UPDATED 18:45 EDT / JULY 27 2015

NEWS

CD Projekt’s final gift to The Witcher 3 fans is a free New Game Plus DLC

Over the last two months since the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Warsaw-based CD Projekt RED has released over a dozen free DLC for players that have included new quests, weapons, armors, character customizations, and more. Now the Polish game maker has revealed that the final free DLC it will be releasing will be one of fans’ most requested features: a new game plus mode.

In video games, new game plus refers to a game type that allows players to start a new game with all of the upgrades and gear they gained in a previous playthrough. While most players want to experience a game as it is meant to be played the first time, for a second playthrough many want to be able to use all of the toys and cool powers they gained before.

CD Projekt has not revealed any details about the new mode other than saying the new game plus DLC “won’t happen this week – we need a bit more time to finish it.” However, there are a few different ways they could approach the game mode depending on how they want to do it.

For some games, new game plus starts players off with everything they had: weapons, armor, money, abilities, and so on. For others, players may start with only certain features. For example, they might keep their new powers but lose their items and money, or they could start over at level 1 but keep their weapons and so on.

For The Witcher 3, the method that would make the most sense is the former, as most weapons and armor require a certain level to equip anyway, so it would be pointless to let players keep them but start them off at level 1.

There is also the possibility that the new game plus mode could increase the game’s difficulty, which is how the mode works in games like Dark Souls, but since The Witcher 3 has multiple difficulty settings already, that seems unlikely.

If you follow the video game industry closely, it can be easy to sometimes think that game makers do not care about their fans beyond soulless sales figures on a quarterly finance report. There are studios who cling to draconian DRM programs that only hurt legitimate purchasers, studios who unceremoniously strip a beloved game maker’s name off his works, studios who pile on paywalls and microtransactions to games that are somehow labelled “free to play,” and on and on.

Luckily, studios like CD Projekt prove that there are still a few good ones out there.

Image courtesy of CD Projekt RED

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