Hearts of stone
Hearts of Stone regularly reminds players of the presence and considerable power of Gaunter O'Dimm Throughout Hearts of Stone, the player frequently talks to and works with O'Dimm. In contrast, the player doesn't actually see any of The Wild Hunt until hours into the game, and doesn't meet the king of the Wild Hunt face-to-face until the game's final showdown. He sets Witcher protagonist Geralt on the right path at the very beginning of the game. See no evilĪnyone who has played The Witcher 3 for more than the first few minutes has met Gaunter O'Dimm, the primary antagonist of Hearts of Stone.
#HEARTS OF STONE FREE#
Free from the urgency of saving the world, players can lose themselves in whimsy and focus on learning the story of the tortured Olgierd von Everic and uncovering the true nature of Gaunter O'Dimm.
#HEARTS OF STONE SERIES#
While it does feature plenty of rehashed fairy tale tropes and morally ambiguous choices - the same stuff that's driven The Witcher series since the first game in 2007 - the expansion boils the experience down to its essentials. Some will suggest that Hearts of Stone is simply more of the same. The studio's passion for its craft obviously extends to care for its players in a way that every studio in the industry could stand to learn from.
Like so much of what CD Projekt Red does, Hearts of Stone feels very pro-consumer. This is perfect for folks who have been away from the game for a bit, and effectively avoids the frustration felt by Bloodborne players surrounding that game's expansion. Hearts of Stone can be played before or after completing the primary quest in The Witcher 3, but developer CD Projekt Red brilliantly included a stand-alone play option that grants the player with an appropriately leveled and geared character. It costs ten dollars, which is approximately the price of a couple of new dance moves for your Destiny character. It will take the average player around ten hours to complete - roughly the length of the average single-player campaign in an action game. The first of two announced expansions for The Witcher 3, Hearts of Stone can be played largely as a self-contained experience. Hearts of Stone adeptly takes players on a journey free from these foibles. They're threatening to abduct the player character's adopted daughter and use her to invade the world and destroy all known life, but it's too easy to ignore this danger for the majority of the game. Additionally, the titular villain, The Wild Hunt, is invisible for most of the game. Among those is the common open-world game challenge of balancing the urgency of the primary quest line with the vast number of other things to do. However, it suffers from a few notable flaws. The Witcher 3 is the best game released this year, and any publication that says otherwise is, in my opinion, wrong. It has all the strength of the The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt behind it (as well as the developer's considerable dedication to improving the game post-release).
#HEARTS OF STONE HOW TO#
The Witcher 3's first expansion, Hearts of Stone, is a master class on how to create meaningful, valuable downloadable content. As with last year, we're running a series of opinion pieces by members of the Polygon staff explaining why certain games earned top marks from them even if they didn't make our staff-wide Game of the Year list.ĭisclaimer: This article includes minor spoilers about characters and plot points in The Witcher 3 and Hearts of Stone.
Every year the Polygon staff chooses 10 excellent games to award our Game of the Year honors, but that means some games we love don't quite make the cut.