The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition

[2house2fly]

Though before you get some more useful attacks (power attack and whirl), your experience will be rather dull

And after.

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, but at least you'll have an awesome button afterwards.

 

[Lambach]

Turn off the option that lets you see collectibles on the mini/world-map. They're fucking worthless and completely ruin the game for a lot of people.

How the hell am I supposed to pay for all the hookers Witcher sword/armor if I don't collect and sell all that shite?

 

[bonescraper]

Steal and then sell honey. I'm serious.

 

[Bored Games]

Any builds that turn game into baby Dark Souls? Let's say I don't want to powergame the f out of this one, I was thinking about skills like reducing damage on dodge and adding damage on counter attacks, fast attacks, whirl, and skills that increase oils from alchemy because I want to be smart and prepare for combat n shit. And what helpers and derp compasses should I turn off right away?[/QUOTE]


Focusing on strong attacks, Crushing Blows, Rend, etc. will make combat feel more like that of Dark Souls in that attacks will need to precise and well-timed. Bear School Techniques + Ursine gear is need for adrenaline generation. Also consider Battle Frenzy. Acquired Tolerance on the Alchemy Tree will help make decoctions usable but putting points oil preparation isn' useful for a slow attack build like this. Delusion is necessary for role playing, so you need to factor out three points and a slot for that.

I've tried all sorts of builds and that's the least boring.

 

[typical user]

Avoiding places of interest has made the game fresh again. I am not overleveled so I can get XP from those places after Battle of Kaer Morhen which is XP fest on it's own (I usually get 2 levels during the dialog with Avallac'h after the burial).

Still the game has some retarded decisions like main quests which have level increase and suddenly you have a quest with few levels lower requirement just so you can get no experience for it. You can't get to place of power in Kaer Trolde if you don't side with Cerys which is another dumb thing (I wanted to choose Birma/Svanrige but I also want to make a perfect build but this game doesn't allow me that unless I use console commands to teleport myself there.

The scaling enemies option is broken as it makes rats lethal, the combat is at times broken as critters don't get mini-stagger from hits and can immediately counter-attack. In Dark Souls enemies either have low poise or are immune to staggers, this game is just plain fucking random leaning towards bullshit experience. I also should mention bandits that can block whirl with simple club like they are Vilgefortz or something.

 

[2house2fly]

I hate levelled items and required maximum levels for quests. It feels like they wanted to make an open world game because open world games are cool right now, but also they wanted to make an entirely linear Ultimate Witcher Story and didn't want their audience to spoil it by being too high level or having too good equipment at any particular point. They should have just had a Story mode where you follow the glowing dots from cutscene to cutscene and a Witcher Mode where you roam the world and do quests.

 

[Shadenuat]

The open world design is ironically the weakest part of an open world game. I am not even sure if it is better than Bethesda games - at least latest Skyrim/Fallout 4(?) worked on level scaling for monsters and there is no equipment you can't use (although much of it can scale with character but you still can make your own overpowered stuff with crafting) and there are no "zones".
Level restricted equipment? MMO zones?! seriously?
And what's up with level ???YOUDIE monsters messing around in locatons with quests marked for level 10?

The only saving grace for open world is that quest you find while riding horse and concidering how good quests are in this game, even with their shitty level scaling making xp/loot obsolete (I have level 2 and 3 recipes but can't make them because you need level 1 recipes ) it sometimes is worth it.

There is also that awkward design with some NPCs that should be present in world only spawning when you get a quest (herbalist in White Orchard with locked house as example); locked chests that can be unlocked only with quest keys and stuff like that that bother me in "open world" game compared to ye olde RPGs

The character development is a second bugger. You can spend whole game leveling shitty passives. The first skill picks are also shitty passives. I've spent 10 hours leveling shitty passives untiil I at least bought lots of alchemy recipes which breaks the pacing of shitty passives leveling. Although, many decoctions are shit. More power for signs if the weather is cloudy? You serious?

