Witcher 3 Mod Restores CD Projekt Red’s Cut Narrative Recap Replay Feature

A fan-made mod for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is bringing back a cut storytelling feature that many players effectively never saw—letting you replay the game’s animated narrative recaps without sitting through loading-screen sequences. The project was in development for years, and it restores a panel originally prepared by CD Projekt Red before the game’s 2015 release.

Background: an unfinished recap panel returns

Behind the mod is a creator using the alias Glassfish777, who published Storybook. The mod reintroduces a feature CD Projekt Red worked on prior to The Witcher 3’s launch, but which never fully made it into the finished product. After installation, a new menu appears in the game’s Glossary section—called Events—where players can access all available story recaps.

1. The mod’s main addition is an Events menu that lists the game’s narrative recap clips.

2. These clips were originally limited to appearing during loading screens, where they played after loading a save or reaching a new story point.

3. Storybook allows those same recaps to be started at any time and in any order, removing the need to wait for a specific loading screen.

What you get: control, accessibility options, and existing translations

Storybook isn’t just a simple unlock. Because the original panel was left unfinished, the modder reworked it to match the game’s modern UI styling and added quality-of-life functionality. The creator says they rebuilt the panel in the look of the 2016 UI update—an interface style that still defines the menus today in The Witcher 3.

In practical terms, the panel is straightforward: a list of available videos appears on the left, while the right side shows the titles and descriptions prepared by the developers. The mod also uses only existing text resources—since the studio already translated the recap descriptions during the game’s production, Storybook doesn’t introduce new translations.

• Optional features added include skipping, subtitles, and automatic music muting during playback.

• Recap videos unlock automatically based on story progress, just like the game’s internal tracking expects.

• Because story tracking worked in the background from the game’s original release, the mod can be used on long-established saves with no need to restart the campaign.

The “almost unseen” second halves of clips

One of the most interesting details is that many of the recap videos are structured in two parts, but the second part was rarely shown during normal play. The modder explains that The Witcher 3 prioritizes the most recently unlocked recap when deciding what to play, which can cause earlier, expanded versions to be skipped—leaving some players unaware that the complete clip set even existed.

Storybook automatically combines both parts, meaning viewers should now get the full sequence of recaps that CD Projekt Red prepared for those moments.

Loading-screen control: hide recaps without losing access

The mod also includes an optional behavior change for players who dislike recap videos during loading. When that extra module is installed, the recaps stop appearing on loading screens while remaining fully accessible from the Events menu.

However, the modder notes that this option works in a specific way: the game engine writes information about which recap films are currently playing directly into save files. Because of that, you must save the game after installing (or removing) the optional module for the change to take effect. That setup is also what allows players to switch between “watch on load” and “only watch on demand” whenever they want—by saving after the preference change.

Timeline: first attempt in 2022, resumed after 2024 tooling

Although Storybook only surfaced publicly now, its road to completion began earlier. The first attempt to restore the panel was made in 2022 by a modder known as Fabian (Tinnaib), but progress stalled after encountering a major interface-related error that couldn’t be fixed with the modification tools available at the time.

1. In 2022, Fabian (Tinnaib) began work restoring the panel, but hit a severe error that wasn’t solvable with the tools then available.

2. After the release of RedKit in 2024, CD Projekt Red shared UI sources that enabled the error to be addressed.

3. With those new resources, the panel was brought up to a publishable quality and completed for official mod release.