The Witcher 3 Songs of the Past DLC Due to “Happy Accidents” That Happened, CDPR Wants to Give Geralt “One Last Ride”
Last year, we reported a rumor that The Witcher 3 would be getting another expansion, which, at the time, sounded ridiculous. I mean, who ever heard of a game getting premium DLC 11 years after its release, right?
Well, this rumor became a reality this year, when CD Projekt RED announced Songs of the Past — a new premium expansion that will tie in to The Witcher 4.
How did this become a thing? It seems it’s not something that was planned, but due to “happy accidents.”
CD Projekt RED Wants to Give Geralt “One Last Ride”
Speaking to The Game Business, CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski explained how they thought a third expansion would never happen.
Nowakowski notes, “We felt that The Witcher 3 was a closed book and we’d never come back to it. But a couple of happy accidents happened. We started a collaboration with Fool’s Theory. They were supposed to work on The Witcher 1 [remake], but we realized that needed a bit more time because of certain technology dependencies with The Witcher 4.”
While Nowakowski does say they had an idea for a third expansion way back then, it was something they’d never thought would ever see the light of day, stating, “We actually had the idea for a third expansion a long time ago, but it was put in a drawer forever. We never thought we’d be taking it out. But one conversation led to another, which led to, ‘Why don’t we make an expansion?’ Does it even make sense after such a long time? Has anybody done that for a single-player game? That led us to, ‘It sounds crazy, but let’s give Geralt one more ride’.”
The conversation about The Witcher 3 didn’t end there, as Nowakowski also talked about the Remastered upgrade too.
CDPR Never Considered Charging for The Witcher 3 Remastered Upgrade
At Gamescom Opening Night Live, one of the biggest surprises wasn’t even a game, but the announcement that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt would be getting an upgrade that would add not just performance and visual boosts, but also ones that affect gameplay.
Some might have thought that this would be released as a paid upgrade to existing game owners or as an entirely new edition; we were glad to see our assumptions were wrong as CD Projekt RED revealed it will be dropping as a free update on September 29.
It seems that even with a slate of new features and content included in the Remastered upgrade, the devs never considered charging for it, even if the additions made might make it justifiable.
Nowakowski said, “It was never a question we asked ourselves. We were going deeper into the development of Songs of the Past with [developer] Fool’s Theory, and we started chatting: ‘Why don’t we make the game more modern? Everything felt like it was developed 10 years ago’. Because it was developed more than 10 years ago.”
The studio CEO mentioned how they saw this Remastered upgrade as a free gift to players, and charging for it never even occurred to them.
“We started chatting about what we could do to improve it. It started with small things and then it turned into this larger project, and we suddenly realized we had a remaster on our hands….we never thought about it this way. The commercial bit is the expansion, but with the game, we really felt this is the CDPR way to gift it to the players who already own it. It was just never a question we asked ourselves,” Nowakowski commented.
While gamers are used to video game companies nickel-and-diming for every single thing, that’s where CD Projekt RED is different, and we’re glad the studio is appreciative of their player base.
Songs of the Past will be released in 2027 for the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, while the Remastered upgrade will be rolled out as a free title update in September on the same platforms.
Players can now download a title update for the game that will turn the base game into the Complete Edition, granting free access to the Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone expansions.
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