Who was your first choice for romance in The Witcher 3? Sure, everyone knows about Triss and Yen, but there’s also Keira, Sasha, Jutta an Dimun, Shani, Sylvia… the list goes on. And it sure looks like, in the upcoming expansion Songs of the Past, Geralt is going to be able to add at least one more name to that list.
The new Songs of the Past expansion, launching 11 years after the initial release of The Witcher 3, takes us to Letten, a bucolic country in the north of the continent Geralt calls home. Why are we there? Because Dandelion is; some family business has brought him back to his ancestral home, where the mouthy bard – it turns out – has actually got quite a homestead to his name. Part of that family business is his cousin, Lilla – a fiery woman with a sense of adventure – who Geralt immediately takes quite a shine to. Never say he doesn’t have a type.
In a hands-off gameplay demo shown at Gamescom, I saw Geralt accompany Lilla on a scouting mission to a mysterious grove seemingly cursed with sentient thorns and other nightmarish creatures. As the quest progresses, Lilla is tipped up by some thorns and falls over – as Geralt goes in to help her to her feet, a couple of options appear that we can choose from… including an option to hug her. “Come on, I’m Team Yen,” jokes Miles Tost, level design lead at CD Projekt Red as he nods to Benji Hanussek (playtester and QA analyst), who pilots Geralt to make a more chaste decision.
“Did I see a romance option for Lilla in the demo?” I asked Fool’s Theory CEO Jakub Rokosz in an interview after the demo. “Ehhhh….” he says, as everyone in the room nervously chuckles. “We want players to experience this on their own. We don’t want to spoil anything.” Duly noted. It’s not a no, is it?
Elsewhere, in a livestream taking place at the same time I saw the hands-off demo, Carolin Wendt – CDPR’s “expert content creator strategist” – said “we know you are waiting for romance options, and yes, there is more romance for Geralt. He deserves it.” If we put two plus two together, I think we can all see where this leads.
The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past launches sometime in 2027, even though the story for the game was written ‘years ago’.