The Witcher 3's New Weapon Was 'Impossible' 11 Years Ago
Overview & Key Takeaways
The Witcher 3's upcoming Songs of the Past DLC finally gives Geralt his chain, a weapon that was "impossible" to include when the base game launched.
The Witcher 3 may have been released 11 years ago, but that doesn't mean developer CD Projekt Red is done with it. A remastered version of the seminal RPG is out later this month, ahead of a new expansion, Songs of the Past, which will be released next year. Songs of the Past will return familiar faces, like Dandelion, while introducing new enemy types. It will also give Geralt a weapon that would have been impossible for him to use when the main game came out in 2015.
In The Witcher short stories and novels, Geralt sometimes wields a chain in his battles with monsters. In the opening cinematic of 2007's The Witcher, he uses it against a striga, even though it's nowhere to be found in the game. It's absent from the second and third Witcher games, too, but that will be rectified in The Witcher 3's Songs of the Past DLC as technology has now caught up to CD Projekt Red's vision.
In a recent interview with BBC News (spotted by GamesRadar), Songs of the Past game director Jakub Rokosz said that CDPR had discussed giving Geralt a chain when developing the base game. "It was impossible to do at the time for various technological reasons and challenges," he said. "A few things had to click together, because we were able to address those challenges and issues during the remaster. So then we were able to implement a weapon that feels just natural and very fluid, and basically realizes the fantasy that you either read in the books or seen in the trailer."
Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki talked about how the chain is a good option when facing Songs of the Past's new enemies. "We were able to do crowd control on enemies like the Swarmions that swarm you, and you have to keep them away from you, essentially," she said. It'll also allow Geralt to pull enemies in close for follow-up attacks. "It's a very cool weapon for players who might be sick of the crossbow by now."
While we haven't been able to get our hands on Songs of the Past and its new chain weapon ourselves just yet, Polygon's Ford James did get to watch it in action during a hands-off preview at Gamescom last month. "Geralt's new chain weapon can pull in enemies from afar, breaking [the Swarmion's] protection and opening up windows for new finishers, including one where the chain takes the foe's head clean off," he wrote.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Songs of the Past will be released sometime in 2027, which can't come soon enough. After that, The Witcher 4 will arrive in 2028.
