Whatever would Yennefer think?
At Tokyo Game Show 2026, CD Projekt RED invited us to a 45-minute hands-off demo of one of our most anticipated DLC releases in recent memory: The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past. This upcoming expansion adds a third DLC storyline for Geralt centred around Dandelion and his hometown of Letten, wherein the titular witcher finds himself buried under layers of mysteries and family secrets.
Here are our thoughts on the gameplay demo!
The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: Songs of the Past
Release date: 2027
Developer: CD Projekt RED, Fool’s Theory
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2
Does The Witcher 3: Songs of The Past have romance?
CD Projekt RED invited us over to the Red Bull Gaming Sphere at Tokyo Game Show to watch 45 minutes of largely uninterrupted gameplay from The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past. While we only got to watch the developer play the game live for members of the media, we did get to see quite an enlightening slice of the game nonetheless.
The footage began with Geralt waking up on the morning after Belleteyn, a fertility festival from the Witcher books that coincides with Yennefer's birthday. The festival appears to have been rather massive undertaking across the town of Letten, and Geralt finds himself stirring in its countryside. Geralt also, interestingly, recalls a terrible dream; one involving trees and blood.
The witcher immediately sets out to find his travelling companion Dandelion, aka Jaskier, who has vanished after the celebratory night. Dandelion is nowhere to be seen, so Geralt travels back to his home property–a massive mansion, our first contextual clue that Dandelion comes from old money. There, Geralt heads into the dining room, where he’s scheduled to share a meal with the family.
In the dining room, he finds only Dandelion’s grandmother and family matriarch, who says that she's used to her family being late to gatherings. When Dandelion’s cousin Lilla shows up with his abandoned lute and pleads for her to look for him, his grandmother is dismissive, warning her against pursuing Dandelion. Lilla then asks Geralt to come with her to a dark forest surrounding a rather ominous area called the Garden of Thorns, wherefore Letten's citizens dare not venture.
Here, Lilla’s horse gets spooked, and the duo choose to finish their journey on foot. Geralt predictably gets attacked by monsters, and at this point we were shown the game’s new skill tree–a very more player-friendly arrangement of skills and upgrades. We also got to see his new chain, which can be used to bring enemies closer, execute whipping attacks, or target specific weak points. It's not its own weapon, however. Think of it as another tool under Geralt’s belt, right next to his spells and potions.
Eventually, Geralt comes across a door blocked by brambles, and comes face to face with a zombified corpse made up of flesh and plants; evil fauna being a theme of this segment of the demo. The corpse regards Lilla with familiarity before taking Geralt on, and we learn later that he was likely attempting to protect Lilla from Geralt, thinking he might do her harm. The fight itself is standard Witcher 3 fare, and we were shown Geralt using his stun magic and whip to dispatch the enemy with ease. It didn't take too long, which suggested that this was more of a miniboss than anything else.
Eventually, Geralt beats the enemy, searches for Lilla, and eventually finds her. While she’s despairing over Dandelion’s disappearance, Geralt is given the choice to either embrace her or hold her hand for comfort. A CD Projekt Red developer noted that while players can do whatever they like at home, for the sake of the demo, they would go with the more platonic option of holding Lilla’s hand. They also pointed out that Lilla is Dandelion’s cousin in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner, when requested to choose the more romantic embrace.
After comforting Lilla, Geralt jumps down a well in the Garden of Thorns. There, a female vine-covered zombie attached to a tree reaches for him menacingly, but the demo sadly ends there.
The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past TGS 2026 impressions
It’s hard to give our full impressions of the game given that we weren’t allowed to actually get hands-on with it at Tokyo Game Show. However, what we saw at this 40-minute gameplay demo was extremely enticing nonetheless. The graphical improvements showcased in the upcoming Witcher 3 remaster are astonishing; in particular, the sunlight streaming through the windows in Dandelion’s house, the detailed rendering of Letten's neighbourhoods, and the soft night lighting in the Garden of Thorns.
These improvements breathe new life into a nine-year-old game, which is an achievement by itself. The new loot and skill tree UI also look much more accessible, and dialogue cutscenes are not quite as robotic as the original game. The music sounded fantastic as usual, and the whip is clearly going to be a fun new addition for the new slow-mo executions that we saw Geralt pull off in this demo.
What interested me the most here was the story content teased in this expansion. Pivoting to Dandelion in order to flesh out his backstory is a great choice, given him and Geralt’s doting long-time friendship in the books, that goes far beyond what we saw in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt alone. There’s a lot of history there, and it looks like this expansion is expanding on it with a central mystery surrounding enigmatic dark secrets buried in Dandelion’s hometown.
Time will tell if the story has a worthy payoff, but I’ve seen enough to be excited for its eventual release. The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt’s Songs of the Past expansion launches in 2027.