But, highest difficulty is good. Died in 1st fight Also ignored Sun&Stars in favour of Cat's School Techniques and went for an alchemy tree and stealing chickens. At one point I was ready to sell my silver bars for 2 chickens or killing everyone

Graphics on ultra is indeed good but there's something about yellowish or orange tint that looks specifically "x-boxy" that I dislike. Also nvidia hairworks seems to eat up to 20 fps sometimes, but I am not sure. Generally I have 50-60, but it sometimes makes random "jumps". But then all that stuff is nvidia tech and I have an amd card.

The setting and quests and cities with beautiful woodworking are beautiful. I wish they added more creepy slavic monsters though instead of reusing same poludenitsa/gravehag/werewolf etc.

Overall game is definitely not bad, but it seems heavily casualised compared to W1 or even W2. The fencing system is now all but gone in favor of just 2 types of attacks and dodge/parry. I remember some awkward game from like 2000 (Severance?) that had more abilities and types of attacks. Well, even DS has more because you're not using only swords. For a game where you only use swords, it should have way more attacks.

Spells and alchemy - I only use them for special monsters, and seems like only due to my misuse of magiK and highest difficulty. You could probably out-poke-a-mole anyone on lower difficulties or with heavy armor.
Fighting 5-8 level 5 drowners is more difficult than fighting level 10 boss sometimes.

heylelelleyleyleyeleleyeley

 

[ortucis]

So I bought the Witcher 3 GOTY on GOG (the upgrade, I got the original for free with my 980ti, I think), I also have Dark Souls 3. If I ain't a storyfag, but I do like a little more than just combat, would I be better off playing TW3 or DS3?

Witcher.

I have only played the first DS, hated it, but I specifically remember shit story-line as one of the reasons.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/the-witcher-3-story-war

How CD Projekt envisioned The Witcher 3’s striking depiction of war

Walk along any bridle path in the Witcher 3’s Velen, and it won’t be long before you come across signs of war. It may be a Nilfgaardian patrol, clad in their black armour and feathered helms, seeking out signs of Redanian incursion. Alternatively, it might be an abandoned cart, robbed by bandits who thrive on the chaos of war, or perhaps by soldiers looking to earn more than medals. Or it may be a battlefield, scattered with hundreds of bodies, prowled by corpse-eating ghouls, ragged banners fluttering in the breeze.

Walk a little further, however, and you’ll likely stumble upon a very different scene, a peasant village bustling with activity. Men labouring in the fields, women washing their clothes in wooden basins, children singing and playing in mud-churned alleyways. It’s a bizarre pocket of peace in a devastated land. Yet even here you will spy telltale signs of the wider conflict: a Nilfgaardian garrison stationed to keep order and requisition supplies, a plume of smoke on the horizon, from another village that wasn’t so lucky.

Wherever you go in The Witcher 3, war is never far away. At the same time, you only catch glimpses of it, the remains it has left behind in its terrible, inexorable wake. It is omnipresent and yet unseen, like the vengeance of some wrathful god.This is just one of many reasons why The Witcher 3 is the most striking vision of war ever depicted in a videogame. Whereas in most games we experience war as a cascade of bullets and explosions, or a cold tactical puzzle that must be solved, the Witcher 3 shows us war as a powerful and yet distinctly human force, a sequence of grand plans and calamitous blunders that scorches the landscape and affects everyone from commander to commoner.

How did The Witcher 3’s developer, CD Projekt RED achieve this bold and complex vision? Magdalena Zych, a writer for the studio, explains that the team set out not with the objective of depicting war convincingly, but depicting people convincingly. “As a writer, setting the story in a war-ravaged world is attractive. Especially when working on an open-world game and wanting to populate it with characters who are more than just [a] one-dimensional background for the protagonist. [It’s about] creating a believable and varied society, showing the problems that plague their daily lives. An ongoing war gives us the perfect excuse to set up scenarios that will make the players care.”

The Witcher 3’s war was designed around the individuals caught up in it, and because CD Projekt seek out complexity and ambiguity in each character they write, this layers upwards into the depiction of the war itself. In this game itself, this layering begins with Nilfgaard, not least because it’s Nilfgaard who commence hostilities.

