I’ve been in a lot of rooms to see a lot of games, but sitting in a theater to watch footage of The Witcher 3’s Songs of the Past expansion for the first time provided me with an experience I’ve not come across before – live nostalgia.
As members of the Fool’s Theory dev team – who are co-developing the expansion with CD Projekt Red – guided Geralt through the new region of Letten, they made sure to stop off and reintroduce us to Roach, his ever-present steed. And, as they did, the assembled crowd let out not-quite-a-gasp, not-quite-an-ooh, but a noise that communicated some kind of shared, “There they are!”
I can’t deny that I felt it too – after a decade, there’s something distinct and practically unique about the feeling of returning to The Continent in this way. The combination of it being the same game (albeit in fresh Remastered clothing), and yet a brand new quest in a brand new location gives the sense of a true check-in – visiting old friends and, just maybe, stopping a monstrous threat along the way.
Set in Letten – the homeland of series mainstay (and narrator) Dandelion – Geralt is tasked with investigating his friend’s fractured aristocratic family, and a dangerous mystery in their past, centered around the threatening Garden of Thorns. I saw around 45 minutes from its early stages, and it’s hard to tell exactly how high the stakes are here on a global scale, but the impression I get is that Songs of the Past is more concerned with investigating the stories of its characters than the world of The Witcher as a whole.
And yet despite that, Letten emerges as the true star of the show here. A new region inspired by both English and Polish rural regions, set outside of the constantly war-torn countries we’ve visited previously, it’s initially a ray of sunshine. Geralt awakes at dawn on a hilltop after a raucous party, and is met by the sight of a placid lake, complete with touring sailboats, surrounded by bucolic rolling countryside and ringed with mountains in the far distance.
Fool’s Theory call Letten a “fully realized open world” in its own right, and has even upgraded NPC systems to allow for a region where the characters around you behave more believably, giving Letten as a whole the sense of a bustling, happy location. That is until you find Dandelion missing, begin to unravel his unhappy family history, and visit the Garden of Thorns itself.
As I see Geralt and Dandelion’s cousin, Lilla travel to investigate, the world changes almost imperceptibly around them. The trees get tighter, more misshapen. We see the remnants of human settlements laying overgrown, pierced by foliage. The light fades. Suddenly, Letten doesn’t seem quite as inviting.
And that’s before it starts trying to kill them. New enemies include Thornblooms – vicious flowers that make up for their inability to move by flailing wildly – and Swarmion – humanoid enemies boasting shields made up of hornets. Geralt himself has seen an upgrade, too, now able to equip a hooked chain as a ranged weapon, drawing enemies up close to make melee faster and more efficient than ever.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/08/29/the-witcher-3-songs-of-the-past-preview/
