CD Projekt Red confirmed last week that it will be releasing a Game of the Year edition of The Witcher 3 in the coming months, a re-release which will likely include all the game s patches, free DLC, and paid expansions Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine. As we ve learned, though, CD Projekt Red has a tendency to go above and beyond, and the prospect of a final, definitive edition of The Witcher 3 got our imaginations going.With The Witcher and The Witcher 2, CD Projekt released Enhanced Editions that fixed bugs, reworked animations and character models, added cinematics they were huge updates. The Witcher 3 has been getting that kind of treatment with patches and DLC since day one, so we don't expect any major surprises. But our biggest Witcher fans still have some outstanding wishes for The Witcher 3 s last ride.

Rework the skill system

Witcher 3 s skill trees are full of interesting abilities that augment melee combat, potions, and signs...but by the end of the game, you probably haven t gotten to use that many of them. It simply requires too much investment in a skill path to get to the high-level skills if you want to diversify at all. I appreciate when games don t give you every single ability, requiring some choice in how you specialize, but I felt like The Witcher 3 went too far in that regard, and I never felt like I was making interesting choices in how I leveled up Geralt. Another problem: the limited number of slots you have to use at any one time discourages experimentation, since it can feel wasteful to put points into abilities you won t use constantly. I would ve enjoyed trying out bombs more often in specific combat encounters when they felt especially useful, but I didn t want to invest points in them when my signs and melee skills were always there and always reliable.I m not a game designer, so I can t suggest the perfect solution, but more flexibility here would be welcome. A bigger change would be adding more actual abilities into the skill system: things that significantly change Geralt s skillset. For an Enhanced Edition, this would probably be relegated to combat giving him new abilities that affected conversation and Witcher sense, while awesome, would probably require too much work. But even in combat, a new skill system could be so much fun. Imagine Geralt unlocking sword combos based on skills, or gaining new ways to combine signs and swords similar to the way Batman gears up in the Arkham games. The Blood & Wine expansion plays a bit with this idea with its high-level mutations, but I'd welcome that creativity spread across the entire base game.At the minimum, just letting Geralt equip a wider set of skills at once would make for a more satisfying sense of progression through the skill tree. There are a few paths CD Projekt Red could go down to make The Witcher 3 s combat and experience curve more satisfying, and that would be enough to send me on another 60 hour playthrough. Wes Fenlon

Fix Roach

I love Roach. She doesn t seem to have much personality, but the trusty steed can be relied upon to materialise out of thin air whenever a quest marker sits too far away. Roach isn t perfect though: she makes sightseeing in the Northern Realms a little harder than it should be. Her inbuilt GPS has a habit of taking the wrong fork in the road, sometimes veering off on unwanted detours through drowner infested land. Whenever you want her to take the left road, she ll usually take the right, and while it s probably really hard to fix that, I want it fixed anyway! Somehow. I want a horse that can read my mind, or at least favour major roads over less traveled ones. Shaun Prescott

Add a first-person mode

Look, I can accept that this is a huge ask, but if Rockstar can make GTA 5 s third-person shooting work in a first-person setting, I have faith that CD Projekt Red could make its third-person combat work in The Witcher 3. Even if that proves impossible and the more I think about it, the more Geralt s dance-like, barrel rolling combat style seems completely unsuited to first-person it s be great to just explore in first-person. As much as I love seeing the back of Geralt s head while I explore the Northern Realms, I d very much like to see one of those perfect Oxenfurt sunsets without the Butcher of Blaviken s silhouette in the way. Perhaps the game could switch between third- and first-person view (optional, of course) depending on the setting? In any case, I d love to get a little bit closer to Velen and Skellige, and this feels like the best way to do it. Shaun Prescott

Add a hardcore survival mode

Having played The Witcher 3 in its entirety, completing every expansion, and nearly every quest, I can t help but feel like the open world setting is a tad underutilized. The dynamic weather, day and night cycles, and realistic portrayal of its varied geography are all harmless set pieces. Through playing the witcher quests, you get the sense that the world is harsh and unrelenting it must be, there s an upturned cart peppered with caracasses every other mile. But the environment itself is rarely a threat. It s just a massive space with the occasional mob roadblock.A hardcore survival mode where Geralt can t fast travel and has to hunt, make camp, and dress for the weather may not be ideal for first timers, but for those looking to squeeze more fun out of the open world, it could make for a more dramatic, impromptu experience. So often, the open world is just a means to an end. It s beautiful, detailed set-dressing that works as a massive stage, but it s also the perfect test bed for experimental emergent systems. I like the idea of having to prepare for a trek up one of Skillege s mountains, packing warm dress and a tent, slowly making my way while fending off the occasional pack of wolves or troll, hunting for rabbits to keep my stamina up, and (hopefully) making good enough time to beat an incoming blizzard. Make Geralt earn those scars.

