CD Projekt Red announced The Witcher 4 at last year’s Game Awards with a wonderful cinematic trailer, which depicts Ciri, now a witcher, doing battle with a creature called a Bauk. It hits all the right notes — grim, dirty and hopeless, three words that sum up much of the setting.
If it wasn’t clear enough from the trailer, CR Projekt Red also confirmed that Ciri will be the game’s protagonist. Although many fans saw this as a natural progression for the series, others are annoyed that Geralt is not reprising his role as the story’s protagonist. There’s also the usual crowd who say that having a woman protagonist is “woke”, but the arguments of those people are hardly worth considering.
It would appear Geralt’s voice actor Doug Cockle agrees, as he expressed this sentiment in a recent video from Fall Damage. In the video, Cockle is reacting to comments and memes created by Witcher fans.
One of these posts references the number of people who spammed “woke” when Ciri was unveiled as the game’s protagonist during the Game Awards.
“I think that’s just stupid,” Cockle says. “It’s not woke, there’s nothing woke about it. It’s a cool character from The Witcher, and they’re going to focus on that character. I think that’s awesome, we can’t just have Geralt for every single game for The Witcher ad nauseam through eternity.”
Cockle rightfully points out that The Witcher 3’s Blood & Wine expansion was intended to be the end of Geralt’s story. Dragging him away from his lovely vineyard would be a disservice to the character and the story of the trilogy.
“I celebrate Ciri, I celebrate her being the protagonist,” Cockle continues. “So all you people who think it’s woke… if you read the books, then you understand why CD Projekt went down this avenue. There’s a whole rich world of stuff to explore with Ciri, that they didn’t do when they put her into Witcher 3, because the story was about Geralt. If you think it’s woke, read the damn books…”
The Witcher 4 entered full production at the end of 2024, so the earliest we’ll likely see the RPG is 2027.
