Once upon a time, there was a little bit of Cyberpunk in The Witcher 3, and thanks to some modders we know what that would have been like (sort of).
Slight spoilers ahead for The Witcher 3 side quest Through Time and Space, if you’re fussed about spoilers for a decade old game that everyone pretty much knows everything about.
If you can say anything about CD Projekt Red, it’s certainly that it’s an ambitious developer. You can see that just from the scope of Cyberpunk 2077 alone, and as it turns out, at least at one point in time, there was going to be a little bit of that particular title in The Witcher 3. You might remember the side quest Through Time and Space, which saw Geralt and Avallac’h hop from dimension to dimension across all sorts of different planets. And as spotted by PC Gamer, the modding project What Lies Unseen (documented by YouTuber xLetalis) has found that an earlier version of this project actually brought the pair to Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City.
There’s obviously not much to go off of from the datamine considering it didn’t make it that far into the game, but some dialogue was discovered at the very least:
- Geralt: “What… What is this place? Is this the afterlife?”
- Avallac’h: “No. Just another of the realities the Spiral leads through… Technologically advanced, but broken. Dying.”
- Geralt: “Disgusting. This stench, noise… How can you live here?!”
- Avallac’h: “You should know better. This world is inhabited by humans, not elves.”
That’s pretty much all that’s known about the scene, and you obviously shouldn’t take it as canon because, well, it just didn’t make it into the game! It’s certainly a fun concept, and I’m sure it would have been interesting to see how different this Night City might have been from the one we’re all quite familiar with now. Maybe they’ll do something like that in The Witcher 4, which has finally started production.
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