As Nilfgaard are the invading force, in most other games they’d be painted as the player’s enemy. But for the first third of the game, Geralt’s search for Ciri requires him to work alongside, and sometimes directly for, Nilfgaardian soldiers and officers. Through Geralt’s conversations, we come to see them not as some sweeping, malevolent force, but as individuals with their own quirks, hopes and fears. “In one of the first quests, Geralt speaks with a commander of a Nilfgaardian outpost -- a man that is tough, but fair and competent, who looks after not only his men, but also civilians of the conquered territory he’s in charge of,” says Zych.

At the same time, CD Projekt strive not to euphemise the actions of either side. Much of the Witcher 3 is about showing unflinchingly the damage done by warring nations to those caught in the middle. Zych cites both the Romans and the Nazi occupation of Poland as inspirations for how the civilians of Velen are affected by Nilfgaard’s invasion. “As Poles, we’ve a strong folk memory of World War II. Even if it’s something we heard from our grandparents or great grandparents, we can relate to people living under foreign occupation. It’s not hard to imagine for us.”

Importantly, the Witcher 3 doesn’t portray the civilians caught up in the war exclusively as victims. Indeed, their responses to the war are just as myriad as those who fight directly in it. “Poverty will force some onto the battlefield and strip corpses of fallen soldiers of their armours and belongings; others will continue to fly the colors of their homeland on tavern walls, even if that country doesn’t exist anymore,” Zych says. “This is what we wanted to show in the game, the different ways in which war affects lives of the people it touches. So we thought about who the characters living in the world of The Witcher 3 are - their needs and fears, where they’re from and what’s important for them - and through their actions show how they’re dealing with the predicament they found themselves in.”

Not all of the themes and images depicted in The Witcher 3 made it in as part of a carefully considered design document. The developers were sometimes surprised by where their approach to a given topic would lead them. One example of this is patriotism. In the Witcher 3, the Kingdom of Temeria has been destroyed by the invading Nilfgaardians, and the Redanians know a similar fate awaits them if Nilfgaard is victorious. CD Projekt decided to pull on this thread, and explore how different people respond when their national identity is under threat.

“Patriotism, which seems like a simple matter, turns out to be quite complex,” says Zych.

Just compare the straightforward attitude of Vernon Roche (a former Temerian Commander turned guerrilla fighter) and that of Sigismund Dijkstra -- a man for whom the well being of Redania is close to heart, but whose methods are known to be controversial.”

The Witcher 3 is able to accommodate such a large number of themes and focus on each in detail on account of its sheer size. But the most crucial factor in the Witcher 3’s portrayal of war is not its spatial breadth, but its depiction of time. CD Projekt understand that, in general, wars are mostly made up of long periods of nothing happening, punctuated by short, sharp bouts of fighting. Geralt’s search for Ciri takes place during one of these lulls, when both the Redanians and Nilfgaardians have returned to camp to lick their wounds and puzzle over their next move.

With the battlefields empty except for the dead, life creeps back into the woods and fields. The peasants resume work and traders walk the roads. Hence we experience the war not just as a sequence of battles soldiers either survive or perish in, but as a long-term scenario that is literally lived through by the people who subsist on Velen’s charred strip of no-man’s-land.

What’s more, CD Projekt understand the relative nature of time for various individuals experiencing the war. “Generals who move pawns on a map, are aware of the bigger picture, and for whom a lost battle is not the end of things, will see war differently than soldiers, who lose friends fighting alongside them, or their own life on the battlefield,” Zych explains.

In the Witcher 3, CD Projekt show us the full effect of total war, the devastation it can wreak, and the lives that are destroyed. But it also explores how individuals adapt to it and persist through it at every level of society. “Our goal was to create a believable world and say something true about war and the people that get caught up in it,” Zych summarises. In the end, The Witcher 3’s vision of war is so convincing because CD Projekt portray it as a part of life, rather than a machine of death.

 

[Sentinel]

didn't read

 

[ortucis]

didn't read

TLDR; You know that empty battlefield which is supposed to look like a battlefield but looks half-arsed version of one? IT WAS AMAZING!

 

[anvi]

I wish there were mods that changed the combat. Significantly I mean.

 

[WhiteGuts]

didn't read

TLDR; You know that empty battlefield which is supposed to look like a battlefield but looks half-arsed version of one? IT WAS AMAZING!

You'd really have to be the king of edgy tryhards not to admit the depiction of war-torn areas in TW3 is nothing short of amazing.

