PaigeFTW: ‘Hearts of Stone’ Sets the DLC Standard
I’m used to being mildly disappointed by DLC.
You pay a disproportionately high sum to get content that does not feel commensurate to what you paid for. If an entire 60-hour game costs me $60, after all, why is it that I have to pay another $15 to get three hours of largely superfluous content?
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has changed that trend with Hearts of Stone, a $10 expansion that is DLC done absolutely right.
The self-contained quest sees Geralt on an adventure that is, for the most part, completely unrelated to the main plot of the story (which feels organic, as Geralt by trade would be going around, having random adventures). It opens a previously unexplorable area on the map near Oxenfurt and Velen.
A tangle with a frog prince and an attempted kidnapping deposit our hero right in the hands of Master Mirror, who asks Geralt to grant the three impossible wishes of a rogue noble named Olgierd von Everec. Along the way, Geralt goes to probably the best wedding ever (not his) and woos another fiery redhead (the lovely Shani, whom some might remember from the first Witcher).
So, yeah, the story is pretty great.
The characters are lively, and the choices are morally ambiguous — you’ll wish this sequence had an effect on the rest of the game. But, of course, there are also tons of smaller side quests, new sets of armor (including Viper gear!) and dozens of new points of interest on the map (the trap that ensnares every player, always).
It’s more of what you already liked, plus enough new stuff to be worth every penny. And it definitely takes more than three hours to work through.
The only downside to all of this is that the next expansion, Blood and Wine, doesn’t drop until next spring. That one promises an entirely new region to explore in the mythical Toussaint. Consider me hyped.