It wouldn t be a mode for everyone. The danger of The Witcher s environment is baked into the writing already, but some players also want to live it and roleplay for real. James Davenport

Bulk up the ModKit tools

Shortly after the release of The Witcher 3, CD Projekt released mod tools for the game. That's more than most developers offer if a game is even moddable, it's usually up to the community to break it apart and figure out how it works with little or no support. But compared to CD Projekt's offering for The Witcher 2, Witcher 3's modding tools were limited.

Witcher 2's REDKit toolset allowed modders to dig into the engine and create their own new environments. It was powerful. Witcher 3's ModKit is unfortunately not so comprehensive, and we haven't seen any big mods for The Witcher 3 come out of it over the past year. If modders are dedicated enough, they'll carry on anyway. Maybe we'll even see whole community-made expansions someday. But expanded tools would be a great way for CD Projekt to say goodbye to The Witcher 3 and hand its legacy over to the fans.

Give modders the proper tools, and they'll keep the game alive for a decade to come. Wes Fenlon

Every game is ambitious. It s not easy to turn a beautiful idea into a finished, playable game as developers have said time and again, sometimes it feels almost impossible. As miraculous as finishing any game might be, not all games are created equal. Some stretch the boundaries of technology to their breaking point. Others take a leap into the unknown with new design schools, often so effectively that years later, it s hard to remember them ever having to be invented.

Think, for example, of Monkey Island s Three Trials structure, as used by almost every adventure afterwards. Or its sequel s Four Map Pieces , as later picked up by BioWare. And sometimes, both art and science combine to push the envelope and we get something truly, impossibly special. Here are our picks for the top 20 ignoring the very early games that had to prove computers could handle gaming at all.

For more on some of the most monumental games ever to grace the PC, check out our feature on the most important PC games.

King's Quest (1983)

For the longest time, adventure games were where people looked to see the latest innovations. King s Quest set that bar early on, jumping from simple text and pictures to 3D environments, huge worlds, and a fairytale land of mystery to both wander and wonder at. Admittedly, the last part was helped by some dreadful puzzles. King s Quest was originally commissioned by IBM as the showpiece for its long-forgotten PCJr system, but the series would go on to demonstrate just about every major technological advancement for the mainstream: ADLIB sound, VGA graphics, full speech, and high resolution. 3D didn t work out so well, but until that point, King s Quest was where many players went to get their glimpse of the ever-advancing future.

Commander Keen (1990)

If you want to experience pure hell, try the average 80s PC platform game. Long before making Doom, the team that would be id Software wanted to prove that the PC could handle experiences that played as smoothly as dedicated consoles. Commander Keen wasn t just a fluid experience by the standards of the time, but a fast one, with pogo-jumping, shooting and big levels to explore. Looking back, it s hard to appreciate what a development it was, but we re talking an era where games like the original Duke Nukem (or Nukum either way, the one who wore a pink suit and watched Oprah) were constantly being held up as the PC s answer to Mario. Commander Keen didn t qualify either, but it paved the way for many sequels and the formation of id itself.

A bit of bonus ambition: before making Keen, id tried to convince Nintendo to let it port Super Mario Bros. 3 to the PC by building a working demo (in their off hours in a single week, no less). Nintendo said no thanks, but you can see footage of the demo here.

Maniac Mansion (1987)

If you made a game like Maniac Mansion right now, people would still rightly call it ambitious. A choice of seven characters, each with their own skills. A non-linear adventure with five different endings depending on choices and characters. Real time elements, like ringing the doorbell and having a character come downstairs to check on it. Puzzles involving multiple characters in different rooms of the house or simply the option to do things like put a kid in an empty swimming pool and then fill it back up. And on top of all of this, Maniac Mansion brought the world the SCUMM system (Script Creation Utility For Maniac Mansion) that would define about half the adventure game market for the next decade. All of this, in 1987. Few adventures have ever done so much.

