The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past takes the best of CDPR's RPG and pushes it further in Geralt's new final chapter

What brings Geralt out of retirement for The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past? The last time we saw The White Wolf, at the end of Blood & Wine, he was preparing to settle down for his retirement in Toussaint. Now, he's been dragged to a whole new corner of the continent for a new expansion that CD Projekt Red says will rival The Witcher 3's original two. The catalyst, as with many of Geralt's (mis)adventures, is his chaotic friendship with Dandelion

Specifically in Songs of the Past, however, that's Dandelion in his role Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove. At the start of my hands-off demo, Geralt has traveled to his friend's noble seat in Letten. Waking up after a wild night of partying to celebrate the Belleteyn, it's immediately clear that something is wrong. Dandelion is missing, he's lost his flute, and a threatening dream suggests to Geralt that this is no ordinary hangover.

Heading to Dandelion's family estate for breakfast, Geralt's fears for his friend are founded further by a heated conversation between his grandmother, and Dandelion's cousin, Lilla. She links Dandelion's absence with the details from Geralt's dream, pointing directly towards the mysterious Garden of Thorns and a scandal that engulfed a distant ancestor, and it's not long before Lilla and Geralt are riding off in search of Dandelion.

Thorny subject

In this scripted demo, there's relatively little chance to explore Letten itself, but lead level designer Miles Tost says it's a "fully realized open-world which you can explore freely". It's similar in scale to Blood & Wine, and there's a comparably dreamy, fairytale feeling to this new region to what we saw in Toussaint. At the same time, Tost says that there's a desire to bring this 11-year-old game into a more modern era. The new features that are launching with The Witcher 3 Remastered are most keenly seen in combat, but Letten also looks better than I remember the base game looking, with improved lighting and vastly denser environments bringing its villages to life even as you gallop through them.

That vibrancy is something The Witcher 3 has always done well, but it's clear CDPR has pushed it further here. Tost suggests that NPCs have more detailed routines and more dialogue. The world around Letten is teeming with the stories of the night before as Geralt rides Roach through its lakeside villages, inspired this time by the countryside of England and southern Poland. As the fog rises slowly off the lake and the sunlight diffuses gently through it as partygoers drag themselves back to their daily lives, Songs of the Past harks back to The Witcher 3's greatest strengths while bringing it forward into a new era.

That's felt later on too, as Geralt's monster-slaying silver sword is put to work. In the Garden of Thorns, it's very little time before the local flora and fauna turn against the new arrivals. All three fights I'm shown in Songs of the Past offer something fresh – even the one enemy type that's reminiscent of a Drowner or Nekker has a signature mechanic that requires Geralt to work around its core identity. Thankfully, Geralt has some new moves of his own. Some are subtle – improved combat animations and camera angles let his signature pirouette-style swordplay shine through while helping combat flow a little more naturally. Others are baked into the wider game – an overhauled upgrade system is now far more like an actual skill tree than a linear upgrade path.

Others still are new toys entirely. Geralt's chain – a nod to his very first adventure in the books and a mechanic cut from The Witcher 1 – is an alternative to the base game's crossbows. Flinging it out towards enemies drags them towards Geralt, closing gaps against ranged foes or, in this instance, dragging them out of their defenses to quickly dispatch them.

As Geralt and Lilla move through the garden, there's a sense of how it fits into the wider world of Letten and Songs of the Past. At one point, stumped by a riddle, we're shown a dialogue option that implies Geralt might have learned the solution from an NPC somewhere else in the world. Unwilling to dwell on the puzzle for too long, he hacks his way through the obstacle before him regardless, Doug Cockle's dry portrayal of Geralt's funnier side is as witty as ever. Later on, there's even a hint at a new romance, but we don't get to take that dialogue option, Tost explaining that he's Team Yen all the way.

The real test of Songs of the Past will come when we're let loose within its open world, that being the true test of whether CDPR has managed to recapture the magic of its RPG despite the intervening years. But, what I've seen so far is a very promising start. Even this story-based section seems to fit seamlessly into the existing world of The Witcher 3, while the upcoming remaster's features push much of what made the original game so special even further – and attempt to tighten up its weaker elements.

A new expansion a decade after the last update is the kind of thing very few studios would dare attempt. Even fewer would manage to pull it off. But, combined with the remaster's improvements, the scope of Songs of the Past currently looks set to make this a worthy new addition to The Witcher 3's enviable legacy.

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