The night's headliner goes on at 20:00 CEST. When Opening Night Live reaches The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Songs of the Past, CD Projekt Red presents the first major expansion for its 2015 epic since Blood and Wine, and Sunday's preview cataloged everything the studio has refused to share going in. Tonight shows whether the restraint was confidence or caution. Four things decide that. [1][2]

First, footage type. A cinematic tells you nothing about scope; gameplay minutes are the only currency this audience accepts at face value. Second, premise — whether Songs of the Past is Geralt's epilogue, a prequel, or a bridge to the next saga, the framing decides how a decade-old world grows. Third, the numbers: release date and price, both withheld through a summer of leak threads that have already traded every plausible figure. Fourth, platform breadth, which reveals whether this is a service-era add-on or a console-generation showpiece. [1][2]

The comparison hanging over all four questions is Blood and Wine, the 2016 expansion widely treated as the form's high-water mark — thirty hours of new country that played like a sequel. Anything less ambitious will be graded against it within minutes. [2]

That is the real spectacle tonight. The reveal is staged in Cologne; the verdict is written simultaneously by thousands of close-readers who will slow the trailer down before the applause ends.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles