Geralt carefully circles the Swarmion, his steps slowly overlapping as he sizes up his foe. The creature could be easily mistaken for any generic fantasy undead or humanoid mutant, were it not for the cloud of hornets that swarm around its torso – a bizarre form of armour by any stretch of the imagination. But our Witcher is as resourceful as ever. He switches his silver sword for a chain, swinging the hooked end round and round as he chooses his target. The creature's legs, or its head? The answer is obvious. The hook sinks into the fleshy neck and pulls taught, wrenching the creature out of the hornet swarm and pulling it directly into the path of Geralt’s blade. Blood plumes from its neck. The head falls with a dull thud.
The silver chain is an important weapon for Geralt of Rivia. Those who have been there from the beginning will remember it from The Witcher’s very first cutscene, back in 2007. Those who have been there from the actual beginning will know it from the short story within The Last Wish collection, from which that cutscene was adapted. The important thing is that it’s part of Geralt’s core Witcher gear – and so it’s only fitting that we finally get to use it in what could well be the last time we get to play as him.
Songs of the Past is The Witcher 3’s unexpected third expansion pack, which will launch next year – 12 years after the base game was originally released, and a year ahead of the series’ in-development fourth game, which passes the protagonist baton to Ciri. And Geralt’s chain-swinging monster battle was just one small section of an hour-long demo I watched at gamescom 2026, during which a member of the CD Projekt Red dev team played through the ‘A Bed of Thorns’ quest, an early chapter that establishes Songs of the Past’s story.
Geralt awakens in Letten, the homeland of his frequent partner-in-heroics, Dandelion. While much of Geralt’s life has been well documented across both Witcher books and games, Dandelion’s history is a little more of an enigma – one that Songs of the Past seems primed to crack. The quest’s opening sees Geralt trek towards a grand hilltop estate, the home where Dandelion grew up not as a bard, but as Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove. It’s not hard to see why he left this life of nobility behind; Geralt endures a painfully tense meal with Dandelion’s incredibly stern grandmother, a woman who would make even the most pampered person want to run away from home. Also present is Lilla, Dandelion’s cousin – a much more agreeable woman and Geralt’s new companion (plus, of course, potential target of affection – although this playthrough ignored any flirtatious dialogue options.)
I hesitate to make a judgement call on Songs of the Past's writing at this early stage, but I'll understand if you've some reservations - rather than purely CD Projekt Red behind the wheel, this expansion is the work of Fool's Theory, a different studio (although one that is made up of many CDPR veterans). Thankfully, what I've seen so far suggests the quality bar has been maintained. Within just a single scene I had a very good idea of who these two women were and how their values complimented or clashed with Geralt's own well-established code.
Not at the table is surely the reason Geralt came here in the first place; his faithful bard is nowhere to be seen. And so begins Geralt and Lilla’s mission to seek out Dandelion and bring him home. But where to start? Well, in dreams: during the night Geralt had visions of blood, thorns, violets, and a well – an image Lilla recognises as The Garden of Thorns. The two meet later that day to head out in search of what should just be a bad story, but is very quickly going to become a horrifying reality.
Letten is a beautiful place, divorced from the woes of The Continent. In that way it’s a little like Blood and Wine’s idyllic Toussaint, and the comparisons don’t stop there: CD Projekt Red says to expect something of a comparable size, so it may well be that Songs of the Past extends as far as 30 or so hours. Geralt explores the old and new sides of the town, and we pass by rows of bushes entwined with wild flowers – there’s a little of Nordic midsummer in its design, blended with English and Polish countryside. It all looks beautiful, helped by the newly-announced remaster, which upgrades The Witcher 3’s technology base with higher-resolution textures and path-tracing lighting. It would be disingenuous to say it makes this decade-old RPG look like a game from the current console generation, but it’s nonetheless a beautiful thing, particularly when it comes to natural environments caught in the final rays of the day’s sun.
But a Witcher’s job rarely stays in pleasant territory. It’s not long before Geralt and Lilla have journeyed beyond the town’s borders and found themselves in more cursed lands. Knotted trees with twisted branches form the edge of an arena in which Geralt does battle with a Thornbloom, a large vine-like plant that can cause fields of large bulbs to grow and subsequently explode. While the remaster and, by extension, Songs of the Past benefit from an upgraded combat system, it’s not obvious in this fight how substantial the change is – this very much looks like Witcher combat as usual. A little later, when the Swarmion and its hornet shield turn up, it becomes clear that the chain does add some extra flair to the proceedings, and I like that in a moment of slow-motion you’re able to target what body part Geralt sinks the hook into before grappling a far-off enemy into melee range. But until I go hands-on with the new system I’m going to assume the changes are subtle tweaks rather than a revolutionary overhaul.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/weve-seen-the-witcher-3-songs-of-the-past-in-action-and-its-looking-like-another-blood-wine-gamescom-2026
