Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Without doubt, The Witcher 3 and its two expansions was, in my opinion, the best game ever made. It’s a big call, I know - but when I first played The Witcher, I was suffering from ill health and had been for years. I’ve often felt that our experience with a medium, whatever it may be, can be enhanced and amplified by our life circumstances at the time. I remember that after finishing the game I jumped online to see if anyone else had felt the same way. I’m happy to say one YouTube comment has stayed with me to this day: “When I finished The Witcher 3, it was like saying a final goodbye to a very old friend.”

Well, thankfully, eleven years after Geralt of Rivia last rode into the sunset of Toussaint, the Path called to him once more. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered was announced at Gamescom. That’s right, fellow Witchers - the return of the White Wolf was announced on 25 August, and we would only have to wait another month or so for it to drop on 29 September.

And that wasn’t all: for all existing game owners, the remaster would be free of charge. And we’re not talking about a simple coat of fresh paint. Combat was sharpened into something smoother and more precise, with new animations, finishers, and a smarter camera that no longer lost enemies in the chaos. Roach will finally behave as your loyal steed instead of a skittish glitch machine (though players can toggle the old chaos back on if they missed the meme). The skill system was torn down and rebuilt for more meaningful choices. Armour matching, an expanded photo mode, better quest tracking (the number of days I’ve spent in side quests is thoroughly disgusting), cross-platform mod support, and a long list of visual upgrades - from path tracing to revitalised scenery - turned the decade-old classic into something that felt almost like a 2.0 version of itself.

Even better, every base-game owner suddenly found Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine unlocked for free. A quiet update on the same day made the expansions available immediately on current-gen platforms. Newcomers buying the Remastered edition would receive the full package. For the first time, a native Nintendo Switch 2 version was coming, and through a fresh partnership with Blizzard the game would also appear on Battle.net (no idea why, to be honest) - complete with a Geralt skin for Diablo IV.

But the real surprise waited in the shadows of the same presentation. A trailer rolled for Songs of the Past, the third and final expansion for The Witcher 3, scheduled for 2027 and co-developed with Fool’s Theory. Geralt would ride again, this time into Letten, the homeland of his old friend Dandelion. New monsters, new weapons, and the classic weight of CDPR storytelling awaited. Behind closed doors in the following days, journalists and fans glimpsed hours of footage: Geralt pulling a chain-hook finisher straight out of a nightmare, old companions returning, and a story that felt like a proper farewell before Ciri stepped fully into the light of The Witcher 4.

None of this arrives by accident. CD Projekt Red has massively scaled up. Back when The Witcher 3 shipped, the core internal team was around 240 people. Today the studio employs over 1,000 developers, with The Witcher 4 alone commanding 519 of them - more than double the size of the team that built one of the biggest RPGs of all time. A free remaster, a final expansion, and a next-generation sequel running in parallel is the kind of ambition that team size finally makes real.

That comment about saying goodbye to an old friend used to feel final. Remastered doesn’t undo it - it just means the friend is still at the tavern when you walk back in. I don’t know if I’ll love this version the way I loved the first - life circumstances change - but for anyone who met Geralt when they needed him most, this isn’t nostalgia bait. It’s a chance to walk the Path again with clearer eyes, and maybe better health than last time. And when Songs of the Past lands in 2027, maybe then we’ll get the ending Toussaint only promised.