Bathtub Zoltan Chivay becomes more real than ever as The Witcher 3's full-fat modding tools get a release date

A shot of Geralt relaxing in the bath, his face overlaid with an amateur photoshop of Zoltan from The Witcher 1.

(Image credit: CD Projekt)

If you're anything like me, you have two desires: The creation of an international brotherhood of man and a version of The Witcher 3 that tells the tale of Zoltan Chivay in a recklessly customisable amount of clothing. It's my delight to inform you that both dreams are closer to realisation than ever: CD Projekt has announced a release date for the full version of The Witcher 3's REDKit. It's coming on May 21 via Steam, but you can use it across different versions of the game.

If you're almost certain this happened almost a decade ago, you're thinking of the MODKit. The Witcher 3 got modding tools all the way back in 2015, but CDP promises to make Geralt more malleable than ever with tech "based on the same set of tools that were used by our developers to create the game." That'd be the REDKit, which "should allow for nearly limitless freedom in modding."

"Limitless freedom" means being able to dream up entirely new things for The Witcher 3 and bringing them to life, rather than just changing up what's already in there. Over on the game's forums, CDP says you'll be able to create "New quests, new worlds, new cutscenes, new characters/monsters/NPCs, new journal entries, dialogues etc." and plenty else besides. Essentially, one of the greatest RPGs of the past decade is getting opened up to a level of customisation we more traditionally associate with Bethesda games.

The tools have been available in a beta capacity for a while now after they were announced last year, but modders will finally be able to get their hands on the full-fat version in a couple of weeks.

Once upon a time, CDP said The Witcher 3 wouldn't get REDKit tools, but man plans and god laughs. A mere nine years on from release and here we are. My only concern is that the tools are coming too late. The Witcher 3 is, of course, a classic, but most players have long since moved on to more recent games. With any luck, the release of REDKit will spark a little renaissance for the game, but who knows what we might have seen if these tools had come out closer to Geralt's last outing back in 2015?

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.