Speaking to IGN, game director Vladimir Tortsov said Rogue Mage emerged from players’ desire for more PvE experiences in Gwent. “While Gwent multiplayer is a fantastic game for those who are looking for a great PvP multiplayer experience, we perfectly understand that many Witcher players loved the original mini-game of Gwent for totally different reasons. With Rogue Mage, we aim to give this audience a reason to play modern-day Gwent in the format they prefer.”

The story follows Alzur, a mage looking to create the first Witcher. As such, it takes place hundreds of years before Geralt was born. Utilizing a rogue-like format, Rogue Mage sees players starting with 12 cards a deck. The four decks offer unique themes and purposes, though each offers three key cards to build on. Upon exploring the procedurally generated map, more cards are unlocked.

However, you’ll also come across Places of Power and moral dilemmas with different choices. Interestingly, the story isn’t treated as an official addition to the lore. Tortsov notes, “Our goal with Rogue Mage’s story is to give players enough context on who Alzur is, what is his motivation, and the general setting of the world he lives in. We hope that players will get enough immersion to complement the gameplay-first formula, but we do not expect the story to be the main reason for players to appreciate this release.”

Depending on one’s path, it’s easy for a run to be over quickly or even go for an hour. The expansion should offer more than 30 hours of gameplay in total if you do everything. Of course, there are also difficulty modifiers that can either make things easier or harder. It’s also worth noting that it’s entirely playable offline, though cross-save progression and leaderboards require an internet connection.

Stay tuned for more details when Rogue Mage goes live tomorrow.

CD Projekt RED is the latest developer to suffer a major cyber attack with some of its internal systems being compromised. The developer noted that the unknown party obtained “certain data” belonging to the company and left a ransom note. The incident is still under investigation with CDPR noting that, as of now at least, no user data has been compromised.

Said ransom note, which the company had shared,  indicates that source code for Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Gwent and an “unreleased version of The Witcher 3” (likely the current-gen upgrade) had been stolen. Documents relating to “accounting, administration, legal, HR, investor relations and more” were also compromised. Though its data could be leaked, CD Projekt RED has already stated that it will not give into the demands.

Unfortunately, such cyber attacks are becoming more prevalent. Capcom suffered a significant leak which leaked projects like Resident Evil Outrage and even details on Monster Hunter Rise’s Switch exclusivity period. Stay tuned for more details on how this impacts CD Projekt RED, especially with the company already under scrutiny from Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled launch.

Important Update pic.twitter.com/PCEuhAJosR

— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) February 9, 2021

Thanks to the Netflix show, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has enjoyed a big spike in sales and popularity. The game returned to many of the top digital sales charts, for instance, showing just how much a popular show can help your brand. It’s hard to say if that same effect has hit GWENT, the digital card game spin off. That game will, however, be playable by more people relatively soon.

In a new developer update stream, CD Projekt RED broke down the game’s latest update and upcoming features. They briefly mention that the Android version of the game is up and running on higher end devices, but it still needs time and polish to get working on more. They say the official release is still slated for the Q1 of this year, however.

GWENT is available now on PC and all iOS compatible devices with the Android release hopefully coming soon.

CD Projekt RED had stated some time ago that they will probably release games in the future related to The Witcher series, but they also said that it wouldn’t be a traditional fourth entry. Speculation and theories have been rampant since then (a game focused on Ciri, perhaps?), but that’s been put to an end – for now – with CDPR’s latest announcement. It’s… not quite what you would expect.

It looks like Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is going to be the next Witcher game. It’s based on the popular Gwent card game that was included in The Witcher 3, and was going to receive a standalone game of its own. Which is still coming, and though this was planned to originally be part of that, it has seemingly expanded so much in scope that the developers have decided to make it an entirely separate standalone game.

If you wanted another fully fledged The Witcher game, then you may be disappointed. However, if you liked Gwent in The Witcher 3, then there’s no reason you won’t enjoy this. The game will be an RPG with a 30-hour story campaign, and all of the main gameplay will be centred around Gwent matches. Given the excellent writing that CD Projekt RED are known for, it’s going to be great to explore more stories connected to the world of the Witcher, and it should be interesting to see how they contextualize all that around… a card game.

Thronebreaker: The WitcherTtales will be launching alongside Gwent. We don’t know when exactly the game will release, but you can check out the teaser trailer for it below.

Former CD Projekt RED designer Damien Monnier, who worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as well as the upcoming Gwent, has now joined Dyig Light developer Techland, where he will be working with them on their new IP.

“As a whole, we’re extremely excited to welcome all the recent additions to the Techland family. We’ve got really big ambitions for our next internally developed games so people with ingenious ideas as well as the skill and knowledge to bring them to life are absolutely essential,” Techland told Eurogamer in a statement.

Monnier’s departure from CD Projekt RED was known of already- CD Projekt RED had even issued a rather defensive statement about his departure a while back. However, at the time, it had been unknown what Monnier would be doing after he had left. Now we know. I guess Techland’s new IP is going to be one to watch out for, then.

GamingBolt recently had a chance to sit down with Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Gwent’s Narrative Designer to answer a few questions that have been on our minds.

"We will support our game as we always support our games. You can expect the highest quality of that."

What was the main reason to release Gwent as a standalone title?

So basically a lot of people have messaged us, by emails, by Twitter, Facebook and so on, after we released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt because they loved Gwent so much as a game in the game; and they asked if we could make this game a standalone game so they could play with their friends. So basically we listened and decided to work on that. Shortly after the release of the game [The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt] we started working on it in secret. One of our programmers has written a big part and that’s how it started.

