Doug Cockle, the voice actor of The Witcher’s Geralt of Rivia, shared his personal ideas on the possibilities for the next game in the series.
“I kinda knew something was gonna happen,” Cockle says, reflecting on when he first heard of CD Projekt Red practically confirming another Witcher game. “Nobody at CD Projekt has told me anything specific, but I had a hypothetical conversation with somebody from CD Projekt at one point on the way to the Golden Joystiq Awards in 2016. We were just kinda talking about possibilities, I put forward a couple of possibilities, and those possibilities were not sneered at. I’m not saying I know what’s gonna happen in a Witcher 4. I don’t even know if it’ll be called The Witcher 4! It’ll just be another game set in The Witcher universe. So we may not see Geralt in that game.”
Instead of focusing on Geralt, Cockle says he feels there’s a storyline related to Ciri and her exploration of other worlds waiting to be focused on. “If I were developing the next Witcher game, that’s where I would go,” he says. “Because there’s so much there that they can work with. That’s probably going to be a strong consideration for the next Witcher game.” He asserts that this is only his personal opinion and not a confirmation in any way.
Looking back on his role, Cockle says he’s very proud of the work he did. “I’m proud to still be around, to be honest,” he says. “I just turned 50 this year … you see quite often, by this time in a lot of professional actors’ careers, they’re starting to shift to other avenues — or they’ve already shifted. Because they have to. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to keep riding this horse.” He jokes that he’s still riding Roach, Geralt’s beloved horse. And he’s so used to doing Geralt’s voice that sometimes he’ll be doing laundry and talking to himself, and Geralt’s voice will come out.
Be sure to watch the full interview below. Cockle goes on to talk about attending the launch event for The Witcher Netflix show, why he once joked that he hates Gwent, his work on other projects like Horizon: Zero Dawn, and much more.
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In March 2020, CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kiciński told Eurogamer Poland that the company would start producing the next title in the world of The Witcher after the release of Cyberpunk 2077. He stated work was already underway for another single-player game for which the team has a fairly clear concept waiting to further be developed. According to the translation, the company has two worlds, The Witcher and Cyberpunk, and they want to continue to create games within them.
The title likely won’t be called something like The Witcher 4 since The Witcher was planned as a trilogy, it will be embedded in the universe. In December 2019, CD Projekt Red reached a new deal with Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the book saga that serves as the adaptation source of The Witcher on Netflix and as the basis for the games (which he sees as an adjacent story, but not a sequel). The deal exists to create more games and merchandise with the property.
While the aforementioned plans may have been affected by Cyberpunk 2077′s tumultuous launch, it’s very likely they’re still underway. Last month, the company announced it’s undergoing structural changes. One of them is the acquisition of Digital Scapes, a Vancouver-based studio that largely did support work on games like Dying Light, Dead Rising, and Cyberpunk 2077. Doing so, the studio says, will make parallel AAA development plans on multiple games possible. This will begin in 2022. Earlier this week, Kiciński stated the studio has no plans to give up on Cyberpunk 2077.
“I don’t see an option to shelve Cyberpunk 2077,” Kiciński said. “We are convinced that we can bring the game to such a state that we can be proud of it and therefore successfully sell it for years to come.”
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It will soon be getting an upgrade for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, which will be free to anyone who already owns the game.