Ultima Underworld (1993)

Like most of the games on this list, Ultima Underworld is a fusion between ambitious technology and ambitious design the design side specifically being to take one single dungeon and try to breathe life into it. To add nuance to its different races, there to be talked to instead of just beaten up. The Stygian Abyss wasn t just a battlefield. It was a fallen community. A place to live in. The experience of being thrown into a dungeon and just expected to survive.

What really sold it though, if your PC could run it, was the technology. Before even Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima Underworld offered a full 3D environment complete with slopes, lighting effects and more, in a bit of technology that could only have been more impressive if well, the viewing window had been a bit bigger. Underworld 2 greatly increased the scope of the game, visiting other worlds and making it a bit easier to see, but what the first one managed remains a technological victory worthy of any heroic age.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1993)

Get used to seeing the word Ultima. Ultima VII came out in 1993, and still games like Divinity: Original Sin measure themselves against its success. Its biggest success was creating a living world, where peasants went home at night, weather blasted the world, your companions had to be fed, and, yes, where you could get some flour and water, mix it into dough, stick it in an oven, and get your own deliciously crispy bread. On top of this was an incredibly mature story that continued the series love of more advanced storytelling than most games of the era (previous ones having tackled racism, the perversion of good, and the quest for a hero worth being called one) with a complex tale of good intentions subverted by an otherworldly being of pure, but incredibly smug malevolence.

Ultima Online (1997)

Last time! Where Ultima VII brought a living world to single-player RPGs, Ultima Online brought it to multiplayer. It wasn t the first MUD or MMO, but most of them followed the Diku model popularised by Everquest: go forth, slay. Ultima Online wanted to create an actual world, where players would gather resources, craft houses, become shopkeepers and more, with hero just one of the many careers available. It wasn t without its problems, the first of them being the discovery that given a world to explore and exploit, players will typically turn it into a survival of the fittest Hell. But, its scope, its potential, and the joy of it when it worked created an epic experience that s still running today, and stories like the assassination of Lord British that will never cease to amuse.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996)

The second of the Elder Scrolls games asked one hell of a question: could you make a world with over 750,000 characters and a map the size of Britain actually feel like a world? We re putting this one here instead of Elite, partly to ring the changes, but mostly because few procedural games have pulled it off so well enough political relationships, guilds, interesting stuff to discover, and cool mechanics like being able to get turned into a werewolf or vampire.

It s not that difficult to create raw space. Daggerfall s own predecessor Arena offered even more. Its sequel, Morrowind, did what most games tend to, and hand-crafted a far smaller area in intricate detail. But for a moment with Daggerfall, we had a game that showed you could be epic, procedural and interesting, without simplifying everything down to the ASCII style of Rogue or putting all the impetus on the player to pretend that there was more going on behind the surface than was ever going to meet the eye.

Duke Nukem 3D (1996)

While another case of a game that s not aged all that well, Duke Nukem 3D was the game that took FPS action out of military bases and sewers and relocated it to city streets, cinemas, and other more realistic locations. That plus a complicated scripting system to blow them all up, clever tricks to fake a 3D engine (even though it was only 2.5, much like Doom) and endless imagination took Duke from being a moderate shareware star to the highest tiers of game characters. No wonder the world was willing to wait so long for Duke Nukem Forever. Even if it wasn t worth it, in the end.

Outcast (1999)

The PC has never really had its own Legend of Zelda. Action. Exploration. A whole new world to explore. Outcast is arguably the closest its come.

A graphical powerhouse of a game that immediately impressed with its freedom, with the AI of its characters, with the glorious effects in everything from jumping into water, to your personal scanner rippling gridmarks across the scenery. There was only one problem. It was all done with voxels at a time when 3D cards were finally allowing for decent polygonal worlds, putting all the work on CPUs that couldn t handle it. If you could play it, Outcast was an unforgettable experience. Too bad for most people it was one that had to wait until the GOG version that finally made it run, long after its prime.

Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)

It s easy to dismiss the sheer effort that goes into creating a city. After all, we ve walked, run, driven and carjacked around so many. GTA 3 wasn t even the first, with racing games in particular having set the pace. But could you get out of the racing cars and ramble? Enjoy a pumping gangster soundtrack? Run around with automatic weapons and go on missions with a huge cast of crazy characters? Just sit back and listen to an hour of talk radio? Nope. GTA III was magic, and so many sequels on, it s still raising the bar for what virtual cities can and should be.

Give or take a few terrible cock jokes, anyway.

EVE Online (2003)

Ultima Online intended to let players call the shots. It didn t quite work. With EVE Online however, CCP had the courage to actually let it happen, creating one of the most talked about online games of the last few years. Tales of empires at war, of con artistry on a scale that would make Count Lustig blink, the epic sagas of backstabbings and betrayals that no other game can match. CCP likes to describe EVE using the phrase EVE is Real , and while there may not be any starships flying distant galaxies under your favourite forum s command, they still have a point.

Civilization (1991)

All of human history in a single game? There s not much more to be said, really. As achievements go, the only bigger one would be making it one of the greatest games of all time. Not to cast aspersions on the likes of Elite for creating a universe in slightly fewer bytes than the average person would make in a toothpaste and peperami footlong, but the thing about space is that it is mostly empty. Just saying. The world however, in as many ways as you can imagine? That s ambition, even if using it educationally does mostly teach people never, ever to mess with Gandhi.

Deus Ex (2000)

Real world. Real conspiracies. Where do we even begin? Deus Ex not only set out to create some of the most realistic real-world locations we d ever seen (not a tautology the games before hadn t exactly done a great job most of the time), but also turn them into nothing short of a psychopath s toolbox. Multiple paths and solutions. Characters who reacted to your decisions. Tiny decisions determining who lives and who dies. All wrapped in some of the best writing and wrapping the PC had known up to this point. There s a reason why so many years on, it s the original Deus Ex that still stands out as both one of the greatest games ever, and the template of a dream for future immersive simulators to study at the feet of as they try to surpass it.

Dwarf Fortress (2006)

Simulations don t get any deeper than this. Literally, or figuratively. Dwarf Fortress or to give it its full title, SLAVES TO ARMOK: GOOD OF BLOOD, CHAPTER II: DWARF FORTRESS is an ASCII gem best summed up by its creator saying in 2011 that we shouldn t expect version 1.0 for at least twenty years. That s what you get in a game so crazily detailed that a cat can go into a tavern, pick up spilled alcohol on its paws, wash itself off, and get drunk. This was never intended behaviour, just the sum of smaller sub-routines coming together and making their own reality. In retrospect, that twenty years to complete doesn t sound so much at all.

Half-Life 2 (2004)

In a way, Half-Life 2 s most ambitious part isn t even in the game. Valve had an idea for a new store, called Steam . You might have heard of it. Half-Life 2 was, if not its Trojan horse, then its vanguard. You wanted to play the best FPS ever made at the time? Then you got it through Steam. And that worked out pretty well.

Even if you ignore Steam, Half-Life 2 reinvented the shooter with its focus on physics, with every chapter introducing new mechanics and new exciting concepts like the gravity gun or playing point-defense with turrets. It also created a continuous world like no other, putting the final nail into the coffin of games that didn t prize a sense of presence as well as place in their shooter campaigns. Much copied, but still rarely bettered, Half-Life 2 set out to be both the best shooter around, and its next great leap forwards.

Planetside (2003)

Some games just shouldn t be possible. Even knowing the technology that powers them, the epic battles of the Planetside series have always had a degree of magic to them. For the handful of players lucky enough to have a system and connection that could handle it, heading out into one of Planetside s huge battles is a defining moment in games. For the rest, it says a lot that it still felt just as impressive when Planetside 2 rolled along only a couple of years ago. 5v5? 12v12? That s all well and good. But an explosive, expanding, all-access battlefield where the war never stops? That s military action with a little sorcery mixed into the formula, even today.

Spore (2008)

It failed. Yes, we know. It failed. But this is ambitious games we re talking about, and few games shot higher than Spore. Leading a tiny organism through every stage of life. Constructing it using the surprisingly powerful and fun editor. Sending it out to meet other players aliens in a great throbbing galaxy full of freshly created life. That may have been the point where the charm ran out, but the open-ended action and procedural generation and early focus on user generated content that led up to that point still stands out as a technological, if not gaming success.

