Yesterday, the WAR Project Team released a demo of their ambitious eponymous The Witcher 3 mod, which aims to restore cut content from the base game, specifically a large cut questline originally developed by CD Projekt RED under the internal name “WAR.”
The original WAR storyline centered on Geralt, Roche, and his partisans as they tried to stop a Nilfgaardian medic named Hector Kraft-Ebbing. It also involved characters such as Thaler, Ves, Iorveth, and Vincent Meis, making it one of the more politically focused and faction-driven questlines in the game's development history. According to the project notes, the story was cut in late 2014 because the questline was in too rough a state to finish in time for release. Some elements survived in altered form in the final game, especially in An Eye for an Eye and Reason of State. However, the studio's release of the REDKit tool on May 21, 2024, allowed modders to datamine the game's string database, enabling them to view the entire written script and properly understand the events of the original quests.
The WAR Project is organized around a larger main questline and a smaller set of side content. The playable core at the moment includes Partisans and Vultures, No Man's Land Investigation, Unusual Impressions, and the rewritten An Eye for an Eye. Other quests, including Political Games, Taken, Queen, Bishop, Rook, Dr. Hector’s Secrets, the re-written Reason of State, and several side quests, are still marked as in development or not yet available. That gives the mod the structure of a long-form restoration rather than a simple quest pack. The final version of the mod is expected to be released in 2027 and be over ten hours in length, which means The Witcher 3 fans might have a lot of content to play through next year as they return to the game with the official Songs of the Past expansion.
One of the most ambitious parts of the project is its plan to restore the world spaces associated with WAR. After the original questline was cut, CDPR reportedly had to quickly repurpose the locations, filling them with points of interest and other content. The mod aims to restore those areas to their original layouts, including the Plague Pit and the Nilfgaardian Officer resthouse near the Army Group Center camp. It also says that, after the WAR quests are done, players will be able to restore the world to a more vanilla-friendly state if they want to continue normal exploration.
The WAR Project also changes or disables vanilla The Witcher 3 content that no longer fits. An Eye for an Eye and Reason of State are being fully rewritten, while A Deadly Plot is removed because Thaler's role is expanded much earlier in the restored storyline. The next-gen quest In the Eternal Fire’s Shadow is also removed because the mod replaces Devil’s Pit with its original intended role as a major story location. In addition, Funeral Pyres and the beginning of Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine are delayed or gated so they do not collide with the restored quest flow.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
