A demo of The WAR Project team's work is out now
Those modders, eh? Never ones to be outdone. CD Projekt whip out a surprise extra DLC for The Witcher 3 following months of speculation, revealing it's set to arrive in 2027. Naturally, that's now also the point when a group of the RPG's modders are planning to have an expansion-sized resurrection of a beefy questline CD Projekt cut from the initial version of TW3 fully up and running. They've got a demo out already.
The aim of these modders, led by well-established in-depth Witcher 3 tweaker MerseyRockoff, and what they've dubbed "The WAR Project" is to fashion what CD Projekt left behind of a cut questline surrounding the Catriona plague into something which might do its original pitch justice. This cut questline, uncovered by dataminers some years ago, would have seen Geralt team up with a bunch of mates from his previous adventures to take down a Nilfgaardian-allied medic named Hector Kraft-Ebbing, who's getting up to some dodgy plague-related business.
Some remnants of the questline made it into the full game as part of the quests centered around deciding the future of the Northern Realms, 'An Eye for an Eye' and 'Reason of State', which featured characters like Vernon Roche, Ves, and Thaler who were slated for key roles in the cut plague quests. The Witcher 2's flute-playing Scoia'tael commando leader Iorveth and The Witcher 1's head of the Vizima city guard Vincent Meis were also planned to feature in the cut quests, but didn't end up in the final game.
Cue these modders making an effort to rebuild the plague questline, as well as re-write 'An Eye for an Eye' and 'Reason of State' to match it, based on the last known version of the cut content prior to its axing. As of right now, the group have released a demo version of their work with four quests - 'Partisans And Vultures', 'No Man's Land Investigation', 'Unusual Impressions' and the re-written 'An Eye for an Eye' - playable. A further eight quests are either works in progress or not in place yet.
MerseyRockoff and co are planning to have everything in place to release a final version sometime in 2027, which they say "will rival a full expansion, taking 10+ hours to complete". They're also leaving the door open to potentially adding more quests further down the line.
If you fancy giving the demo a go, you'll need the latest version of The Witcher 3 and to follow the installation instructions on the mod page. It's also worth reading through the various rejigging of main game quests that the modders have had to do to make their work fit as seamlessly as possible, which includes ditching two quests (one of which is the one added by TW3's next-gen update) and postponing the starts of both major established Witcher 3 DLCs - Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.