Witcher 3 Modder Built Songs of the Past Sword in Hours

5:41PM UK time on May 27th. That's when veteran REDkit modder Merigoldmaribor uploaded a fully modelled recreation of the sword from The Witcher 3's newly announced Songs of the Past expansion to Nexus Mods. The expansion itself had only been officially revealed that morning, meaning the entire weapon went from promotional artwork to playable mod in a matter of hours.

"Who could have guessed that I'd be getting a new expansion pack after a full 11 years?" Merigoldmaribor wrote in the mod's description. "In honour of this announcement, I decided to make a sword inspired by the one Geralt is holding in the promotional poster for the Songs of the Past expansion pack." The mod replaces the Wolf School steel swords with the new blade and its scabbard, letting players carry it around the Continent right now.

I love this kind of thing. The modding community around The Witcher 3 has always been one of the most dedicated in PC gaming, but turning a single piece of key art into a functional in-game weapon before most people have even finished reading the announcement is a different level of enthusiasm. It says something about how hungry Witcher fans are for new content after a decade-long wait.

The sword itself

What makes the blade distinctive is the curved, ornate decoration around the guard. It's more elaborate than the practical Witcher swords most players are used to, though it doesn't quite reach the flashiness of the fancier weapons from Blood and Wine's Toussaint. The standout feature is a multilayered crossguard with a functional V-shape overlaid by golden, swooping ornamentation.

Here's where it gets interesting. As spotted by fans and detailed by Eurogamer, this sword may not have debuted in the Songs of the Past artwork at all. Back on April 30th, CD Projekt Red shared artwork celebrating the Gaelic festival of Beltane, showing Geralt leaning against a tree while Dandelion plays nearby. Look closely at the bottom left of that image, and you'll see two sheathed swords, one of which has the same unusually ornate crossguard. A Reddit user named Kasavir created an overlay comparison that makes the match unmistakable. CDPR hid the expansion's signature weapon in plain sight a full month before the announcement, and almost nobody caught it.

Some fans have speculated that the sword is actually Ciri's blade from The Witcher 4, but a close comparison of the hilts and blade notching shows they're different weapons. Others have pointed out its resemblance to Gesheft, a powerful silver sword already in the base game. The truth is nobody outside CDPR knows yet whether the sword carries narrative significance or is simply a cool piece of key art, but the modding community clearly wasn't going to wait to find out.

The expansion announcement itself was something of a scramble. Songs of the Past appears to have leaked early through the Polish version of CDPR's RED launcher before the studio was ready, with one developer calling it an apparently premature reveal. A more fitting debut was likely planned for the Blood and Wine anniversary stream. Instead, CDPR had to scramble and put out the official announcement ahead of schedule.

What we know so far: Songs of the Past is being co-developed by CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory, the studio behind The Witcher 1 Remake. It stars Geralt, it's coming in 2027, and CDPR is emphatic that it's an expansion, not DLC. Community manager Marcin Łukaszewski drew the line clearly, explaining that DLCs at CDPR are small free content drops like outfits, while expansions are "major pieces of content providing lots of hours of gameplay, including new story, characters, etc."

Players on older hardware should also pay attention. According to CDPR's support page, Wild Hunt's minimum system requirements are going up ahead of the expansion. The new minimums include a GTX 1660, Windows 11 only, and SSD-only storage with HDD support being dropped entirely. These changes take effect "from the next update," which may arrive before Songs of the Past itself launches. Players on older setups can revert to a previous version of the game, but that obviously locks them out of the new expansion.

Raising minimum specs for an 11-year-old game is a bold move, but given that the next-gen update in 2022 already pushed the visuals forward considerably, it makes sense that a full expansion would need more headroom. I'm more curious about what Merigoldmaribor's mod sword will look like compared to the final in-game version when Songs of the Past actually ships. If the modder nailed it from a single piece of promotional art, that's going to be a fun comparison to revisit in 2027.