'I got slapped by CD Projekt': Doug Cockle says he doesn't actually know if Geralt is in The Witcher 4 or not, but the studio wants him to shut up about it
It turns out that Geralt of Rivia, everyone's favorite monster-hunter-for-fire, may not be in The Witcher 4 after all. Then again, he may be—the truth is, nobody outside of a presumably select few at CD Projekt really knows, and that includes voice actor Doug Cockle, who says he got "slapped" by the studio after revealing earlier this year that Geralt will be in the game.
Cockle blew the whistle on Geralt's return in August, saying the character "will be part of the game," but that he won't be the lead character. "We don't know who [The Witcher 4] is about. I'm excited to find out. I want to know! I have not seen any script yet—I mean, I couldn't tell you if I did. This is the thing, so I could be lying through my teeth. But I'm not. Or am I?"
It's probably a bit much to call it "lying," but during a conference at MCM Comic Con Birmingham shared by Geektown (via GamesRadar), Cockle said the information was, well, not accurate.
"I did go online and I said something about this, and then I got slapped by CD Projekt, because—I don't know how true it is. I went off a rumor, I thought I'd seen somebody from CD Projekt say that Geralt will be in Witcher 4 but he won't be the main character. I don't actually know if that's true now because they came back and they went, 'We haven't put anything out there, don't say anything!'
"I don't know what it's going to be. I have ideas—I thought I had an idea what it was, and then I was kind of basically told, 'We haven't told anybody what it is, so where you got that information, we don't know.' I think it might be from a really, really old statement that somebody who no longer works for CD Projekt actually put out about three years ago. So Witcher 4 is a complete mystery to me."
Cockle said he thinks it would be cool (and make sense) if the next Witcher game follows Ciri's travels to various worlds in the multiverse, drawn from author Andrzej Sapkowski's books and mentioned in The Witcher 3 quest The Isle of Mists. But he also noted that the medallion seen in Witcher 4 teases appears to represent the School of the Lynx, which is specifically not in any of Sapkowski's work and could thus point toward some new, all-original work from CD Projekt.
Regardless of whether or not Geralt will be in The Witcher 4, it does appear that Cockle will be. Asked about the November appearance of a Witcher 4 placeholder on GOG indicating a December 2025 release date, he said, "The truth is, I can't answer the question because I've signed an NDA. So even if I did know, I would have to lie to you."
For the record, there is virtually no way The Witcher 4 will be out in December 2025. CD Projekt only confirmed the game had entered "full-scale production" in November 2024.