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Last week, as Gamescom 2026 first began to open up to media and business visitors, I double-timed it to CD Projekt Red's booth. I had been promised the very first slot to see a blowout on Songs of the Past, an expansion coming 11 years after the launch of the base game. Rumours about this add-on have been swirling for the better part of a year now (though apparently the idea for Geralt's visit to the ancestral homeland of Dandelion have been percolating for even longer), and CD Projekt Red has clearly been putting a lot of resources into making sure this new tale lives up to the expectations fans have after completing the base game, Blood & Wine, and Hearts of Stone.
The first thing that struck me as I sat in a little theatre and watched a hands-off demo of the game was simple: I can't believe it feels like we're picking up right from where we left off. In-game, there's no 11-year gap: you'll complete the base game and see the events of Wild Hunt to a close, then head straight to Letten to uncover the weird mysteries and conspiracies taking place there. The real-world time gap does not match the in-game one, yet - as soon as Geralt woke up, hungover, in the bucolic Somerset-like pastures of Letten - it felt like I'd come home.
I think it's a lot of things coming together at once to make CDPR's writing feel so great. For a start, CDPR's version of Geralt is very well-defined. From the second he wakes up, and lets off one thoughtful-cum-grumpy 'hmm' when he notices Dandelion is missing, you feel your connection to him reborn. I've spent a good 300 hours with Doug Cockle's Geralt - his idiosyncrasies, his little reactions, his gruffness, his wry sense of humour… it's not easy to keep all that feeling consistent, especially when there's a decade between releases. The writing staff at CDPR should take a bow; making your main character feel that seamless when (assumedly) there are different thumbprints all over him is a real feat. And doing that with as little as a 'hmm' as Geralt passes by an obnoxious minstrel is a credit to the team.
Then there's the trust in the player. I think a lot of video games suffer from over-writing and patronising their players, largely for fear certain narrative beats will be lost on them, or because developers think certain themes or plot points need to be hammered home with blunt force trauma. CDPR, whilst not exactly the most subtle writers in the business, operates with a quiet confidence, letting you read between the lines and pick up on what's being projected in the margins.
A good example of that in Songs of the Past is when Geralt accidentally crashes a breakfast: sat between Dandelion's cousin Lilla and their 'Grandmama' (who I think is the Countess de Lettenhove, as implied by Dandelion in the original novels), you see the interaction through the eyes of Geralt. Lilla, emboldened by the presence of her attractive guest, begins to challenge the matriarch, who attempts to swallow her tongue whilst remaining stalwart in her convictions. She clearly disapproves of Dandelion, and would have you believe that his absence is nothing more than a bard's foible. But Lilla presses the topic home; there's an amazing little cut to Geralt's eyes darting between the two women as the atmosphere turns a bit frosty. Here, we see the synergy of tight, realistic writing and some gorgeous cutscene direction.
Finally, there's the actual quest design itself. If you're being ungenerous, you could say that all Witcher quests follow a similar path: you hear about something weird going on somewhere nearby, you follow up on it, you investigate the area, then you fight a group of guys or some big monster. You get your coin, you might kiss a lass, then you go home. Rinse, repeat. Yet, CDPR always manages to make it feel more complicated and morally dubious than that; there's always some compromised humanity, or some beastly lament, or some lovelorn desperation. It's never a simple case of go here, do this; Geralt - and therefore you - always gets to have a say in the state of things, no matter how paltry the consequences may appear to be.
In Songs of the Past, the quest we were shown sees Lilla recall the grim fate of a doomed ancestor, Count Humbert de Lettenhove, who was driven mad by his love for a witch. "I've always enjoyed stories of ghosts and dread horrors," she muses as you ride towards the 'bed of thorns', where Humbert is said to lie. It turns out this doomed man had been throwing bodies down a well to appease the wishes of the witch that stole his heart, causing the garden to 'hunger for blood until this day'. "Who are you, slumbering knight at arms?" Lilla asks a skeleton, whose bones have grown into the thorn thicket, as she approaches. Reanimated, the knight grants her a flower, and moves to kill Geralt in order to protect the fair maiden he thinks is under threat.
It comes off like some chivalric romance. Yes, it may all be the set dressing for a boss fight against a humanoid figure with plant-like powers, but if it isn't as heart-wrenching and grimly romantic in its own way, like base game Witcher 3 at its absolute best. We remember The Witcher 3 for questlines like The Bloody Baron, and - even after an hour of Songs of the Past - it's clear that those high tides of video game narrative are not flukes: this studio has a command of narrative and world-building that few other triple-A developers could ever hope to attain. I can't wait to see more.
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