Remember all that whinging from internet weirdos when Ciri was revealed as The Witcher 4’s protagonist late last year? Well, having come out in support of the move at the time, Geralt’s voice actor has now doubled down in even more emphatic fashion, suggesting that you’re a fool if you think it was a “woke” thing to do.
Doug Cockle did so in a video for Fall Damage which saw him react to some Witcher memes. Seriously, at one point he explains that he understands what the distracted boyfriend is, but doesn’t reckon it accurately reflects big Gerry’s love triangle with Yenny from the block and the ginger one.
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Confronted with a post about people spamming “woke” when TW4’s trailer rocked up at last year’s Game Awards being “everything that is wrong with gaming culture”, the actor didn’t mince words.
“I wouldn’t say that’s everything that’s wrong with gaming culture, but I do think that’s just stupid,” he said, “It’s not woke. There’s nothing woke about it. It’s a cool character from The Witcher, and they’re gonna focus on that character, and that’s awesome.
“We can’t just have Geralt for every single game for The Witcher ad nauseam, out through eternity. Besides, we’ve seen the end of Geralt’s journey. Blood and Wine was supposed to wrap up Geralt’s journey. I celebrate Ciri. I celebrate her being the protagonist.” He then blew a raspberry at folks who still think it’s “woke”, whatever that word means aside from a thing I don’t like because it might be a tiny bit diverse.
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If you do still think it’s woke, the start of the video might help you. It sees Cockle advise us all to be a bit like Geralt and gather up the confidence enough to talk to girls – or whoever you might be interested in – because “they probably don’t bite”. Well, as the actor admitted, “unless you ask them to, probably”.
Later on in the video, Cockle also encounters one of those ‘I bet he’s thinking about other girls’ menes, and goes on to suggest that Geralt isn’t a distracted boyfriend, reasoning: “I think he’s pretty focused on the present. I think when Geralt’s with Yen, he’s thinking about Yen, and when he’s with Triss, he’s thinking about Triss.”
Yes, this is all as surreal to hear said in Geralt’s voice as you might think having just read it in text form.
For more Witcher-related news, you can check out some of its devs reminiscing as TW3 turned 10 the other day, or this mod that has a go at giving that game a Witcher 1-style skill system.