Fresh from winning awards for Best Storytelling and Best Visual Design at the Golden Joystick's two weeks ago, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's second expansion Blood and Wine is back in the headlines today having won the award for Best Role-Playing Game at The Game Awards gala in Los Angeles last night.
Game Director at CD Projekt Red, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, had this to say: "Back in the day, when games were distributed mainly on CDs, it was popular to release so-called add-on discs. They were often multi-hour adventures that required a serious amount of work to be created and contained new features that significantly influenced gameplay. When we first thought about how an expansion to The Witcher 3 might look like, we decided that we wanted to bring that way of thinking back ... The fact that our expansion was nominated for TGA's Best RPG was great on its own; the fact that it got the award is mind-blowing."
It fought off some stiff competition this year from the likes of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Dark Souls III, World of Warcraft: Legion, and Xenoblade Chronicles X. It's a testament to the quality of CD Projekt Red's post-launch work that Blood and Wine – an expansion that requires the base game – beat other full releases to this year's prestigious award.
Do you feel this award is justified? Is Blood and Wine a big enough expansion to be included among other such prestigious alumni, or do you think that DLC has no place alongside other new releases at such award ceremonies? Choose your blade carefully and battle it out in the comments section below.
Comments 17
DLC/Expansions should be a separate category. Be The Game Awards is a show where the actual rewards don't matter. All people wanted to talk about was the trailers. It doesn't help make the industry to be taken seriously when it's biggest awards event is a platform for hype and sales culture. As political as the Oscars are they don't take time out to show trailers for upcoming summer blockbusters.
I have tried so many times to get into this game but, I just can't. It's crazy as on paper this should be my sort of game but, I just dislike and cannot get past the levelling and combat systems.
I loved the main game and it's really one of the best rpgs I've ever played but I just couldn't get into the first dlc and haven't even tried this one yet. I don't know whether it was because the main game just sort of burned me out or the fact that most of the characters weren't in it anymore, I'm sure I'll come back to it sometime
Stupid, its DLC.
What's all this negativity!? Blood and Wine can easily clock in at 20+ hours. So the content amount is on par with (and exceeding many) "full" games. Plus, I love that this recognition advocates putting this amount of time and effort into DLC.
Also, 'DLC'? We need a new term, as every game can be downloaded nowadays and it's inevitable that it'll likely be the norm rather than the exception. Expansion? Additional Content? Alas, I know the gaming community does get rather attached to its acronyms.
@Lonejester The length of the content doesn't come into it, it's still DLC that's an add on to a game that's a year old. For great games like Deus Ex and Dark Souls to miss out doesn't seem right.
@adf86 So if they'd released it as a standalone game, exactly as it is now, it'd be justified? It's not like Dark Souls III (3!) and Deus Ex are all that different from their predecessors.
@adf86 @Lonejester My take on this is that if you need the base game to play it, then it's not its own game and shouldn't be included. It's an add-on, even if it's a massive (and brilliant) one.
Still, won't complain in this case, I loved Blood and Wine to bits.
@Lonejester If it was standalone then yes I would count it as it's a separate thing. Like I say expansions should have had it's own category away from full games that came out this year.
Blood and Wine is better than all rpgs this year. So won the prize, end of story.
I picked up the Witcher 3 DLC on sale during the weekend, and i reinstalled to pick it back up from where i left off. Adding it to my currently stuffed nightly game rotation!
@Frank90 Subjectively.
TW3 is a great game if you are the guy watching someone else playing it. Once you have the controller in your hands, you can't stop yelling at the TV "stop talking, let me play!". Once you start playing, you realize all the satisfaction comes from some good cutscene, because quests fells cheap and boring as any Far Cry.
Should have just gave the award to The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition, then there wouldn't be all this silly bickering.
I voted for this as my members forum game of the year so...
@carlos82 There are some great new characters in both of these add-on games. The villian in Hearts of Stone is very good.
Fully deserving, even if an expansion. Very good games in competition, but Imo B&W only delivered in all it sets to achieve.
Even if an expansion feels more refreshing and unique than a lot of full blown sequels we've seen this year.
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