CD Projekt Red details Songs of the Past region at Lucca

CD Projekt Red level design lead Miles Tost and Songs of the Past writer Paula Meissner detailed the third Witcher 3 expansion’s new corner of the Continent at the Lucca Comics & Games festival. The expansion is set to arrive in 2027.¹

This account rests on a single IGN interview from the event.

Songs of the Past lands more than a decade after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s May 18, 2015 release. It adds a full new region, new monsters, and more stories. Tost and Meissner framed the job as building a place that feels fresh without breaking a deep, long-running canon.¹

From a level-design seat, Tost said the main hook is the region itself. The team is not introducing a new motion mechanic, as far as he knows. Prior zones already taught the lesson: Skellig leans on boats and mountains; No Man’s Land plays wide. Lettin has to deliver its own distinct sense of traversal and presence once the player is inside it.¹

Culture does much of that work. Lettin’s people get their own backdrop. The aristocracy shows some British influence. The architecture draws on Polish countryside roots. The studio, Tost said, goes deep on cultural identity for these spaces, the same way Skellig carried Viking-esque notes.¹

The local drink is part of that spine. Residents make Bracket, “a kind of fusion between honey and beer.” It is a cultural export and the economic backbone of the area. Brewing it needs honey and hops, so both appear in the region. That one fact changes how the team thinks about the monsters that belong there.¹

The demo introduces a single new monster, the Swarmion. These creatures love honey and use hornets for protection. Tost tied the design to a simple test: what would live in a land built around that brew? The Swarmion is the answer they showed. The same thread is meant to run into quest design and the wider feel of the space.¹

On canon, Meissner said the writers work regularly with CD Projekt Red’s lore team, which tracks the books, the games, and other franchise material, to stay truthful. Some challenges touch topics not yet revealed. She kept those off the table.¹

Tost said the house approach is to evolve the world, not to retcon it. Find an explanation that holds, and a stretch can work. He pointed to Regis in Blood and Wine. Hardcore fans could have called a return impossible after the character vaporized. The game brought him back anyway, still recovering at a fraction of his strength with help from another higher vampire. Geralt’s own will to restore him helped the beat land. Meissner added that the team sometimes settles a tangle by asking how original author Andrzej Sapkowski would handle the mix, given how freely the books blend their sources.¹

Our read: Lettin is being grown from place, drink, and the creatures that follow, not from a new control scheme. The Regis example is the working rule: expand when the explanation is ready, and keep the lore desk in the room. One demo monster and a 2027 date still leave most of the map dark. The next test is whether Bracket and the Swarmion shape the whole pack or stay festival color.

Footnotes

1. IGN, “The Witcher 3 Devs Talk Songs of the Past DLC Details”. Retrieved November 3, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