Witcher 3 Mod Brings Back Feature That Was Cut Before the Game’s Release

Highlights

• Modder MerseyRockoff restores a cut boat racing minigame in The Witcher 3 using CD Projekt Red’s REDkit tool.
• The modder recreated the feature from text and audio files found in the game files, adding four boat races in different locations.
• The mod is available in 17 languages, allowing global fans to experience the previously cut content.

A modder is restoring a notable feature that CD Projekt Red removed from The Witcher 3 while the game was still in development. While the acclaimed open world RPG has no shortage of enjoyable content to keep players busy, mods like these are always nice to see, as they not only preserve pieces of gaming history, but they also give fans of The Witcher 3 an idea of what could have been had the developers decided to implement the elements of the game they cut from the final product.

Since its 2015 release, The Witcher 3 has widely been regarded as one of the best role-playing games of all time, in large part due to its extensive replayability. Thanks to the action RPG’s genre-defining open world, emphasis on choice and consequence, and lengthy expansion content, players can easily spend hundreds of hours on the acclaimed title without running out of things to do. However, not every feature that CD Projekt Red planned for The Witcher 3 made it into the final build of the game. After all, games packed with features and questlines are bound to leave content on the cutting room floor at some point during development. One dedicated fan, however, has managed to bring some of The Witcher 3‘s cut content back using mods.

As spotted on NexusMods, a modder named MerseyRockoff has restored the boat racing minigame in The Witcher 3 that never saw the light of day. By using CD Projekt Red’s official REDkit modding tool, they successfully recreated this canceled feature in the game with the mod they made, aptly titled “Boat Races.” MerseyRockoff first came across this cut content by looking through The Witcher 3‘s game files. There, they spotted remnants of what appeared to be some boat racing-related quests that weren’t present in the final game. The feature seemingly didn’t make it far in development at CD Projekt Red, as MerseyRockoff was only able to find text and audio files pertaining to the long-lost boat races.

This Witcher 3 Mod Adds Boat Races Back to the Game

Nonetheless, they were still able to bring the content back by creating additional scripts from scratch “based on CDPR’s writing and careful examining of the files.” According to the modder, this “means that all the conversations, characters, notices and journal entries featured in the mod were originally written by CDPR, but re-created and brought to life by [the modder] using REDkit.” This goes to show just how dedicated MerseyRockoff was in adding back the minigame to the open-world RPG.

What’s especially impressive about this Witcher 3 mod though, outside of it adding four boat races to the game accessible in Novigrad Harbor, Kaim Trolde, Oxenfurt, and Holmstein, is that it’s available in 17 different languages, including Chinese, Turkish, and Czech. While the audio is predictably only available in English, the fact that people around the world can experience this cut content from The Witcher 3 is particularly noteworthy.