 

[ortucis]

didn't read

TLDR; You know that empty battlefield which is supposed to look like a battlefield but looks half-arsed version of one? IT WAS AMAZING!

You'd really have to be the king of edgy tryhards not to admit the depiction of war-torn areas in TW3 is nothing short of amazing.

Or, you know, people have different tastes and can find things you think "AMAZING" to be just "Meh".

Maybe step outside your bubble once in a while, kiddo.

 

[WhiteGuts]

didn't read

TLDR; You know that empty battlefield which is supposed to look like a battlefield but looks half-arsed version of one? IT WAS AMAZING!

You'd really have to be the king of edgy tryhards not to admit the depiction of war-torn areas in TW3 is nothing short of amazing.

Or, you know, people have different tastes and can find things you think "AMAZING" to be just "Meh".

Maybe step outside your bubble once in a while, kiddo.

Sure, people have different tastes. But there are some matters where subjectivity doesn't apply. In the TW3, the scenery is great all around, it's one of the game's strengths. You can say it doesn't strike your fancy, but you can't negate that it's quality, that would be kinda dumb.

Obviously, saying this doesn't mean the game is perfect and doesn't have its share of flaws.

 

[Gerrard]

Except for the part where the people from a burned village you pass in the beginning are still there in the same exact places 2 months of in-game time later. That kind of ruins the whole "realism" thing a bit.

 

[typical user]

Except for the part where the people from a burned village you pass in the beginning are still there in the same exact places 2 months of in-game time later. That kind of ruins the whole "realism" thing a bit.

You are nitpicking. New Vegas doesn't have that attention to detail either.

 

[Gerrard]

Except for the part where the people from a burned village you pass in the beginning are still there in the same exact places 2 months of in-game time later. That kind of ruins the whole "realism" thing a bit.

You are nitpicking. New Vegas doesn't have that attention to detail either.

So? When did New Vagas become some kind of paragon of game world design?
And how is pointing out blatant retarded shit nitpicking? Do you think nothing being looted 100 years after the war in Fallout 3 being dumb also nitpicking?

Was it so fucking hard to just despawn those NPCs after a while?

 

[Shadenuat]

60 hours in and level 20, and I am just thinking about exploring Skellige.
how the fuck do you even finish a game like this.

I am surprised at how black and white morality is in this game. Secondary options seem to either be, at worst, to skip content, to get a few extra crowns, or, at worst, to support/spare total dicks/maniacs.
Concidering how linear most quests are, it is not surprising game is big and is fully voice acted.

Good thing I skipped leveling mind trick, you can always just pay some coin instead.

 

[Endemic]

Was it so fucking hard to just despawn those NPCs after a while?

They should, but in the grand scheme of things it's a minor detail. The combat\character system and plotting are much more important criticism.

 

[Frozen]

So I bought the Witcher 3 GOTY on GOG (the upgrade, I got the original for free with my 980ti, I think), I also have Dark Souls 3. If I ain't a storyfag, but I do like a little more than just combat, would I be better off playing TW3 or DS3?

TW3 if for no other reason because unlike DS games at least it has a story.

 

[2house2fly]

An emotionally engaging story about a man searching for his child and deciding the outcome of a multi-faction conflict. Not unlike hit RPG Fallout 4 except there are less dialogue options and you don't get to create your own character.

 

[Frozen]

And its not all voice acted by 3 immigrants from eastern Europe that mistaken voice recording for a language course.

 

[Infinitron]

Remarkably extensive interview with Geralt's voice actor, Doug Cockle: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-27-the-voice-behind-the-witcher

The voice behind The Witcher
How a Bournemouth lecturer became Geralt of Rivia.

It's the middle of December, 10 days away from Christmas. I'm on a train chugging along the south coast of England, across chilly countryside under a darkening grey sky. It's almost idyllic but mostly bleak, and so very ordinary - I've watched industrial estates and small villages like these roll by a hundred times before. This isn't where you'd normally go looking for a superstar.

Bournemouth station is my stop, a seaside town with nice Victorian buildings and lots of students. Many of them study at my destination, the Arts University of Bournemouth, where I'm about to meet the course leader of acting. His name is Doug Cockle, but you and I know him better as Geralt of Rivia.

