Witcher 3 Modders Restore Cut Menu for Story Recaps Ahead of Songs of the Past

Four years after first discovering it, modders have brought back a menu CD Projekt Red left out: a way to watch 'last time on The Witcher 3' recaps narrated by Dandelion whenever you load a save or fast travel. Now, thanks to the work of Glassfish777 and others, this cut content is restored and ready for use ahead of next year's Songs of the Past expansion.

The restored recap video menu — labelled 'Events' in-game, but dubbed 'Storybook' by its restorer — lives in the glossary section of The Witcher 3's main menu, next to the bestiary. Glassfish777 wrote that this panel was originally created by CDPR and left unfinished in the game files ever since the launch of the game in 2015, making it a cut content restoration.

"This panel was left unfinished so I took the liberty of bringing it up to the standards and style of the current GUI and fixing/adding new functionality like skipping, subtitles, and automatic music fadeout," Glassfish777 explained. The modder revealed that this cut menu was actually first discovered in the game's files in 2022, with a modder going by Fabian (or Tinnaib) having tried to restore it back then but halted by a "showstopping bug". The release of the UI flash sources with RedKit in 2024 made fixing the bug and polishing up the panel significantly easier.

Scrolling through the menu itself, you'll find clips recapping key story moments like Ciri's run-in with the crones or Geralt's arrival in Novigrad once you've completed the corresponding bit of the main story. Each has a description and title written by CD Projekt Red, which the studio had even gone as far as localising into different languages.

"Almost every video has a second stage to it that only unlocks after you've progressed the story a little more after unlocking the first section," the modder explained. "The second stage is automatically appended to the first stage so you don't actually have to manually select it. New/updated videos are marked with a star icon." Note that several of these 'second parts' are impossible to see on loading screens as the game always prioritises the next video's first stage for loading screens.

If you prefer to keep the recaps in this menu and stop them playing during loading screens like they usually do in the base game, Glassfish777 has also released an optional file which pulls that off. Installation instructions are in the description.

This is far from the only bit of cut content restoration on the go in the Witcher 3 modding scene right now, with one group of modders dubbed The WAR Project busy remaking the plague questline CD Projekt Red ditched prior to release.

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