Crysis (2007)

"But can it run Crysis?" was a relevant joke among PC gamers for at least three years for good reason: well after 2007, Crytek's shooter could still bring CPUs and graphics cards to their knees. Crysis took Half-Life 2's early use of physics and applied it to a dense, free-roaming world. Being able to shoot a tree, watch it fall over, and then shoot the trunk into smaller pieces was revelatory players gladly gave up framerate in favor of insane graphics and physics processing. Cutting edge AI and the systems-driven sandbox gave Crysis the depth to match its insane graphics, and no shooter since has managed quite the same combination of wow and substance.

DayZ (2012)

From its beginnings as a popular mod, DayZ spawned one of the most popular genres in gaming today. The framework for this multiplayer zombie survival game was Arma 2, up until that point one of the most ambitious simulation games and a bastion for fidelity and scale on PC. DayZ built upon Arma 2 s ambition, borrowing and later adapting its 225 km2 terrain, Chernarus, which was created from satellite-modeled slices of the Czech Republic.

The month that DayZ caught on, creator Dean Hall was already laying out incredible plans about features he wanted to add, as he told us in an interview. Underground structures. Dog companions. Realistic disease systems. A couple months later we were hearing about destructible terrain and player cities. Part of Hall s stated approach was to experiment with big, bad ideas, but the reality of implementing them quickly in Arma s Real Virtuality engine for DayZ proved to be a massive challenge.

Outside of these early technical roadblocks, as a multiplayer game DayZ was uniquely trusting. The systems that DayZ inherited from Arma granted it some depth, and being dropped into a massive, hostile environment with no instruction empowered players to tell their own stories, often through surprising, weird interactions with other survivors.

Our 2012 mod of the year remains in Early Access after arriving on Steam as a standalone game on December 2013.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

It s amazing to think that in just three games, CD Projekt Red has gone from unknown studio to absolute top-tier RPG developer. The Witcher 3 is their masterpiece, from the hand-crafted world to the sheer number of characters and plots. It s a game that excels on every level, from scripting subtle enough for a character to break off combat when they hear your name, to the global nature of some of the most amazing graphics and scenery in any PC game ever, and the sheer artistry of just about every major quest or aside. You never know what s coming next, from the teary humanity of the Bloody Baron s agonising storyline, to a gaggle of Witchers drinking too much, dressing up in drag, and drunk-dialling wizards across the whole continent.

Star Citizen (20XX?)

No, it s not out yet. It doesn t matter. Chris Roberts play to create the ultimate space game already qualifies. Elite style action combined with a dedicated, AAA Wing Commander-style campaign starring Mark Hamill. First person action aboard ships. Deep space exploration. A persistent universe allowing for company, or the solitude of the stars. A crowd-funded budget of $117,259,371 and counting, with players happily putting down real money for in-game ships and unlocking features like pets and modular ship designs and new AI characters to scatter around on planetside environments. If it s not the greatest game ever, expect literal, physical riots.

Update: Speaking to Eurogamer, CD Projekt Red's Konrad Tomaszkiewicz has confirmed the existence of The Witcher 3's Game of the Year Edition.

"With all the free DLC and updates the game received so far, including significant changes to the game's interface and mechanics, many gamers have asked us if we're working on some sort of a Game of the Year Edition. I'm happy to confirm yes, plans are in motion to release such an edition. We'll release more details, including the release date, in the future. In the meantime, I'd like to thank every fan of the game for their support you're really amazing!"

Original: Here's an unsurprising but welcome development: a listing for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Game of the Year Edition has been spotted on the website of Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle the German ratings agency.

Given the marvellous record ratings sites have for leaking new editions of existing games (Bioshock: The Collection was most recently confirmed) and CD Projekt's propensity for releasing 'Enhanced Editions', I'd say this one's true.

Rather than an Enhanced Edition, however, I'd expect a straightforward collection of The Witcher 3 and its two expansions. CDPR has already slain rumours of an Enhanced Edition, and let's face it, it's spent the past year enhancing.

Eurogamer is reporting that we should expect the new edition on August 26.

The Witcher 3 loves to wade through the murk of its magical Middle Ages. Whether Geralt is trudging the forsaken swamps of Velen or topping up his tan in Toussaint, things are always more grim than they seem. A dash of domestic violence here, an avenging spirit there The Witcher s world is complex and muddy.