Cockle looks like a teacher, like every teacher you ever saw walking around a campus or school corridor. Nothing marks him as extraordinary. He's middle-aged, a bit shorter than me and wears sensible glasses. He's dressed comfortably rather than showily in plain, warm, everyday clothes. His hair is shaved and he has a slight beard. He does not have a mane of flowing white hair.

He isn't gruff, either, or arrogantly aloof. He is mild-mannered and friendly. And as we walk to an onsite cafe for a cup of coffee we make everyday small talk about students leaving for Christmas and oh my isn't it getting cold. He buys me a coffee with a handful of change from his fleece pocket. It is an entirely unremarkable situation.

Then I hear his American accent, half growl, half purr, and I remember who he is, like it's some kind of secret, like he's wearing some kind of disguise. I realise I know, and I'm not the only one.

"I don't know when people really clock," he says, "some of my students I think still don't know. I do share it when I'm recording something; if the students ask, I'll tell them. But I was supposed to be very tight-lipped about The Witcher 3 so I didn't say a lot about it. I got told off once for just tweeting. But the ones who were listening knew.

"There are some students who I talk to regularly who I can see getting starstruck, where they kind of go a little funny, a little awkward, and they don't quite know how to talk to me. It's almost like they're scared to approach me about it, or they feel like they don't want to cross a line.

"But one of the things with voice acting is it's the voice people make a connection to, not the face, not the whole person, whereas with film and television we make a connection with a person because we're seeing a person. With Witcher 3 they see Geralt and they hear my voice, but they attach that voice to that other image. It's a weird separation of actor and audience."

But here is someone synonymous with a game and series at least as successful as anything Troy Baker, Nolan North and Jennifer Hale have appeared in. He's video game acting royalty. Can you imagine The Witcher games without him? Because that was very nearly the case. Had destiny not placed a talkative friend where it did, I wouldn't be speaking to Doug Cockle today.

Cockle as Captain/Father John Maloney in 2001 television series Band of Brothers.

Doug Cockle didn't always want to be an actor. He was born into a military family in 1970 and grew up in Twentynine Palms near a US Marine Corps base where his father was an officer. His mum was a teacher, his dad dabbled in art, but neither of them were theatrical. "I wanted to be a helicopter pilot, or raise dogs in Oregon," he says now we're settled in a small white room in the drama wing of the university. He quite fancied studying wildlife biology like his dad. That interest turned to medicine and a place at university as a biology major after he read about gene manipulation curing diseases in unborn infants and thought it was a brilliant idea. But he couldn't get the grades.

It was then Cockle turned to theatre, where most of his friends were and where he was spending most of his time. He had put on shows for his parents, with his sister, when he was growing up, so perhaps it was a lingering desire that led him there. He doesn't know. Point is, he went, he made "a wild leap", and he landed with a theatre degree from Virginia Tech in 1993.

From there he moved to Seattle to make it as an actor, worked the fringe, recorded adverts - good paid work - and took on a variety of day jobs, as actors do, to support it all. One of those was in a little shop in Seattle's historic Pike's Place Market, Mug's Antiques. A lady came in and bought a paperback book. "We got to chatting. I suggested she just bring the book back when she was done and she could get another. She did... several times," he says. It led to coffee, to a walk in the park, to one thing, to another, and marriage.

Three years later, Cockle and his wife moved to Pennsylvania so he could study for an MFA in acting. The obvious next step, for an actor, would have been the bright lights of New York or Los Angeles, but Cockle wanted an adventure and his wife missed her parents, who were in the UK (she had once lived here too). So it was decided: go back to the UK for a year. That was 17 years ago.

They moved in July 1999 and almost instantly Cockle got a break, "blagging", as he puts it, a role alongside Honor Blackman at the York Theatre Royal. It got him noticed, and he landed an agent. And the agent landed him both a role on the Band of Brothers television show and an audition for a video game voiceover. It was October 1999.

"It was all very exciting but I knew nothing about voiceovers for video games," he says, "I didn't even know that they existed. I went along to this little studio that was built into the side of a house on a hill in Harrogate up in Yorkshire, for a game called Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos, and I auditioned for the main role, Cal, and got it.

