Witcher 3 Expansion Finally Adds Geralt's Long-Delayed Silver Chain

CD Projekt Red is bringing a hooked silver chain weapon to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in its upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past. Implementing a weapon first seen in the franchise's 2007 cinematic took significant hardware evolution to actually build.

In an interview with BBC News (via GamesRadar+), game director Jakob Rokosz explained that the team discussed implementing the chain during the original development of The Witcher 3, but ran into technological challenges. "It was impossible to do at the time for various technological reasons," Rokosz said, adding that the studio resolved those issues while developing the game's remaster.

The expansion, Songs of the Past, is anticipated for release, further fulfilling a design goal that dates back to the original franchise novels.

The details

• New weapon: Hooked silver chain
• Primary function: Crowd control against swarming enemies
• Expansion: Songs of the Past
• Base game: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered (set to be released on September 29, 2026)

How it works

Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki revealed that the chain is designed for crowd control against new enemy types, specifically "swarmions" that attempt to overwhelm the player. Anetaki noted that the chain introduces a new dynamic to combat, framing it as an alternative for players "who might be sick of the crossbow by now."

Rather than just a cosmetic addition, the weapon directly integrates with the narrative themes of the upcoming expansion, according to Anetaki.

Why it took ten years

While Rokosz did not detail the exact technical roadblocks of the 2015 release, he stated that the team was only able to make the weapon feel "natural and very fluid" after upgrading the underlying systems during the production of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered.

Trying to get chain physics to behave on older consoles is a classic development headache, usually ending with the weapon clipping through walls or behaving like a loose piece of spaghetti. The studio's decision to wait for a remaster suggests that some ideas require more computational muscle than a decade-old CPU could provide.