I m not interested in emotional grime, however. No, every time I play The Witcher 3 I m hit by its actual dirt: the mud, rocks, silt and sand that make up the Northern Kingdoms.

Immersion comes in part from CD Projekt Red s incredible textures and facial rigging, but the real legwork is done by topography. And I don t mean the awesome mountains of Skellige or the great expanse of Crookback Bog. CDPR s artistry is in the small details.

Even amid the gentle farmland of White Orchard there s evidence of geological processes at work. Sheer, sandy banks overhang the river, fringes of grass suggesting ongoing erosion. Where many RPGs would dump a river in a convenient trough in the landscape, The Witcher 3 s ragged, crumbling riverbanks convince me that this stream was flowing eons before Geralt wandered by.

When the heavens open, rain spatters every exposed surface. Decades-old games can simulate rain of course, but as the torrent develops, rivulets start to run down rock faces, explaining how their deep crevices developed. Even throwaway items like a quest-specific frying pan catches raindrops as you hand it to an NPC.

Rocks, clifftops, tree roots and all the imperfections that make nature a pain in the arse each get their time to shine. They never feel like assets studding the landscape for variety s sake, as boulders often do in Skyrim, for example. They are the landscape, born of imagined natural processes. I like to believe The Witcher s NPCs considered the lay of the land before building their hovels. Roads, for example, typically take the easiest route up a hill, skirting ridges though a straight route would be quicker.

Attention to topographical detail comes at a cost. Geralt s movement is often sluggish, and I wonder whether his lack of precision, quite unbefitting a witcher, is a product of the landscape s complexity. Roach, his faithful steed, certainly sees things I can t, stalling on hilly terrain like she s missed a gear change. Thankfully Roach s initial fear of bridges (gephyrophobia, if you re wondering) was patched out.

Nevertheless, the sensation of controlling a drunk man and his intellectually challenged horse is a price I happily pay to wander a world so muddy, rough and crumbling that it s just like the real thing.

The expansions might be over, but CD Projekt Red is still polishing The Witcher 3. Patch 1.22 is here, and it fixes a number of new issues introduced by Blood and Wine, plus some general tweaks for good measure.

Weird and wonderful highlights include:

• Fixes issue whereby negative experience points were sometimes displayed if progress had been initially started in version 1.0.
• Fixes issue whereby Roach's tail could vanish.
• Fixes issue whereby pressing 'O' would add an unlimited number of Decoy gwent cards.
• Fixes issue whereby Oriana's guard could become translucent during the "Night of Long Fangs" quest.
• Adds display of food or drink vitality regeneration amount.
• Fixes issue whereby players could knock down horses.
• Fixes exploit whereby Aarding a beehive towards the dwarven blacksmith in White Orchard was possible.
• Fixes issue whereby a noblewoman in red would sometimes follow Geralt everywhere he goes.
• Fixes issue whereby body parts would sometimes remain suspended in mid-air after an enemy exploded.

There are many more fixes, and you can find the full patch notes here (amazingly, the inventory is still being improved).

When CD Projekt announced that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would include a Hearthstone-style game-within-a-game called Gwent, two thoughts immediately leapt to my mind: First, that "Gwent is a terrible name for a game, and second, that it would be a quickly-forgettable Witcher mini-game, like dice poker or drunken fistfighting. I was right on the first count, but as to the second part, well, not so much. The game-within-a-game became a hit-within-a-hit, and now it looks like CD Projekt is going to spin it off into a stand-alone release.

As noticed by Nerdleaks, the studio recently filed for two trademarks with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, one for Gwent which appears to be an expansion of a 2015 trademark filing of the same name and the other, more tellingly, for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. That filing includes a logo and, according to a Google translation, covers computer games and videogames in various formats, online gaming services, and also doodads like jewelry, medallions, key rings, statues, clothing, writing instruments, stationery, and luggage. CDPR really wants to be sure that all the branding bases are covered, I guess.

