Last night, CD Projekt Red showed off the first footage we’ve seen for The Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past – new content for the game launching some 11 years after the base game was released. The expansion takes us to a new location, Letten, a bucolic country very far from the conflicts and politics that dominate the rest of the continent Geralt calls home. But all is not as it seems in Letten – shortly after Geralt’s arrival, his friend Dandelion goes missing, and what starts as a simple search for a missing bard quickly becomes a job worthy of a Witcher.
In Songs of the Past, we’re introduced to Dandelion’s family – and their vast estate – and get to see a little more of the context that Geralt’s erstwhile friend grew up in. In a hands-off demo, this morning I saw Geralt acclimatise to the new region, meeting Dandelion’s extended family (including a cousin and grandma), and begin to root through the peculiar, peaceful realm of Letten. Even from this 45-minute glimpse of the expansion, it’s clear that the writing, cutscene direction, and characterisation are as sharp and funny as you’d expect from CD Projekt Red.
The expansion is being co-developed by CD Projekt Red and Fool’s Theory, a studio founded in 2015 that’s worked on original game The Thaumaturge as well as supporting development on Divinity Original Sin 2 and the Silent Hill 2 remake. Fool’s Theory CEO Jakub Rokosz sat down with me at Gamescom to shed a little more light on how Songs of the Past is coming together – many years after the story was initially put to paper.
“This is a completely original story,” Rokosz tells me when I ask if Songs of the Past takes inspiration from any of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books. “The story was conceived, way back when, in CD Projekt Red by Ola Motyka and Philip Weber [who were writers on the base game]. When they were working on it, they had to put it aside for various reasons – stars had to align, Fool’s Theory had to grow, and so on. A few years later, the topic resurfaced and we started working on [Songs of the Past]. We’ve been digging deeper, and growing it since then, and that is how it came to be the expansion you see today.”
Rokosz goes on to note that the team “always takes a lot of inspiration” from the Andrzej Sapkowski books, but this time the novels were merely a starting point for a bigger, more in-depth character study of Dandelion. “The story is original,” adds Despoina Anetaki, senior quest designer at CD Projekt Red, “but I would say what we took from the books was Geralt and Dandelion’s close relationship, and we didn’t have the space in Witcher 3 to explore that because there were so many other topics to focus on – namely, Geralt’s relationship with Ciri.
“So this expansion was a great opportunity to actually talk about Dandelion and make him a more fleshed-out character. [In the base game], we didn’t have that much space to explore him, and now we have the space to explore him, tell his story, and see him more fully. In the books, for example, he has these more philosophical conversations with Geralt – now we get to actually see a deeper side to Dandelion in the game, too.”
Rokosz then spends a little time talking about how Dandelion has always been a natural counterpoint to Geralt: he is a light-hearted, deep-thinking foil to the gruff seriousness of the Witcher. “The Witcher is all about morality and grey areas,” Rokosz continues, “and we really wanted room to focus on how Dandelion complements Geralt when it comes to that.”
CDPR has said that Songs of the Past will be “similar in scope” to Blood & Wine – which is about 15 hours or so of content, if you focus on the critical path – so I’m assuming that’s going to give us plenty of time to see more of Dandelion and Geralt in this new expansion. “[Dandelion] is really one of my favourite characters,” smiles Rokosz. “He’s this very lighthearted comedic relief, but he’s also very deep and very caring. He wouldn’t stick around with Witcher for so long, and through all of those dangerous adventures, if he didn’t care for him. And that kind of attitude deserves a place, and its own story.”
“[That focus on Dandelion] makes Songs of the Past very distinct from the other expansions,” adds Anetaki. “It’s almost like a callback to The Witcher 3 here, because the focus is about family – but in a different way to how it was handled [in the base game].”
“You know,” posits Rokosz, “we always did a lot of romances in Witcher 3, and there was never any place for a bromance…, and that’s the thing we’re aiming for here.”
The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past launches sometime in 2027.