child.

It’s a dark revelation, and one of the first times your opinion of the Baron is soured. But you also know that, prior to Geralt’s arrival, he helped Ciri. “The Baron took care of her, almost like a replacement for his daughter,” says Sasko. “This was a narrative trick to make you sympathise with him. To doubt that he’s really a bad person.”

The Baron’s abuse of his wife has grave consequences beyond the emotional distress caused. The miscarried child, which was hastily buried outside the fort, has become a foul creature called a botchling. These grotesque, baby-like monsters sneak into the bedrooms of pregnant women and drink their blood. It’s the most disturbing creature in The Witcher 3. And like many of the game’s monsters, it’s rooted in Slavic folklore.

“In an old book, a Slavic bestiary,” Sasko tells me, “I found a picture of a creature that was half bat, half newborn baby, called a poroniec—whose name is derived from the Polish word for miscarriage. This became the inspiration for the botchling.” The idea was passed to the concept art team, and Marek Madej, who was responsible for drawing many of the game’s monsters, dreamed up its macabre design.

Geralt can choose to force the Baron to give the botchling a proper burial, freeing it from its turmoil, or kill it. Choose the latter and it morphs into a fearsome beast, and a boss fight ensues, but it’s the burial option that’s the most interesting—especially in terms of the Baron’s character development. For the first time we see the haunted soul behind his jokes and bluster, and it’s a genuinely touching moment.

The Bloody Baron is a rich, nuanced character, which is down to good writing, but also to the wonderful performance of actor James Clyde, who voices him. “I didn’t know how popular The Witcher was until my daughter told me,” he says. “This is my first videogame.”

Clyde, a classically trained stage actor, recorded dialogue for the Baron at a studio in central London over a period of 18 months. “They were very strict about secrecy, so scenes arrived in batches. I had no idea where the story was going. I wasn’t sure at first if there was much complexity to the character, but as it went on the layers were revealed.”

“What forged the character, as well as his military history, was the troubled relationship between him and his daughter,” says Clyde. “The boozing and humour is his attempt to smother that, I think. But I only became aware of this complexity as the scenes arrived in bits. If it was a movie or a play I’d have known all this stuff beforehand.”

“In games like ours, high quality voice acting for a character is essential,” says Sasko. “In the case of the Bloody Baron, we did a live casting, and the results were presented to Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz (lead English writer), who always has final say.”

“You had to trust the directors,” says Clyde. “Sometimes I didn’t know where I was in the story or what was going on. We’d have to call Borys, who never seemed to sleep. He’d always be willing to explain. It was amazing. We’d call him up about a word we didn’t know how to pronounce and he wouldn’t mind, even if it was four in the morning for him. He even recorded a whole load of pronunciations for us. Thousands of them.”

“The personality and motivations of the Bloody Baron were discussed at length,” Sasko says. “James Clyde voiced him perfectly in the English version. In other languages he sounds equally good, but I think his performance is my favourite.”

“The night before my first session, I got a call from one of the directors, Kate Saxon,” says Clyde. “She said ‘Look, we’ve got a slight problem. We used every regional British accent in the first two games. Well, except one...’ And I was like, don’t tell me it’s Birmingham. And it was. So that’s why the Baron’s a brummie.”

“With about 50 hours of dialogue in the main storyline, a script of 450,000 words and 950 characters, it took over two and a half years to finish the whole game,” says Ben Ryalls from Side, who produced, cast, directed, and recorded all the game’s English dialogue. “We visited CD Projekt RED for an intensive prep session in which we were given extensive quest synopses, plot branching maps, images, and videos. The director, the main English writer, and actors would discuss every scene in detail. The writer was always on hand to give more context when needed. The scripts were great, so we had good source material to work from, plus we cast strong performers who could give us the performances it required. James Clyde is a great example: he has credits in theatre, TV, and film, so he brought a lot of experience.”

After dealing with the botchling and, in the process, encouraging the Baron to confront his demons, Geralt is hired to track down his family. His daughter, Tamara, has fled Crow’s Perch to escape her father’s drunken rages and joined the Eternal Fire, becoming a witch hunter. Anna, his wife, is enslaved by witches living in nearby Crookback Bog. Everything comes to a head when the Baron is reunited with his family in the Bog, and the story can end in a number of ways—some of them happy, some really not—depending on Geralt’s actions.

“The challenge with a game like The Witcher 3 is the branching storylines,” says Ryalls. “The directors, actors, and writers really have to work together to hit the right tone for each path a player can take, so that each one gets a performance to match their choices.” In one ending the Baron’s wife dies, and he later hangs himself, torn apart by grief. In another he saves her, and takes her to the Blue Mountains to reverse the crones’ curse. Depending on the ending, Family Matters is either a story of redemption, or a bleak tragedy.

“We started with a very basic idea,” says Sasko. “Geralt meets a baron who wants him to kill a monster, and offers information about Ciri in return.” Sasko designed the events of the quest, and scripted it in the engine, while Karolina Stachyra wrote the dialogue and cutscenes. Then it was tested and approved by the project leads.

“Every area in The Witcher 3 touches a different topic and has a different atmosphere,” says Sasko. “The story of the Baron was designed to reflect the problems of folk living in Velen. In this place there’s war, famine, death, missing people, old rituals, and terrifying monsters. And Family Matters was crafted to contain all of these elements.”

The quest didn’t change much from the first version Sasko designed on paper, but some details changed over time. “The tone of small things were changed and dozens of ideas from the team were incorporated. This is how quests are designed at CD Projekt RED, from the smallest to the biggest. We always go down the same path.”

Family Matters is one of the best RPG quests I’ve played in years. It takes very real, important subjects—alcoholism and domestic abuse—and deals with them in a brutal, heartbreaking, and honest way. But, thanks to the blood-curdling botchling, it still feels like part of The Witcher’s dark fantasy world. It’s superbly written, brilliantly acted, and the branching paths make it well worth replaying. It’s The Witcher 3 and developer CD Projekt RED at their absolute best, and was the highlight of the game for many players.

“It’s amazing to hear that people love Family Matters,” says Sasko. “That is, hands down, the best reward I could ever imagine to get for my work. Our lead writer, Marcin Blacha, said once that he doesn’t like stupid games, and I think that’s the reason for The Witcher 3’s success. We respect the player’s intelligence. We treat videogames as a medium for adults, to tell mature stories. Our ambition is to touch on issues that have never been tackled by games before, but tastefully, and with respect for the subject.”

When CD Projekt Red came by to demo the first Witcher 3 expansion Hearts of Stone, they also dropped off something that got my heart fluttering just a bit: a box of Gwent cards. The box contains two decks of cards, Monsters and Scoia tael, with the same beautiful art as the digital cards inside The Witcher 3. This box of cards comes with the $20 retail edition of Hearts of Stone, but if you already own the expansion pass, you can buy the cards separately through this website. After opening up the box and playing a couple real life games of Gwent, I m lusting after a full set with the rest of the factions represented.

The cards look great, with generous space dedicated to the artwork and bold faction symbols on the backs. They re basically identical to the zoomed-in versions of the Gwent cards you see as you re choosing which cards to play or add to your deck. Interestingly, the decks aren t quite identical: I counted 48 Scoia tael unit cards and 51 Monstesr units, with a side of weather, scorch, decoy and commander s horns in each.

The decks will look plenty familiar if you ve played Gwent in The Witcher 3, and include a mix of exclusive units (like werewolves and fiends on the Monsters side) and generic heroes who could be used interchangeably in any deck in the game (like Zoltan Chivay). There are also five leader cards to choose from for each deck, and each deck even comes with a little quick reference card that includes the faction ability listed at the top.

I had fun assembling a deck from the selection of unit cards available, and found myself choosing cards a bit differently than I did in The Witcher 3. There, I always went with the strongest possible cards available, keeping my deck lean to maximize the potential for good draws. With the physical cards, since I was playing against a Gwent newbie, I included a range of weaker cards to keep it more competitive. I did a good job, because I lost.

The second go-around, I picked some stronger cards, and we ended up with a great game that came down to the very last play. I don't know how much the strategy of Gwent really changes with a human component, but face-to-face bluffing and second-guessing definitely makes it a more tense experience.

As a standalone card game, I think Gwent is best suited to a light RPG experience with progression much like its Witcher 3 implementation, with unlockable cards that gradually beef up your deck and supplant your weaker units. It doesn t have the mechanical depth to be a real competitive human vs. human game in its current form, but I m okay with that.

The physical cards are a fun collectible—it's a shame the Nilfgaard and Northern Realms decks CD Projekt created were only available in the Xbox One Collector's Edition of The Witcher 3. I ll pull these decks out now and again to play a couple rounds with fellow Witcher fans. We ll probably spend most of that time talking about how much we want a standalone Gwent game.

During the two hours I spent playing Hearts of Stone, the first expansion for The Witcher 3, I gutted a massive frog, crashed a wedding while possessed by a medieval bro-ghost, and was applauded by a man I decapitated seconds prior. Hearts of Stone impresses with how it skirts around the expectations of typical Witcher quest fare and wraps so many surprising, disparate threads together in such a short time. Two hours is only a piece of the proposed 10, and even though Hearts of Stone is structurally familiar, it feels like The Witcher 3 at its best.

The expansion doesn t introduce any new playable areas (the second one will), but it still feels like a sizable adventure. Jose Teixeira, a senior VFX artist at CD Projekt, told me Hearts of Stone was largely inspired by the positive reception to long, character-driven quests like The Bloody Baron (one of our favorites). The team wanted to do something in the same vein, but bigger. And without any allegiance to the main quest, it seems they ve been given room to experiment. The story hits on action, drama, and comedy as expected, but dives deeper into each tenet with a playful confidence.

Old friends

Hearts of Stone opens in the most mundane way it can for Geralt. A notice board leads Geralt on a quest to kill a monster living in the sewers beneath Oxenfurt. The mysterious beast has been catching the interest of the young, unbetrothed masses. Word is, it might be possible for the right person to turn the monster into a man—a prince in particular. Geralt, being the world-weary witcher he is, isn t swayed by the hopeful implication. A monster is a monster to him. The whole hunt is fun riff on The Frog Prince that throws a few familiar fairy tale tropes at the The Witcher's darker world and mutates. It s dark alright. And slimy.

Early on, the quest reunites Geralt with an old friend, Shani, who some may recognize from the first Witcher game. Even if you haven t played the original Witcher like myself, their rapport is portrayed well enough to imply a storied history without getting bogged down in exposition. Shani is collected, cool, and clever. I m excited to see how she develops.

Shani is in Oxenfurt by way of the Redanian army working as a medic. It turns out the sewer monster produces loads of venom and hasn t only murdered a hefty amount of innocent romantics and their Redanian rescuers, but has poisoned the water supply. Shani is looking into producing an antidote, so she joins Geralt on the hunt. The search climaxes in a grotesque, gooey fight that, even at level 33, forced me to revisit my arsenal of potions, bombs, and spells to find out what worked. The latter half of The Witcher 3 may have been a breeze, but I died almost right away on my first try and barely scraped by a second time.

Geralt and his spectral foil need to party hard, and fast.

Olgierd von Everec, the man who hired Geralt to kill the monster, was withholding valuable information about exactly why he wanted the sewer monster dead. Avoiding any big spoilers about the quest, Hearts of Stone spins out into an intricately braided plot about old relationships and debts coming to a head. Geralt s thrown into the eye of the hurricane, a not-quite-so-willing participant in ancient affairs looking for the most begrudgingly utilitarian way out.

I m being intentionally vague, but at the end of my encounter with Olgierd, I was given three seemingly impossible tasks, only one of which I was able to begin to pursue. You re asked to give a ghost the time of its life, which builds into a wholly comedic venture. Geralt and his spectral foil need to party hard, and fast. The other tasks sound as if they'll be a bit more dramatic in nature, but if what I've played so far is any indication, I shouldn't leap to any conclusions. 

New tricks

Hearts of Stone also adds the Runewright, a new type of NPC vendor that has the ability to convert runestones and glyphs into words that imbue items with powerful abilities. However, they come with a heavy price. Enchanting any item with a word will block all of its slots and destroy any equipped runes or glyphs. In essence, you sacrifice a few smaller bonuses for a single, powerful bonus.

As pictured above, you can sacrifice your rune slots in a mastercrafted silver sword for the ability to have an armorer s table and grindstone bonus that never expires. Tempting. I m not sure how many words a single item can be enchanted with or what kind of diversity we ll see in the enchant abilities, but it s a welcome addition anyway. I think players testing their skill in NG+ or harder difficulties will benefit most, as I imagine hardcore players will experiment endlessly to find super efficient loadouts.

Either way, it seems as though tweaking your gear will come in handy on the normal difficulty as well. Within the first hour, I encountered three different boss characters with unique movesets, weaknesses, and some pretty powerful attacks. Hearts of Stone may have a narrative focus, but it feels as if CD Projekt is also experimenting with harder combat scenarios after receiving feedback about a fairly flat difficulty curve in the latter half of the base game. During my initial playthrough of The Witcher 3, I became so overpowered I was able to ignore my oils and potions completely. In Hearts of Stone, I was forced to study my enemy, experiment with buffs, and dodge and roll with more precise timing. I just hope the rest of the expansion doesn t let up.

