The Witcher 3's upcoming DLC, Songs of the Past, will be the first to release without a Russian dub. While there will still be Russian language support through subtitles, there will be no Russian voice acting.
This is part of CD Projekt Red's boycott against Russia, which has been in place since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result, CDPR will not be calling back any of the actors who provided the Russian dub of the base game and its previous DLCs.
"Due to our decision to cease cooperation with tax residents of Russia and Belarus starting from March 2022, the expansion The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - [Songs of the Past] will not feature Russian voice acting," a post on the Russian-language CDPR account reads. "Upon launching the expansion, the audio will automatically switch to Polish. The text, as before, will be fully translated, while the Russian voice acting will remain in the base game and its first two expansions."
While the tweet translated the new DLC name to Hearts of Stone, this is likely an error, as this refers to the second DLC. The tweet then goes on to say that the first two expansions will still have Russian dubs in the remaster, which presumably means that Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone will keep their Russian voice acting.
The cast behind the Russian dub are Russian themselves, so hiring them on to do more dubbing work would indirectly be supporting the Russian war effort, since these actors would get paid and then go on to pay their taxes. CDPR, like many other studios, has gone to great lengths to distance itself from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The move suggests we can expect CDPR's other future releases, like Cyberpunk 2, to not include Russian dubs either.
This Witcher 3 remaster was only announced at Gamescom last night. It is set to launch on September 29, ahead of next year's Songs of the Past expansion. The fact that the Russian dub will still be available for older content would suggest that all of the voice work is being left intact in the remaster, with nothing re-recorded now that the cast is getting back together for the DLC.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/the-witcher-3-songs-of-the-past-no-russian-dubbing/
