Records were broken, Titans fell, and yesterday's revolutionary start—up became today's defeated incumbent: The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine expansion - CDPR's excellent swansong for one of the greatest RPGs of all time - was officially replaced by Erdtree's shadow. 

In the 8 years since it was released, Blood and Wine has claimed a record of "Best Review Extensions for Role-playing games," but that's just history now. In a tweet today, CDPR congratulated fromsoft for getting the title from under the title."The Elden Ring now wears that crown," read a tweet from The Witcher's official account."Congratulations to the entire fromsoftware team for doing a great job."

CDPR makes development elegant. In fact, it looks like a solid chunk of the studio has spent the last few days just like the rest of us have: Preparing for Erdtree's release In a follow-up tweet, the studio has a CDPR developer who undertakes Mohg, the Elden Ring boss who needs to overcome in order to access the DLC. At least one concept artist of 16 shows that mohg falls prey to Geralt's silver sword and creates a whole new original artwork for the tweet.

CDPR does not say, but the record it mentions is probably B&W and Erdtree's Metacritic rankings. The average score for the Witcher DLC is 94, 92, and 91 for Xbox, PC, and PlayStation, respectively. Erdtree, on the other hand, now boasts 94, 93 and 95 on the same platform. Or maybe it just has that priority straightened out, referring only to PC Gamer reviews where Blood and Wine won 94% and Erdtree won 95%.

Personally, I am surprised by the perception that blood and wine are somehow nearly 10 years old, but it is always good to see the king supporting the king. After all, it's not like Geralt did not have his time in the sun. Plus, another 8 years later, it's time for FromSoft to paint Messmer's artwork that pierces some kind of Witcher4 or Cyberpunk expansion villain, and the cycle begins anew.