While the story of Geralt is all but confirmed to end with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s upcoming Songs of the Past expansion, DLC developer Fool’s Theory has said that the story will also bring closure to the story of Geralt’s long-time bard companion, Dandelion. Speaking to TechRadar Gaming, the studio’s CEO and the expansion’s game director, Jakub Rokosz, revealed that the story will also help create a bridge between the 2015 RPG and the upcoming The Witcher 4.
“We always wanted to give Dandelion the proper spotlight he deserved. So, we knew that there was no space in the base game to give him justice. That’s what I wanted to say: Give justice to Dandelion.” This belief stemmed from the vital role Dandelion has played throughout Geralt’s life. Rokosz noted that, while some only see the character as comic relief, he actually has quite a bit of depth to him, and his backstory even involves him having been a former professor at Oxenfurt Academy.
“We knew that at some point we wanted to address this thing, because Dandelion is a very important character in Geralt’s life. There’s a misconception of him being this comedic relief, and this is his only role in the Witcher series, whereas that’s not true. He’s a very deep and intelligent character. He used to be a professor at Oxenfurt, and he writes beautiful poetry, so we want to show the players what’s behind that mask of a joker, where he came from, what his family is about, what’s the world [like] where he grew up.”
Senior quest designer on Songs of the Past, Despoina Anetaki, went on to say that Dandelion’s story getting some closure is better late than never. “What’s really important to us is not so much like should we release an expansion 11 years later; it could be, I don’t know, 20, 100 years later. What matters is that the story we tell is complete. This is part of The Wild Hunt, and it felt like a chapter was missing, like something was not there. One more thing we wanted to tell, right? And Dandelion’s story was one of those, right?”
Long-time fans of the RPG franchise will also find things that will “excite” them, since the team even went through the books that served as the source material for CD Projekt’s RPGs to find interesting things about Dandelion that could be expanded upon in the expansion. The story will even involve Dandelion, due to his friendship with Geralt, pulling the old witcher into action.
“Once we identified that important thing,” Anetaki explained, “it all clicked together, and it became very clear that yes, we need to make this expansion because it makes us as fans of The Witcher really excited about it, and I hope that the players will also feel that.”
Songs of the Past will come to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027. For more details, check out how it had already hit 900,000 wishlists earlier this month.