"That," kids running around half-naked because the family's living room was next door to the studio, "was the beginning of voiceovers for games for me."

Cockle as Larry in Burn This at the Duke's Theatre Lancaster, year unknown.

As chance would have it, Cockle had gotten in with the right company at the right time. Those kids belonged to Mark Estdale, whose fledgling Outsource Media company has been at the forefront of UK video game sound recording ever since, albeit now residing in London rather than on the side of house on a hill. Estdale gave Cockle a lot of work. Indeed, it was Estdale who phoned him about The Witcher.

By then it's roughly 2005. Not only is Cockle an old hand at video game voiceovers, he's appeared alongside Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush in The Tailor of Panama; alongside Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire; and landed a job at Arts University Bournemouth. Not to mention the theatre and radio bits in between. He's been busy, as actors tend to be.

Cockle heads to London and meets a man called Borys from CD Projekt Red. That's Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, who was then a lead translator, now a lead writer, and has always been a key person for Cockle. "He's the one who suggested that I think of Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry as an example of the kind of thing they wanted," he says. "I think I spent about 15 minutes in the booth playing with things and then I headed off." A couple of weeks later he gets the call; he's got the part.

"It was work as normal" Cockle says. Up to Outsource's old offices in Sheffield on the train for a week. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Except, well, he does remember there being a particular excitement about the three or four Polish people there, and when they handed him the script and he thought the game sounded like fun.

"We spent a week, four or five days, [recording]. And they were long days," he says, "some of those days were 10 hours, which is a long time to be doing any voice work. It was hard. It wasn't painful or anything like that but it was a challenge. It was an intensive time. And I remember thinking 'this is going to be a big game'. There was a lot of dialogue."

Then just like that the job was done. He says goodbye and thanks for the lunches and heads back home. Life carries on. He doesn't even realise when The Witcher came out in October 2007, just like he doesn't realise casting has begun for a second game until destiny intervened.

"I didn't know Witcher 2 was even happening until one of my actor friends said, 'I went and auditioned for this game the other day, Witcher 2, didn't you do Witcher 1?'

"I said 'Yeah, who did you audition for - was there a particular character?'

"He said 'Yeah, Geralt, didn't you play Geralt?'

"I said 'Yeah, I did!'

"Oh it felt rubbish!" he says, to know they were casting but he hadn't been called. What on earth had he done wrong?

But an actor is nothing if not tenacious, so he brings up Borys' number on his phone and sends him a message, plays it cool, says he's heard there are castings and could he come in. And Borys replies.

"What happened," he says, "is between The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2, CD Projekt decided that they wanted to completely shake it up. They were pleased with how Witcher 1 had done but they wanted to recast everything, go with a different voice production studio. I don't know why; their reasons were their own. But that's what they decided to do."

Borys apologises and goes to see the new voice director for The Witcher 2, Kate Saxon, and mentions Doug Cockle. "And the story is that they went back and listened to some of the recordings from Witcher 1, and Kate went 'Actually he's really good - that's a good voice for Geralt. If you're happy to bring him back I think we should just do that.'

"It was almost an accident that I ended up doing all of Geralt in all three games."

Cockle as Goosh in 2002 film Reign of Fire.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was recorded at a different studio, called Side, and in London. The whole production was bigger, from game to organisation, everything. Our returning hero, Cockle, walked in a little afraid.

"I was pleased to be asked to do Witcher 2," he says, "but, I'll be honest, when I went in for the first session I was very nervous because of what had happened. Even if you know it wasn't a personal thing, that you had done a good job previously - which I did know because I was told that - it shakes you. You begin to question, 'Well could I have done something differently that would have made them think differently between the two games?' So I did go in very, very nervous."

But as time rolled on, Cockle found his groove. He even found room to inject some humour and emotion into Geralt this time, to humanise him. "I remember the troll storyline and thinking it was just silly," he says, "and that was good, that was a good thing, because CD Projekt wasn't taking themselves quite so seriously. It was nice to see some humour creeping in." Ditto emotions, something CDPR kept "a hard rein" on before. "In Witcher 2 they started to allow that."

