CD Projekt Red says Witcher remake must keep 2007 original's spirit while courting new players with modern tech

"The secret is to identify what was good in the original game, and find a way to retell it to the audience that, for some reason, cannot participate in this experience," Blacha said. "Those are two different things, and each of them is difficult on its own, because it's not that easy sometimes to recreate this experience."

Blacha pointed to the section the studio calls "Act Four" of The Witcher, set in a rural lakeside region he described as "very folklorish" and "full of beautiful landscapes." He said that feeling is hard to rebuild because it differs for every player and can be "a little bit vague."

"To create a good remake, you need to identify what was good and find a way to recreate it using newer technology, [while] staying true to the spirit of the original game," he added.

The remake is in development at Fool's Theory and will use Unreal Engine 5. CD Projekt Red is currently focused on The Witcher 4, the first entry in a new trilogy of Witcher games the company wants to release within a six-year window. The studio has also just released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered, a collection of improvements to the decade-old role-playing game.

Separately, Fool's Theory chief executive and Songs of the Past game director Jakub Rokosz said technological limits stopped CD Projekt Red from including Geralt's silver chain in The Witcher 3, and that updated tools finally made the weapon possible in the upcoming expansion. Rokosz, a former senior quest designer on The Witcher 3, spoke to TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom.

"There were numerous conversations that we [had where we] would want to do the chain even during the base game, but it was impossible from a technological standpoint to do it properly," Rokosz said. "Back then, the way the combat, the targeting, the camera, the enemies were implemented, it would require too much of an overhaul just for one feature."

He said the decision to revisit those systems came while the team worked on the remaster and the expansion at the same time. "All of a sudden the chain became a reality," he said, adding that physics and animation technology had to advance before the weapon could be simulated rather than hand-animated. "Trust me, 11 years is a lot of difference."

Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki said handling so many animations is difficult in a game as large as The Witcher 3, and that the remaster gave the team room to add something new. Geralt's crossbow can be swapped for the chain, which players can use against flying enemies, enemies in water and for crowd control. Rokosz said the team wanted to avoid making it "a gimmick item" and instead treated it as an important part of a witcher's arsenal, usable in the base game and previous expansions. Anetaki said the weapon is "woven into the narrative" of the expansion.

Songs of the Past has no release date but is slated to launch in 2027.