Doug Cockle (of The Witcher fame) apparently recorded all of Geralt of Rivia's voice lines in only 8 days while working on the very first game in the series, and he landed a home run without ever being able to read the original source material.
Geralt's husky voice will forever be defined by Doug Cockle's performance, but the iconic role wasn't easy to get right. Speaking to Gameology, the actor remembered he simply "went to an audition" back in the day and met a developer from CD Projekt Red who described the character of Geralt.
Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher novels hadn't yet been translated into English, meaning Cockle "couldn't refer to them" when preparing to jump into the recording booth. Still, he was immediately on board.
"What I really liked about the concept of The Witcher when I was introduced to it was just this whole new fantasy world. I've always been a fan of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Dragonriders of Pern, all those great fantasy novels - Conan the Barbarian. So, I've always always loved fantasy worlds, and this was a whole new one to explore," he explains.
When it came to actually recording the huge role-playing game, Cockle recalls he spent about eight days in total for The Witcher 1: "I think it was five days in a row and the voice was very low - very, very low in my register. And at the end of a long recording day - we were recording six, seven hours a day - my voice was wrecked. So I would go back to my hotel room and I would just sip peppermint tea all night, or lemon and ginger. Those are my two favorites. And then I'd go back the next day and do it all again. And then the game came out and people loved it." The rest is history.
Doug Cockle is confirmed to reprise his role when The Witcher 4 finally comes out, which is targeting a tentative 2028 release window. Developer CD Projekt Red recently said Geralt will "always have an important" role in the series, even when he's not actively in the spotlight.
