Image credit:CD Projekt Red / The WAR Project

The Witcher 3 Remastered has scuppered an ambitious cut plague quest restoration mod, but there'll be "something extra" in the update that gets it working again

Despite CD Projekt Red having gotten the modders in to test the remaster

· Rock Paper Shotgun

Today, September 29th, The Witcher 3 is back on the path in Remastered form. With that remaster bringing a host of tweaks to the decade-old RPG, there was always going to be an adjustment period for the RPG's established mods. One that won't work right out of the gate is the WAR Project - an ongoing effort to restore a plague-themed questline CD Projekt Red abandoned prior to release.

However, the modders behind it have made clear this is just a temporary bump in the trail and promised "something extra" for the update that brings their demo up to remastered spec.

"As Witcher 3 Remastered draws close, we wanted to clarify on the state of the mod," WAR Project developer Ferroxius wrote in an announcement on the mod's Discord server late yesterday. "Unfortunately due to the (quite frankly) insane amount of changes made to the game, the mod will not work out of the box on Remastered. We do know this with certainty as we can now reveal in proper that all of us have been in direct contact with CDPR and Yigsoft over several months, helping test Remastered and the mod.io integration before release.

"We will endeavour to get WAR working and updated for Remastered as soon as possible. Since things were always shifting around during development we couldn't ensure WAR would be stable before release but we have had time to familiarise ourselves with the additions and improvements brought to the game and the kit. So we reckon it won't take too long.

"In addition to the obvious benefits of now being able to play WAR on an improved baseline with Remaster, we'll also be throwing in something extra with that update while we continue to work on the next phase of content."

From the sounds of it, that something extra will be some English voice acting, with the modders having originally planned to push a slightly smaller update live midway through this month. "We will aim for [the] phase 1 update within a week of the Remaster launch, which will include the quests that were already there, plus a lot of fixes, plus English VAs for phase 1," another key WAR project dev, MerseyRockoff, wrote in a September 21st reply in the mod's Nexus comments. "Then roughly in [the] two months afterwards, we aim to release phase 2 which will include four new quests, two remade quests, and two mini quests." The modder also noted that, once updated to Remastered spec, the mod will only be available for that version of the game going forwards.

As of writing, four of 12 planned quests are playable in the demo version of the WAR Project the modders released back in June, with a further four listed as being in active development. The modders, who last month had to recast the actor they'd picked to provide new lines for Vernon Roche following what they referred to as a "severe incident of gross misconduct", are aiming to build their work out to full expansion size for a full release "sometime in 2027".