DW8:XL Anounced!:

Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends is well on its way to completion and slated for a November release in Japan.  So says Famitsu where it was announced.  Hallelujah!  The game has so far revealed two new playable characters, Chen Gong and Zhu Ran.  They also say the story will go in depth into Lu Bu's story (which would make sense given Chen Gong's new inclusion), and that there are more popular characters to come.  They also said this would be the biggest Xtreme Legends game yet.

XL can take the save data from your DW8 game and seamlessly play on, it's a simple expansion pack to the already biggest Dynasty Warriors game ever.  The goal seems to seriously be to exceed all previous DW games put together in one last PS3 bonanza.  DW6 also had a huge segment featuring Chen Gong and Lu Bu, something DW7 totally skipped, so it's good to see DW8 gobble up this territory for itself.  It's still too early to know how good this game will be, without the remaining characters and stages announced the game could really be about anything right now.  However, I've been calling for this game to be announced for a while now, so it's good to see my expectations met and exceeded.  I've also been saying that DW8 has a chance to supplant all previous versions of Dynasty Warriors as the be-all game, because it had all the characters from all previous versions plus more, all with their own unique weapons.  This XL expansion will be the key to fulfilling that dream as well.  A nice day to have DW8:XL and Mononoke Hime blu-ray announced at the same time, if I do say so myself.

The Japanese full voice version of the game with English subtitles will be available free as downloadable content August 28th.  It should have come with the game but a month late isn't too bad.  Since Tales of Xillia couldn't live up to the greatness of its predecessor, DW8 is still looking to be the game of the year -- once all the expansions and DLC are taken into account.