If this turns out to be true (and I fully expect that it will), it will hardly be a surprising move. Card games are big business these days, and everyone seems to want in on the action: Hearthstone is a runaway hit, Bethesda is working on one based on its Elder Scrolls series, and the only thing left of the once-mighty Fable franchise is a card game Kickstarter. Add to that the fact that Gwent is basically a fully-formed game already, and the real question isn't whether CD Projekt will release a version separate from The Witcher 3, but why it hasn't already.

(Actually, whether is a real question too, and one I've asked. I'll let you know what I hear.)

The PC Gaming Show returns to E3 on Monday June 13, featuring game announcements, updates to existing favourites, and conversation with top developers. You can find out what to expect here, and also book free tickets to attend in person at pcgamingshow.com. The PC Gaming Show will be broadcast live through twitch.tv/pcgamer from 11:30 am PT/2:30 pm ET/6:30 pm GMT, but be sure to tune in beforehand to check out The Steam Speedrun, in which one lucky winner will buy as many games as they can in three minutes.

Barely out a day, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine's darkest secrets are already being illuminated by players. A bog light dances on rickety bridge towards the end of the DLC. Let the flames guide thee, and you'll discover a combustible bonfire, complete with sword, in homage to Dark Souls.

Disappointingly, it's not a Coiled Sword. This is Gesheft, but as Gesheft is a beast of a blade (plus-20% sign intensity, three rune slots and up to 627 damage unaltered), I'm inclined to forgive the oversight. It's certainly a more practical Dark Souls tribute than Just Cause 3's.

Accompanying the release of Blood and Wine The Witcher 3's incredible final expansion is the colossal patch 1.2. CD Projekt Red has tended its game like a loving gardener since it released a year ago, and even though this is the end, that hasn't stopped it fixing longstanding issues and adding free features for good measure.

The addition of enemy level scaling is a big one. It's optional, intended for the players who have outlevelled the native fauna through exuberant side-questing, and can be toggled at any time.

There's good news for card captors too: a new book, A Miraculous Guide to Gwent, lists the missing cards in your collection and offers hints at where to find them.

Most excitingly if you're dull like me the inventory, player, crafting and repair interfaces have been further reworked. Subcategories make inventory sorting easier, while missing reagents can now be bought straight from the crafting screen (assuming you're at a vendor, of course). Even icons have been redone to make oils, cards and decorations recognisable at a glance.

Patch note of the year: "Fixes issue whereby Geralt's clothing was not properly restored after sex scenes."

The extensive notes can be found here.

CD Projekt has released the patch notes for the coming 1.20 update to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which makes a number of improvements and fixes to the game, including one that will be a big boon for Gwent card collectors: A new book called A Miraculous Guide to Gwent, which displays the number of cards missing form your base-game deck, and information on where to get them. New players can get the book from the Gwent scholar in the prologue, while those of you already deep into the action can pick it up from the merchant near St. Gregory's Bridge in the Gildorf district of Novigrad.

Other big changes include the addition of optional enemy upscaling, which will make low-level enemies more challenging (but won't affect experience points, loot, or quest rewards), and an increase in the incidence of certain monster-based ingredients required for high-level alchemy. The inventory and journal have been improved to make them easier to use, automatic drawing and sheathing of swords can be disabled, and this is a big one there will be a fix for a bug "whereby Geralt's clothing was not properly restored after sex scenes.

Oh, Geralt.

There are quite a lot of other fixes and tweaks, most of them for the base game but some specific to the Hearts of Stone expansion. A rollout date wasn't announced, but CD Projekt Community Lead Marcin Momot said on Twitter that it will be out after this weekend, but shortly before the Blood and Wine expansion goes live on May 31, and Tom Senior's review says that it's very good indeed. Full patch notes can be found here, and the relevant discussion of the update on the CD Projekt forums is here.

I had to double check the date, but yes, here we have the launch trailer for The Witcher 3's massive Blood and Wine expansion. That is, the launch trailer for an expansion that's still a week away. Does that make sense? No. Is the trailer packed with unmentionably horrible monsters? You're darn right it is.

CD Projekt Red has broken out the bestiary for Geralt's trip to Toussaint. I spied the nightmarish giant centipedes of the Witcher 1, a smattering of barghests (the beast!), and something that resembles a Dark Souls boss. Proper witcher's work.

Interesting choice of soundtrack, but I suppose it's hard to conjure primal rage on the lute.

Blood and Wine releases May 31, and Tom has a preview to whet your blade.