The butcher is back in this new The Witcher custom story

Well well, it's not every day (or year) that you see a new custom story mod for The Witcher. Yes, the original Witcher with the clunky combat and clunkier menus and questionable voice acting that is still pretty enjoyable despite all that. This new adventure is made in The Witcher 1 but takes place after the events of The Witcher 3. Geralt finds his way back to the outskirts of Vizima where, as usual, there's a murder mystery to solve and a monster to catch.

Apparently the Masquerade mod began its life yonks back in 2008 with the Ifirt modding group known for such other adventures as The Wedding and Merry Witchmas. It's since changed hands to another group called "Eler Creative" who released it with a fully voice-acted Polish version back in January 2020. This week, Eler published a version with English subtitles so the rest of us can give it a go.

Witcher 1 custom stories have always been pretty impressive to me, wrangling that ungainly old game into new stories that often succeed at telling a good Geralt story. Masquerade looks to be no exception. You can watch the intro below or watch a gameplay video posted by the modders.

Things kick off with Geralt sassing a ghost, as a Witcher does, but the job won't be nearly that easy. The man whose ghost he met seems to be still alive, or at least a shifter wearing his face is wandering about. There have been murders in the outskirts as well, which the guards are keen to pin on the supposed shapeshifter, but as usual Geralt isn't that quick to condemn the monsters.

Eler Creative say that Masquerade has references to film noir, multiple side quests, and "many secrets and curiosities to discover." Based on the gameplay videos posted to the mod's page, Masquerade looks to have at least 5 hours of adventure to tackle, likely more if you don't know the thing inside and out as its creators do.

You can pick up the silver sword once again by finding Masquerade on ModDB.