On the last day of recording the team goes for lunch and then goes their separate ways. This time he had hints from Borys about The Witcher 3, that it was coming, though the thought "gosh I wonder if they're going to do a similar thing and want to shake it all up and move things around" did cross his mind.

May 2011 comes around and The Witcher 2 is released. Cockle waits with anticipation for the reaction to his performance. And keeps waiting. And keeps waiting. "Nothing," he says. "Nothing at all. There was almost no interest in me whatsoever."

A little deflated, he checks Amazon reviews to see what people think. "And someone," he says, "said something like, 'Yeah it's great but the guy who plays Geralt sounds like a 16-year-old trying to do a 42-year-old's voice,' or something like that! And I actually was so pissed off about that I got on and replied and said, 'Actually, I am that age - and I disagree. It is my voice and go stuff yourself!'"

Cockle as Lincoln Mathers in 2004 film London Voodoo.

"By the time we got to Witcher 3, I knew Geralt," he says. Cockle knew him from Andrzej Sapkowski's books, by now available in English - he's a big fan, "loves" the Tower of Swallows - and knew him from two games and the shared plotlines for the third. He even watched the ropy Polish Witcher television series. "It wasn't great," he says, "but it was OK."

The voice was also by now second nature, "bedded in", he says, whereas in The Witcher 1 it was "a very conscious effort" to maintain. "If you go back and listen to Witcher 1, Witcher 2, Witcher 3, you will hear a difference in terms of performance, but I don't know how much of that is [on purpose]. My voice changed," he says. We are talking about 10 years of someone's life here, and he'd quit smoking during The Witcher 2.

"Going into Witcher 3 was like slipping into a comfortable bath," he says - exactly how Geralt starts The Witcher 3, coincidentally. Cockle knew the team, the studio, the character, the voice, the world. "It was really nice to go back in."

Funnily enough, though, Cockle barely knew the rest of the cast. "It's very rare for actors to record together for games, partly because availability for individual actors is often very hard to gel. I've always recorded alone in the booth for Geralt," he says. "We're like ships in the night. Sometimes I meet people as they're coming out of a session and I'm going into my session, and we'll run into each other in the hallway, but even then there were only a very few of the actors from any of the Witchers that I actually met."

He met Triss, Jaimi Barbakoff, but he never ever met Yennefer, Denise Gough, although one afternoon he came close. He'd been to see Gough in her starring - "brilliant" - role in West End production People, Places and Things. "I went to the stage door because I was going to introduce myself and say, 'Hey great job saw the show and by the way I'm Geralt,'" he says.

"But I waited by the stage door, I waited for about 15 minutes, and thought, 'You know what? She's probably taking a nap.' Her performance was so intense and there was another show that evening, so I left her to it."

Ships in the night. Odd though, considering the moments Geralt and Yennefer shared on the screen, on a certain unicorn. But even those moments, the sex scenes, are handled alone - pun, I'm afraid to say, intended.

"It's like the violence," he says, "the hit that the character takes, the damage that he or she takes. You have to do a reel of different intensities, different kinds of injuries, different kinds of screams, different kinds of dying - you have to die different ways. It's the same for sex; you have to enjoy yourself in different ways. What is that other character doing to you? What noise does that make you make? It's... interesting!"

And a bit embarrassing.

"It's one thing if you're doing a love scene, any kind of real intimacy, on stage or screen," he says. "It's easier to do when you have someone there you can do it with. That's natural, that makes sense. It gets awkward when you have to negotiate 'tongues, no tongues?' but there is a negotiation that happens silently or verbally.

"When you're doing it in the booth there's a different kind of awkwardness, because it is a bit like masturbation, you're being caught masturbating. Do you know what I mean?"

No! I mean what?! I mean do you know what he means?

"That's what it feels like," he says. "If you can imagine yourself having a good old wank and in walks your mum. It's that kind of embarrassing feeling."

"We're still early days in terms of people fully appreciating the contribution that the voice actors make to the games," Cockle tells me, topically.

"It's a funny thing with games because the voice actors, no matter how big we think we are, how important we think we are, we are a very very small part of the overall development process of the game. There were hundreds of people working at CD Projekt on Witcher 3 in various capacities. They're not being brought in for three days a week for a month: they're there every day for five years or however long they were there slogging away getting this thing put together.

