Witcher 3 mod restores cut boat-racing quests

The Witcher 3 - Boat Races (Restored with REDkit) - YouTube

The release of the REDkit modding tools has opened up The Witcher 3 like a Yuletide goose, resulting in finds like an extended version of the ending in which Yennefer pulls off a shocking betrayal. Less plot-relevant but still pretty neat, modder MerseyRockoff has found the audio and text files for a cut series of quests where Geralt could enter a string of boat races, and set about recreating them.

As MerseyRockoff notes, "all the conversations, characters, notices and journal entries featured in the mod were originally written by CDPR, but re-created and brought to life by me using REDkit." That means the Boat Races mod feels like a seamless insertion into The Witcher 3, with Geralt having fully voiced conversations with race organizers and various townsfolk about competitive boating, as well as overhearing relevant chatter on the street.

The races themselves have you choose between representing Novigrad or Redania, who sponsor the competitions, in four tournaments: the Novigrad Regatta, the Oxenfurt Regatta, the Helmsman's Dash, and the Rally of the Wrecks. Each sees you racing between burning wooden checkpoints, with a bundle of cash and experience points waiting if you win.

To install the Boat Races mod, you'll need to put the modBoatRaces folder in the Mods subdirectory of your Witcher 3 install, and the dlcBoatRaces folder in the DLC folder of your install. Then run Script Merger to check for conflicts, and you're off to the races. Check our list of the best Witcher 3 mods for more.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.