The record is broken, the titan is fallen, yesterday’s revolutionary upstart has become today’s defeated incumbent: The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion—CDPR’s excellent swansong for one of the best RPGs of all time—has officially been supplanted by Shadow of the Erdtree.
In the eight years since it released, Blood and Wine has claimed the record for “best-reviewed expansion for a roleplaying game,” but that’s just history now. In a tweet earlier today, CDPR congratulated FromSoft on nabbing the title out from under it: “Elden Ring gets to wear that crown now,” read a tweet from The Witcher’s official account, “Congratulations to the entire team at FromSoftware on their stellar work!”
For the last 8 years, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine had the honor of being the best reviewed expansion for a role-playing game – but @ELDENRING gets to wear that crown now. Congratulations to the entire team at @fromsoftware_pr on their stellar work! pic.twitter.com/aop9B1ZG3JJune 21, 2024
CDPR is taking the development gracefully. In fact, it looks like a solid chunk of the studio has spent the last few days just like the rest of us have: Gearing up for Erdtree’s release. In a follow-up tweet, the studio shared a patchwork of 16 screenshots of CDPR devs taking on Mohg, the Elden Ring boss you need to overcome to access the DLC. At least one concept artist was either frustrated or triumphant enough to create a whole new original artwork for the tweet, showing Mohg falling prey to Geralt’s silver sword.
CDPR doesn’t say, but the record it’s referring to is likely B&W and Erdtree’s Metacritic rankings, where The Witcher DLC has an average score of 94, 92, and 91 on Xbox, PC, and PlayStation respectively. Erdtree, meanwhile, currently boasts 94, 93 and 95 across the same platforms. Or maybe it just has its priorities straight and is referring exclusively to PC Gamer’s reviews, where Blood and Wine was scored 94% and Erdtree just pipped it with 95%.
Personally, I’m just galled by the realisation that Blood and Wine is nearly a decade old somehow, but it’s always good to see kings supporting kings. After all, it’s not like Geralt hasn’t had his time in the sun. Plus, in another eight years it’ll be time for FromSoft to draw artwork of Messmer impaling some kind of Witcher 4 or Cyberpunk expansion villain, and the cycle will begin anew.
