When you measure the amount of content by the estimated number of hours it will require to play through, CD Projekt Red, developer of The Witcher 3 and its predecessors, becomes the front runner in delivering the goods. In a recent interview with GameReactor, game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz got fans of The Witcher 3 salivating when he went into detail about just how much game players can expect of the story-heavy DLC packs.
While CDPR has been releasing weekly DLC packs containing items, equipment, and cosmetic additions, there are two larger DLC packs, titled Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, confirmed for release in October of 2015 and early 2016 respectively. In a market full of DLC missions and quests promising ~4-7 hours of gameplay, CDPR is raising the bar. Tomaszkiewicz said himself,
The expansion packs will be whole new storylines with all the elements you’ve got in the main story (like cutscenes, new characters, new items, new Gwent cards) and many, many more. They will be quite long. The first expansion will be around 10 hours and the second expansion will be around 20 hours… and I think it’s possible that they will be bigger, because it’s always like this (that when we plan some time or hours, it’s twice or something like this), but I’m not promising anything right now. And even now, if you sum up this 10 to 20 hours and you compare it to The Witcher 2, it’s almost the size of The Witcher 2. And it will be cool, it will be new stories, it will be very emotional stories and I think that people will be happy.
Keep in mind that this is in addition to the game that, even when stripped of all DLC, most players have reported taking 100 hours or more to complete in its entirety. No fans of the game are going to go hungry for more if CD Projekt Red has anything to say about it. In a Forbes article on the subject, contributor Paul Tassi mentioned that “it’s increasingly bizarre that this is an industry where a seven hour (max) game like The Order: 1886 costs the same $60 as 100+ hours of The Witcher 3.”
Regardless, it’s clear that CDPR runs under a consumer-first philosophy that can likely be attributed to the droves of fans they’ve garnered over the years.