- CD Projekt Red says The Witcher 3 Remastered and its many upgrades helped realize Songs of the Past
- Game director on Songs of the Past, Jakub Rokosz, says the team had a "certain vision" for the expansion, but there were technological challenges
- He says the remaster "helped with applying optimization" to the expansion
According to CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, may not exist without The Witcher 3 Remastered and its many upgrades.
If you missed the bombshell news the Polish studio dropped during Opening Night Live, The Witcher 3 Remastered is a massive free update arriving on September 29. It offers many improvements to the base game and the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, such as upgraded visuals, a refined combat system, new Witcher Signs, transmogrification, and more.
The remaster will essentially rework the game in its entirety, giving fans of the 11-year-old role-playing game (RPG) an excuse for another playthrough, ahead of the upcoming expansion Songs of the Past.
Now, in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Jakub Rokosz, CEO of Fool's Theory and game director on Songs of the Past, and senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki shared that without these technological improvements, their vision for the expansion may not have been fully realized.
"The stars had to align, so to say, because a few things had to happen," said Rokosz, who was also one of the original senior quest designers for The Witcher 3. "The Songs of the Past expansion and Letten itself, the area that it takes place, it had a certain vision. We had a certain vision for it, and it posed us certain specific technological challenges that was impossible to realize without the remaster changes.
"So the conditions had to grow for the remaster to appear on the horizon for us to be able to realize this, so this is actually two things meshing together to make it a reality."
The developer explained that Letten's lush vegetation, small bushes, and dense forests caused issues during development, but were resolved with the remaster's advancements.
"One of the challenges when we started prototyping the area was [that] it was impossible to ride with a horse through it, basically," he continued. "So we had to do some improvements on the horse handling side, right? So it feels more organic or more natural."
Letten also features a big lake in the middle of its map that allows players a view of the horizon, and as Rokosz explained, having this huge amount of open space where you can see fishermen fishing "posed a challenge in terms of how the engine was handling this. So the remaster helped with applying optimization."
Songs of the Past is due to launch in 2027.
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