Blood and Wine, The Witcher 3’s second narrative expansion, just received two new screenshots, and they look as though pulled straight out of a fairy tale. There’s no denying the world of The Witcher 3 is expansive and beautiful. Between the rundown settlements and marshes of Velen, the colorful, vibrant city of Novigrad and its surrounding fields of green, and the jaw-dropping mountain vistas of both Skellige and Kaer Morhen, it’s clear that developer CD Projekt RED understands the importance of captivating audiences through open world design. And the game’s second expansion looks to outdo previous regions in terms of scale and beauty.
Blood and Wine will introduce an entirely new region to the game: Toussaint. Untainted by the war, the country’s atmosphere mirrors that of the lands in a fairy tale; large castles, knightly rituals, and bright, colorful environments. Check out the first two screenshots below.
Speaking on the game as a whole, Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz noted, “2015 is almost behind us. It’s a great year for open world games and a fantastic time for The Witcher. A year of intense work for the team and a time filled with many personal victories for everyone involved in a project that received more than 300 awards so far (wow!). We overcame so many obstacles to get to this point, and we’ve always done it with gamers rooting for us. It’s your year, too!”
“Blood and Wine, the second expansion for The Witcher 3, is on the horizon,” he continued. “It’s a massive land to explore, visually unlike anything you saw in Wild Hunt or Hearts of Stone, and it too is brimming with stories we want you to discover.”
The expansion is set to release sometime during the Spring of 2016. When the time comes, you can purchase it separately for $20, or you can grab it as part of the game’s Expansion Pass ($25). If you’ve yet to play The Witcher 3, or pour hours into its first expansion, Hearts of Stone, then please, do yourself a favor, set aside a few weeks, and try them both out. You won’t be disappointed.