Will there be more cards or card packs later on, possibly through DLC?

Of course. We will support our game as we always support our games. You can expect the highest quality of these.

Will there be any other DLC besides cards?

The single player campaign expansions [will] in terms of story, characters, cards.

How many cards will we see from The Witcher 3  and how many will be totally new to this version of Gwent?

I don’t know the exact numbers but you’ll find most of the cards from The Witcher 3 Gwent version and there are also a lot that we have added. We have worked the mechanics of the game as well. We have rebalanced the abilities and so on — so we can expect a lot of new stuff.

During the Microsoft media briefing they talked about how certain aspects of the game have changed or been altered compared to the version of went in The Witcher 3; can you give us more specifics on what has changed and why?

Basically it’s no longer a single player only game. So we had to take into consideration the online competitive element into it. Basically we had to rebalance the cards so everyone of them is useful for you when you pull up your decks in the multiplayer. Also we wanted to add more abilities that are interesting and that are very unique, that correspond well to the characters on the cards. Also we have modified deck building rules because you had no limitations. You basically could put all hero cards in your deck. The hero cards are resistant to the weather effects and special abilities and so on. So they were really, really strong. In the multiplayer competitive version that would have been an issue. So basically we decided to address it and straight on word. Basically right now we have a limitation of four heroes per deck.

Are the people who play the game going to be any specific character from The Witcher in the single player experience of Gwent, and if so will the player be able to choose which one?

In the single player you will be playing as a specific character from The Witcher universe. It will be defined for the campaign separately. So you can expect to play different characters.

The Witcher 3 was game of the year from most media outlets last year and CD Projekt RED continues to provide substantial DLC for the game post release; is The Witcher 3 the game that has come to define CD Projekt RED, or are there still more tricks up their sleeves even after achieving game and developer of the year?

Obviously there’s always room for development. I mean, we are always aiming high as always with this game, with Gwent. This is entering uncharted territory for us because we never done a game like this before. We are very excited about it, it’s a very big challenge for us. We are aiming very high, I hope it will do very, very well. It’s a huge, very exciting challenge for us; a new art form we basically haven’t explored yet.

Microsoft have confirmed that Xbox one Scorpio will launch next year. From a developer and technical perspective what kind of gaming experience will be possible without hardware?

For sure it will have better looking games. If this was available when we were working on Wild Hunt I would expect similar quality that we have on PC right now or even better maybe.

"This is entering uncharted territory for us because we never have done a game like this before. "

The Scorpio will feature 6 Tflop of GPU do you think it will be faster than most modern gaming PCs out there today?

This is my personal opinion: I don’t know that much about it. I think PCs are growing and developing super fast. New graphic cards are being released very often and more often than the new consoles being released. So I think it will put Scorpio on par with the PC is that we have at that point. But I think PC is growing so fast that it’ll outpace [Scorpio].

Microsoft is toting the Scorpio is the most powerful console ever created. Do you think there is worried that it may cost too much and appeal only to the hard-core Xbox fans?

No I don’t think so. I think they’ll keep the prices the way they always have. It’s still sometime in the future.

Will you be developing for the Scorpio anytime soon?

To be honest, I learned about it at the Microsoft conference.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I was working on The Witcher story and we’re doing everything we can to make the story in this one [Gwent] as exciting and as deep and mature as it was before. I’m super excited about it. I think we have something very, very special that I’m working on making it as good as possible it could be. So if you like single player content you have something to look forward to.

The Xbox One Scorpio was announced at E3 this year, and we got to see what Microsoft claimed would be the most powerful console ever created. With 6 TFLOPs of processing power, and a return to the kind of legacy that gave us (for their time) extremely powerful machines such as the original Xbox and the Xbox 360, the Xbox One Scorpio looks like a response to all the criticism the Xbox One has endured since launch, in the face of the more powerful PS4.

But this absurd overpowering of the hardware has also led to some concerns by fans, concerns that the new console might end up being far too expensive. Speaking to Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, Gwent’s Narrative Designer at CD Projekt RED, GamingBolt decided to pose the question of Scorpio’s cost- and on his part, Tomaszkiewicz doesn’t seem too worried.

“No I don’t think [it’ll cost too much]. I think they’ll keep the prices the way they always have. It’s still sometime in the future,” he said. He also explained that CD Projekt RED haven’t yet begun development on Scorpio- they only learned about it the same time that everyone else did, during Microsoft’s E3 presser. “To be honest, I learned about it at the Microsoft conference,” Tomaszkiewicz admitted.

Personally, I am inclined to agree with him. Microsoft is a rich company, and will probably be willing to take a loss on the Xbox One Scorpio hardware like they always have, to be able to deliver a very powerful console at an affordable price- and if that does end up happening, then the console market is about to get very, very interesting indeed.

As was rumored, so it shall happen- this seems to be the theme of the Microsoft E3 press conference so far, all of which, it appears, was leaked beforehand at this point. One of those leaks was for Gwent, a standalone version of the excellent collectible card game minigame from The Witcher 3. It looks like it is being developed into a full fledged game now.

CD Projekt RED spent quite a time showing the game off, discussing how they received so many requests for it, and how the game will have its own epic single player campaign mode. In a lot of ways, it sounds like Gwent will be CD Projekt RED’s counter to Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls Legends. CD Projekt RED also promised that Gwent would be as much about the player’s skill, as it would be about the cards themselves.

Gwent will be launching in closed beta on Xbox One and PC in September. Presumably, it launches for other platforms later.