Witcher 3 Songs of the Past should venture back to the novels

After months of speculation, CD Projekt Red announced more The Witcher 3 DLC on Wednesday. Unfortunately for those wanting more monster hunting on the Continent ASAP, the upcoming expansion Songs of the Past won’t be released until sometime in 2027. So, for now, you’ll just have to be content replaying The Witcher 3 for the 12th time while you wait.

Rumors circulating before the official announcement claimed the expansion could bridge the gap between The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and the upcoming Ciri-led The Witcher 4. CD Projekt Red hinted that could be the case, with co-CEO Michał Nowakowski calling Songs of the Past “in a way, a prologue, although it’s not a prologue in a verbatim way in [that] it’s a prologue for the actual Witcher 4.”

Before Nowakowski said that, I wondered if Songs of the Past would take players back in time to Geralt’s early adventures, due to the “Past” in the title and because the expansion is being co-developed by The Witcher Remake developer Fool’s Theory. Seems like that might not be the case, however, as Songs of the Past could move forward with new shenanigans for Geralt to get swept up in. But I can’t stop thinking about how cool a video game would be that directly adapted the stories and characters from Andrzej Sapkowski’s nine-book saga.

The Witcher 3 has now sold over 65 million copies, but I’m guessing not all 65 million players have read the books. In case you didn’t know, CD Projekt Red’s trilogy of games takes place after the events of the original stories (which is what the Netflix show has adapted). The games somewhat ignore the canon ending of the novels to go off and do their own thing, meaning thousands of pages of material have been left unadapted.

The first two books are short story collections that introduce readers to Geralt, the bard Dandelion, the sorceress Yennifer, the child of surprise Ciri, and more. Most stories follow Geralt getting up to some sort of exciting adventure of monster-slaying, like the classic “A Grain of Truth,” which finds Geralt investigating a secluded mansion and its mysterious inhabitant. It’s prime video game side quest kind of stuff. The first Witcher game even adapted the short story “The Witcher,” wherein Geralt undoes the curse of a striga, showing how well these stories would work as video game quests.

After the story collections comes a series of novels, and the first finds Geralt watching over Ciri after her home kingdom was invaded by the Nilfgaardian empire. He takes her to the Witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen and trains her to become a monster hunter herself, something The Witcher 3 briefly shows via flashbacks. They’re separated after the incredible Thanedd Coup in book two, and venture their separate ways for most of the rest of the series.

Geralt searches for Ciri and gathers several allies during his journey, like the vampire Regis, who pops up again in The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion. A game based on these adventures, which involve Geralt’s Hansa getting tangled up in a battle between Nilfgaard and a northern kingdom’s forces, could do something new for the Witcher games and include multiple playable characters; the archer Milva would play very differently than the Nilfgaardian soldier Cahir. Or if Geralt remained the sole playable character, a BioWare-like conversation system would go a long way in bonding with these characters.

Image: CD Projekt Red

All told, the print saga is ripe for a video game adaptation. In fact, we’ve already seen a successful Witcher video game set during the books’ timeline. 2018’s Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales follows Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia as she battles Nilfgaardian forces… via Gwent, the all-consuming card game from The Witcher 3. It’s splendid!

New twists to the card game make it fresh for players who have already sunk dozens of hours into The Witcher 3’s Gwent. Thronebreaker emphasizes the grey morality of the Witcher world through its choice-based storytelling, and no choice feels “good” or like the “right one.” It’s thematically appropriate for a war-torn land, and a game based on the novels could follow in its storytelling steps.

Of course, Sapkowski’s novels getting a one-to-one video game adaptation is unlikely at this point. If CD Projekt Red wanted to take that route, the studio probably would have done it 20 years ago for its first crack at a Witcher game. Instead it created an original saga, and is still reaping the rewards of that decision today.