Huge new Witcher 3 mod lets you take on the Wild Hunt as a customisable witcher, witcheress, or sorceress - complete with spellcasting
If you've ever fancied swapping Geralt for Yen or Triss without totally breaking your immersion, this even has a fresh quest for mages.
The Witcher 3 having a bit of a modding renaissance at the moment, and the mod I'm about to tell you about might be one of the most impressive things to come out of it so far. What does it do? Well, let you swap Geralt out for a customisable witcher, witcheress, or sorceress without blowing a huge hole in your immersion boat.
As we've been reporting, TW3's REDkit modding tool, which gives folks access to a lot of the same stuff the studio originally used to create the game itself, has been allowing modders to do a lot of cool new stuff recently, including resurrecting cut content and porting over areas from the series' older entries.
However, contrary to what you might first assume, 'Custom Player Characters' by modder Nikich340 sounds like it was in the works long befor CD Projekt lifted the game's hood. "I spent 2.5+ years on making this mod, there were a bunch of tools which I used, including some which I had to write myself," they write, "Redkit was helpful in fixing some animation bugs on last development stages."
Why's that surprising? Well, because all it does is take on the gargatuan task of allowing you to play through the entire game as a customisable witcher, witcheress, or sorceress in a manner that goes beyond a simple model swap. As you can see in the trailer below, you're able to put together your new main character using elements of the game's existing NPCs, with the customisation screen being summoned via the downing of a potion.
While the male witcher option essentially looks to simply let you revamp Geralt's appearance, the witcheress and sorceresses go a lot further, with animations having been edited to suit their body types, and the latter getting both a very impressive-looking new combat system that allows you to fight using the same spells mages use in the base game and a fresh quest called 'Becoming an Arch-Mistress', which is all about learning new spells.
Though, it's definitely worth noting that there's also one potential hang-up in how the mod implements female main characters. Rather than using custom voice acting, Nikich340 has elected to have Geralt's lines read by an AI RVC model trained to combine Geralt's voice with those of Ciri, Triss, and Yennefer to offer the three options for female voice acting.
While it does look like this is an optional aspect of the mod, with the modder having made it a separate creation and taken some steps like making the voices part exempt from donations and not importing any voices from outside of The Witcher 3, it's up to you to decide whether that's enough to make you feel comfortable using it.
If you're not familiar with the ongoing controversy around the use of AI voice acting like this and the arguments against it from actors, it's definitely worth reading up on that first before choosing whether to grab this mod.