Heartwarming

Hearts of Stone s story still might crash and burn in its latter hours, but given our take on the main game, it s safe to have faith. I m also not sure how much the Runewright and new gear will shake things up. I had a good time finding my gear in my initial playthrough of the base game, it just didn t quite feel like my gear specifically. My hope is that the added variability will give players more room to tinker and personalize so each Geralt plays and looks unique. And it s important to keep in mind that the issues abound in the base game still persist. Riding Roach is a difficult exercise in horse empathy and the open world is prone to its fair share of strange bugs.

So far, Hearts of Stone feels like a fine balance of action, comedy, and drama—a narrative divorced from the weighty consequence of World Saving™ in the base game, and for the better. Coupled with the promise of new gear, further customization, and some playful, focused storytelling, Hearts of Stone is on track to be a nice deal at $10 when it releases October 13th. 

Between its multiple delays, much talked about graphical finery, and eventual rapturous reviews, the third Witcher game was every inch the AAA project. Now CD Projekt has revealed some interesting numbers behind the making of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in its summary of the first half of 2015, including that it cost a whopping $81 million to make.

That figure includes not just the development budget, but also an extensive promotional push that included 40 "fine-tuned" campaigns in "every key market" as well as a simultaneous global campaign, a combined effort that CEO Adam Kici ski said was "a daunting task." A few other interesting figures he cited: CD Projekt's internal development team was made up of more than 240 people representing 18 nationalities, while around 1500 people were involved in the development and launch of the game globally. The Witcher 3 was published in 15 different languages, seven of them fully dubbed, which required 500 voice actors in total.

$81 million is an awfully big pile of money, but it's actually not outrageous in terms of modern blockbuster game budgets. EA is rumored to have blown upwards of $200 million on Star Wars: The Old Republic back in 2012, while Rockstar reportedly sunk more than $260 million into Grand Theft Auto 5—a figure that, again, includes both development and marketing. Ken Levine was quick to dismiss the New York Time's $200 million estimate of BioShock Infinite's cost, but even if its guess was double the actual amount spent, it's still a frighteningly large pile of zeroes. Another analyst estimated last year that Blizzard spent $50 million on Titan before deciding to cancel it altogether.

So it's undeniably big biscuits, but nowhere near the top of the heap. More importantly, it was all worthwhile in the end. "It was a good investment, because in the first six weeks after the launch of Witcher [3], we generated six million copies," Kici ski said. "We sold six million copies of the game, and made a net profit of z 236 million [$63 million]."

Thanks, Gamespot.

Mere hours ago I was saying that we didn't have much information about Hearts of Stone—the first expansion for The Witcher 3—except for a few story beats and some information on quest levels. CD Projekt Red must have seen that post, because they've decided to send out a little press release with a release date, some screenshots, and even one of those tiny teaser trailers.

We know from the announcement that this expansion contains more than 10 hours of story that takes place in No Man's Land and the Redanian city of Oxenfurt. According to the press release, Geralt gets hired to take on a bandit captain called Olgierd von Everec, who happens to be immortal. Given the brief footage in the trailer, it looks like that goes about as well as you'd expect. Apparently you'll also get to party with a ghost, so at least there's that to look forward to.

Hearts of Stone comes out on October 13. Until then, here are some screenshots to stare at:

The Witcher 3's first expansion, Hearts of Stone, was announced months ago, before the release of the game, alongside another expansion called Blood and Wine that's not due until next year. Hearts of Stone is out next month, but until now we didn't know much about how it'll fit into the game, only that it'll add about ten hours and take place in No Man's Land and Oxenfurt.

As spotted by VG247, however, CD Projekt Red community lead Marcin Momot has been answering player's tweeted questions about the game. He told one that while Hearts of Stone can be played during or after the main story of The Witcher 3, the quests are aimed at those at level 30 or above.

@savroRus You can play it after/during the main story. The HoS quests will be level 30+ though.

— Marcin Momot (@Marcin360) September 7, 2015

To anyone who's played a particularly large amount of The Witcher 3, don't worry: Momot also says the quests in Hearts of Stone will scale up for New Game Plus.

@Zonkil9 Quests in HoS will scale up for NG+, yes.

— Marcin Momot (@Marcin360) September 7, 2015