Here’s an ambitious new Witcher 3 mod that takes Geralt back to Cintra, and I’m literally begging its creator not to swap its silent movie vibes for dodgy AI slop
The Witcher 3’s REDkit modding tools continue to be a blessing, whether you’re after cut content, autumnal vibes or the chance to sail a big ship. Now, someone’s offering Geralt a chance to head off on an entirely fresh adventure to a land loreheads’ll defintely be familiar with – Cintra.
Yep, as a sumbmission for the same CD Projekt competition as the quest mod we reported on a week or so ago – the one which took Geralt on a trip to a mysterious island via hot air balloon – another modder’s decided to work on a project that sounds like it’ll be a goldmine for long-time Witcher fans.
This latest mod is Gerwant30’s ‘Tales of The Witcher‘, which is currently available in a work-in-progress form that looks like it’ll allow you to get a general flavour of how things are shaping up for a very ambitious thing, which kicks off from the main menu, just like the base game’s DLCs.
“Tales of the Witcher is a mod that takes you to a completely new world, built using REDkit,” Gerwant30 writes, “The main setting is the legendary kingdom of Cintra, along with the village of Hilden and the areas surrounding the city.”
They add that right now, two quests are on offer, designed to serve “as a prologue to the main storyline” – which is set “long before the events of the books and games” – and “introduce the player to the world of ToTW, preparing the ground for future expansion”. It sounds like the main city is still very much a work-in-progress, but the modder says you can still explore it, and think about what some “city-based quests” that’re in those future plans might entail.
As you can see above, the current version of the mod works a bit like a silent film, with Gerwant30 having opted to stick with soundless lipsyncing that makes you read the subtitles in order to avoid potentially violating the aforementioned CDPR contest’s rules around using AI. Here’s the thing, far be it from me to tell someone else what to do with their work, but given the huge effort seemigly being put into the rest of it, it’d be really cool to see this mod get some proper custom voice acting if possible. Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like the mod’s creator plans to go for dodgy AI text to speech, with them writing that they “don’t rule out the possibility of re-using the voices already in the game in the future”.
That aside, Gerwant30’s clearly put a lot of thought into their plans for the gameplay elements of Tales of The Witcher. For instance, there’s currently no map or objective markers, with the aim being that your chats to NPCs and entries in Geralt’s journal inform your adveturing, in more old-school RPG fashion. This seems like part of what the modder calls a “slower style of gameplay, where completing monster hunting contracts is central to the experience”.
As to when you might be able to play more than what’s on offer right now, the modder says the following: “Unfortunately, the full version will definitely not be available this year. I know it can be frustrating that there is so much left to complete, but I hope the project will be a lot of fun when it’s finished.”
Do you like the idea of being able to fire up The Witcher 3 and head back to the place Geralt ended up becoming the most inportant step-dad on The Continent? Let us know below!