![]() ![]() The Witcher 2 was where CD Projekt started to really get noticed, but the evolution of the studio’s writing and characterisation was at its most stark in the step up between the second game and The Witcher 3. It needed to have more personality, and it needed to tell a more personal story with characters players could relate to - even if that character is a sad bridge troll with a drinking problem. ![]() To stand out, this next game needed a heart that wasn’t encased in stone. Lambert… Lambert’s a prick.”īy the time the second game came around, CD Projekt decided to relax the rules a little. It’s probably true that the Trial of the Grasses did a lot of that squashing, but anyone who’s played The Witcher 3 knows the witchers all have emotional lives. He squashes his emotions right down and keeps them in check. I was thinking, ‘This guy does have emotions, it’s just that his job doesn’t allow him to give into them’. “I did that as well as I could, but being an actor - that’s what we do, we play with emotions. “When we did The Witcher, CD Projekt were adamant that he could have absolutely no emotions whatsoever,” Cockle tells me. ![]() But as the series progressed and Geralt grew older, his soul - long-since scabbed over - began repairing itself. He doesn’t let his feelings get in the way. He’s reserved, always calm, and he sees everything logically. In the first Witcher, the after-effects of this process are still very much visible in Geralt. It is just one part of a witcher’s gruelling training, all of it designed to strip away a person’s humanity, turning them into a cold-blooded, monster-killing merc. Seventy-percent of young witchers who drink this poison do not survive, but those who do are granted superhuman reflexes, cat-like eyes, and other inhuman abilities. To become a witcher, you must first drink an alchemical concoction known as the Trial of the Grasses. In the fiction of The Witcher, becoming one of these monster slayers isn’t so simple. At multiple points during our conversation, he lowers his voice to that signature Geralt growl. The director listened to some of his work on the first game and liked what they heard, and so Cockle returned as Geralt for the sequel - one of only two original actors to reprise their roles.Ĭockle slips into Geralt easily these days. That person then got in touch with the game director and told them the actor was eager to reprise his role. “I contacted someone I knew at CD Projekt and said, ‘Look, I’ve heard you were casting for The Witcher 2 and I’d love to audition if you’d like me to’.” “I was surprised, but that’s the nature of the entertainment industry,” Cockle tells me. “Hey, I just auditioned for the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 2,” he said. None the wiser, Cockle received a phone call from an actor friend of his. Eventually, a sequel, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, was greenlit by developer CD Projekt. The voice actor, most famous for his performance as The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, had moved on with his life after the original Witcher game released and was met with mild acclaim. After countless hours of script-reads and recording sessions, Doug Cockle’s job was at risk. ![]()
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