CD Projekt Red are seeking to show "another side" of flirty bardman Dandelion

While the cover's flown off The Witcher 3 Remastered today, September 29th, the wait for the RPGs elusive extra expansion goes on until next year. I've had rather mixed feelings on the decision to extend Gerry from the River's tale beyond the execellent ending offered by the Blood and Wine DLC thus far, something that CD Projekt Red's general tight-lippedness when it comes to dicussing story details hasn't helped. They have at least now dropped some crumbs as to how the new expansion will stack up tonally compared to its peers and what it provides space for that the existing game didn't.

"[The] Witcher 3 is like the bread-and-butter Witcher story." TW3 quest designer and current Cyberpunk 2 associate game director Paweł Sasko told VGC, when asked whether Songs of the Past has drawn influence from Blood and Wine. "Basically, all the things that you would see in the Witcher story are there. Hearts of Stone is an extension of that. With Blood and Wine, you can see that we experimented with a lot of things because it’s an expansion.

"So when you look stylistically at the narrative, you can see that it has differences. As developers, we can use this core, expand a little, and be a little more ridiculous. Now, when you look at Songs of the Past, you can see that approach a little bit too. It’s not in a way that is funnier or more ridiculous, but stylistically, when you play the demo, you can feel it a little bit."

He added that this ties into the art and music in Songs of the Past being "a lot dreamier". Blood and Wine, while still dripping with gothic darkness under the skin thanks to Beauclair's vampires, generally set itself apart by offering a more colourful and exotic fairytale atmosphere than the rest of the game. It's certainly very dream-like and the snippets of Letten's Belleteyn celebrations shown off of the new DLC so far seem very much to share that tone. I'm keen to see if Songs of the Past has anything unique up its sleeves to set itself apart from Geralt's adventure in Beauclair, though. To feel like a fitting extension of a tale that seemed to have already reached a natural conclusion, it'll probably need to, with just offering more of the base game's classic Witcheriness not necessarily cutting it as a trump card either.

As for why Songs of the Past felt necessary, Sasko and Fool’s Theory creative vision director Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz noted that they wanted an opportunity to explore in more depth some of Geralt's relationships that don't get much of a spotlight as he and Ciri battle the Wild Hunt in the base game.

"Dandelion is very often the one who actually pierces [Geralt's emotional] shell," the former said. "He’s the one who is getting out of Geralt the things that he wouldn’t say. He’s sometimes the voice of reason. Sometimes he’s also a comic relief. But what’s important for us is to show the depth in this character and the friendship between them. And that was a little bit of a part that we never really had space to show in The Witcher 3 and in the expansions."

"We will be seeing another side of him, maybe, or a part that was not yet seen, not yet explored in stories, a part that really makes him human," Kuzia-Rokosz added.

There's still a lot of dancing around getting into any specifics or much detail in this Songs of the Past chatter, making it pretty much impossible to judge at this point whether Songs of the Past will turn out to have enough fresh ideas which feel worth pulling Gerry away from his established storybook ending. The few nuggets offered are broadly encouraging, with the caveat that CD Projekt Red have a lot of built-up trust in terms of building cracking narratives, thereby making answers that might not be as palatable from another studio with such a stellar record to lean on.