CD Projekt RED (CDPR) still hasn’t confirmed it’s planning anything for the game that’s nearly 11 years old – but the rumors refuse to die.
There’s still no official announcement, yet the chatter suggests The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is likely to receive new DLC later this year. The expansion is said to bridge the gap between the third and fourth entries in the series and introduce a new region – with many immediately assuming that region would be Zerrikania.
According to a well-known Polish insider, though, people may be looking too far ahead. He implies the new explorable area will be much closer to regions already featured in the game – specifically around Velen and the Northern Kingdoms – rather than a far-off, entirely new land.
Earlier this month, during a live stream about older level-design approaches, UV o grach – a former Gry-Online journalist with close ties to the Polish games industry – made remarks about reusing assets and filling in empty spaces on an existing map. Those comments quickly triggered a wave of chat messages, as viewers started asking directly about the still-unannounced The Witcher 3 DLC.
UV o grach didn’t clearly confirm or deny the rumor. However, he hinted that the answer is right in front of people’s noses – essentially reinforcing information that surfaced back in early December, claiming the “new region” would actually be an extension of Velen rather than a fully separate area like the Zerrikania theory suggested.
Is this the moment when the The Witcher 3 community mistakes the stars reflected in a lake for the night sky – the very accusation Vilgefortz once leveled at Geralt in the novels? Without an official statement, it’s hard to be certain. Still, the practical side of game development points in one direction: building a brand-new region from scratch would likely be a massive effort for a smaller team working on an add-on arriving so long after the base game.
On top of that, the DLC’s rumored purpose is to connect the story to The Witcher IV, which, as far as we currently know, will largely take place in Kovir and Poviss. Those northern kingdoms sit even farther from Zerrikania than the areas where the first three games are set.
From both a narrative and production standpoint, expanding existing areas therefore sounds more plausible than inventing a completely new region that players might never return to, no matter how exotic it could be. With this new The Witcher 3 DLC rumored for a May release, we may not have to wait long to learn whether it’s real – and what it actually looks like.
Hopefully, if it does exist, it will be a worthy addition to one of the best open-world RPGs ever made.
Source: WCCFTech
