Highlights
- The expansion map size in The Witcher 3 is larger than Cyberpunk 2077 , offering players more exploration opportunities.
- Cyberpunk 2077 excels in weapon variety, with distinct iconic weapons and a wide range of guns and melee weapons.
- While The Witcher 3 has compelling characters, Cyberpunk 2077 takes the lead with its interesting characters and detailed writing, giving everyone personality, ambitions, and consequences.
CD Projekt RED has more than provided themselves as capable of making brilliant expansions. Both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 have provided players with brilliant DLCs that pack the game with hours of additional content, a new portion of the map filled with quests, exciting discoveries, and riveting campaigns. Yet, which expansion is better out of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3?
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Both expansions are brilliant in their own right. Whether it’s The Witcher 3 with its Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone DLCs, or Cyberpunk 2077 with its Phantom Liberty spy thriller expansion. CD Projekt RED leaves no stone unturned and shows their love for their games and their fans with these expansions that are well worth their asking price.
Map Size
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty adds a brand-new district joined to Night City. Players can say hello to Dogtown, a ruthless and lawless district ruled by Kurt Hansen. This district is one of the largest in Night City and feels very diverse with what players can find here. With an abundance of discovery waiting, players can have lots of fun in Dogtown, with an air dash or a car.
When it comes to The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, a new map is given to players as they venture out of Velen, Novigrad, White Orchard, and the Skellige Isles into Toussaint. Adding Toussaint into the game is even more impressive, considering the game already has so much on the map. This entire new area is so large, and the fact that players have their feet and their trusty stead Roach, they will spend more time exploring than they would in a car.
The winner for map size has to be The Witcher 3, just because of the sheer difference in map size in terms of the vanilla game and the expansion.
Weapon Variety
Players that embark into Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty are going to find an array of new weapons to choose from. The game offers plenty of missable Iconic weapons, which all play differently, and feature some fun and overpowered effects and designs that can make each playthrough feel distinct and unique to the last.
Cyberpunk 2077: How To Get Missing Iconic Weapons
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty gives players the opportunity to purchase Iconic weapons they missed thanks to a unique vendor.
In The Witcher 3’s expansions, the features seemed more on the stories than the weapons, and Geralt of Rivia continues to use his iconic steel and silver swords, crossbows, and signs. Players can get some different weapons, but they don’t feel as unique as Cyberpunk 2077’s first-person melee weapons, guns, and quickhacks.
The winner for this point is Cyberpunk 2077, for its distinct Iconic weapons and excitingly different variety of guns and melee weapons.
Interesting Characters
Upon entering Dogtown, players are going to be pretty impressed with the characters they meet. From Rosalind Myers, the NUSA President, to the loyal FIA agent whom players might struggle to trust, Solomon Reed, played by the ever-talented Idris Elba. Not to mention the returning face of Keanu Reeves as the rocker boy terrorist Johnny Silverhand. Outside the central talent, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty has so many interesting characters, through the story and the side gigs, that it’s hard not to get fully invested.
When players embark on Toussaint, they are going to run into some fun characters, but most of them don’t feature outside a few missions or less. One of the main characters fans seemed to love was Emiel Regis, a higher vampire who stole the show due to his personality and friendship with Geralt.
Cyberpunk 2077 wins this round, due to the interest in the characters and the detailed writing that goes into giving everyone inside the game a personality, ambitions, and consequences.
Expansion Length
Some players might ask how long is Phantom Liberty, and they could be happy to know that it could take anywhere between 20 to 30 hours, or even more depending on how quickly players get through the main story, the side activities, and the dialogue options. The fact that players are almost doubling their playtime into Cyberpunk 2077 with this expansion shows just how great it can be.
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With Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine featuring as The Witcher 3 expansions, players can expect a DLC finished in a total of perhaps 50 hours or more. These two expansions add so much game time to The Witcher 3, and Blood and Wine alone can take players well over 30 hours due to its large size and ambitious content, so players are going to be sticking with Geralt for a long time.
The Witcher 3 deserves the point for the expansion length here, as both expansions will give players plenty more hours in the game, but that doesn’t discredit Cyberpunk 2077.
Story And Additional Content
A riveting spy thriller that will have V and Johnny Silverhand weave their way through the difficulties of lies, dictatorships, and politics, Phantom Liberty will keep players on their toes as they try and stop themselves from drowning in the blood of Dogtown, and the meddling of the FIA, as V desperately tries to save their own life, whilst understanding the complex motivations and differences of Songbird and Solomon Reed. In Phantom Liberty, it’s hard to trust anyone. The side jobs and gigs also feature some great choices, but not to a varied degree like The Witcher 3.
The Witcher 3’s expansions feel a lot more light-hearted in comparison, and players can take a nice vacation with wine, vampires, and monsters in Blood and Wine. They will also have a rather daunting experience with another worldly being in Hearts of Stone, but the plot is less significant and integral than Cyberpunk 2077. However, the side missions are far wackier and entertaining.
This has to be a draw, since Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty has a far stronger plot than The Witcher 3’s expansions, but the additional content of The Witcher 3 with its side missions seems more varied.
Choice and Consequence
When players reach Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, they will know that V is on borrowed time, and is seemingly desperate for a cure. Songbird has promised just that, and the stakes are elevated when President Myers’ safety is on the line. Throughout the campaign and the side missions, players can make riveting choices that alter the outcomes of the narrative, and provide players with completely different endings that can have a vast effect on the world, characters, and V’s life.
With both expansions to The Witcher 3, choice is present, and a big part of the narrative, but Geralt doesn’t seem to have the stopping power that V does. Geralt can make big decisions, but there aren’t many shown outcomes that players see the result of.
Cyberpunk 2077 wins here, simply because it presents dire consequences for nearly every choice that players make, creating unique paths and playthroughs.
Winner: Cyberpunk 2077
The reason Cyberpunk 2077 comes out on top is due to the fact that so much was riding on its success. CD Projekt RED put their entire being into this expansion after the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, and Phantom Liberty has more than paid off. Not only does it offer a riveting story with some new and iconic characters, but it also provides diversity within the missions available, a new resolution for V’s story, and a great new way to experience the game thanks to Update 2.0.
This is a subjective victory, as The Witcher 3’s two expansions still deserve the crown just as much as Cyberpunk 2077. However, if one must be crowned the king of video game expansions, it seems only right to give it to Cyberpunk 2077, as although it only had one expansion with slightly less content, the context and additions to the base game easily make Cyberpunk 2077 one of the best games on the market, and one that brims with more life.