"The developers are the stars of the games industry. Where film, the production company is much more behind the scenes - the focus is much more Tom Cruise or whoever it is; in games, the focus is the game and the people who've developed the game. Voice actors are just a part of that. One part of it. One part among 30 parts.

"What I'm trying to say is, I was expecting to get a different kind of attention from The Witcher 3 than I'd had from anything else, but I was surprised, eventually, how much attention I've had. And at the same time," he says, "I'm also surprised at how much attention I've not had, but I don't know why I say that - perhaps it's my ego, the actor's ego."

Cockle prepared himself and his wife for The Witcher 3 opening doors, maybe even relaunching his full-time acting career. "I knew The Witcher 3 was going to create a stir I would not have been able to generate otherwise," he says. But besides recording several roles for Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn, it hasn't really happened. Not yet.

"It's definitely changed my life in a number of ways, some intangible and some very tangible," he says. "A simple little thing: the money I was earning. You have to understand that while The Witcher's happening I'm doing other things as well. I have a small role in [the film] Survivor with Milla Jovovich, I have a small role in the Kevin Costner film [Criminal] that just came out. I've been doing other games. It's not just The Witcher.

"But The Witcher being what it is, being the big one of the last few years - of the last 10 years really - the extra money has been nice. I'm not rich by any measure but it's allowed me to do a few things that were perhaps a bit frivolous and fun that I might not have done had I not had that extra money. Things like I bought an electric guitar because I've always wanted one. I wouldn't have done that if I didn't have some extra Witcher money on the side to go, 'You know what? I'm just going to go spend £500 and buy a guitar!'"

Another major plus is Doug Cockle gets to say he's Geralt of Rivia. "It's fantastic! People love the game, love the character and they contact me on Twitter and they say, 'Just wanted to say fantastic job! Love your voice, love what you do with Geralt, love the game!' And it's nice, that's a really nice thing."

He's been nominated for awards, won a Navigator Award, and there could always be more. He's been to the BAFTAs, been to the LA Game Awards. "That's all really brilliant stuff," he says.

Doug Cockle as I see him before me now, 15th December 2016.

I sense that he's waiting, coiled ready for an opportunity. "It's not happening now, and I don't see something coming in that regard but it's entirely possible," he says, he hopes, "because when you get that kind of attention, people notice." But at the same time he's torn, all too aware of the real toll recording The Witcher 3 took, in London half the week and working around the clock at University the rest. "It was putting a serious strain on my personal life," he says. "And I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again, but I'm aware now, having come through it, of just what an effect it was having.

"I don't know..." he ponders. "If an opportunity came up in video games or in television or film, something big that was going to mean a big paycheck and a lot of work then I would have to consider that very carefully, but I can't just take a leap into the unknown and risk the stability of my family on a complete gamble."

His teenage children are happy where they are, his wife is happy where she is. They have a comfortable life. "The extra acting work that I do," he says, "whether it's a lot of work or a little bit of work, is part of feeding my soul."

If he chased the dream he would have to travel a lot, probably without the family (he was away in Ireland for three-and-a-half months filming Reign of Fire, albeit before kids), and there would be no guarantee of work, of income. "It's not a healthy situation," he says. And unlike Troy Baker and Nolan North and Jennifer Hale, who he admires, he says, "I'm not very good at playing the game."

The Witcher 3, though, he has played. "Yes all the way through," he says. "I even got the ending I wanted." And Triss, if you're asking. "You know," he adds, "I have a sneaking suspicion that not all those grunts are mine."

Maybe Geralt of Rivia is Doug Cockle's crowning achievement, perhaps those days of galloping around the globe chasing fame are for someone else, someone singler, someone younger. It doesn't really matter, it's still a towering achievement; The Witcher 3 shows every sign of going down in gaming legend. CD Projekt Red may even bring him in again for Cyberpunk 2077. He's certainly game. "Absolutely!" he beams.

"I have joked with them about bringing me in as an Easter egg. I've jokingly said, 'You've gotta bring me in as a bartender the player has to interact with for at least one quest. A bartender named Gerry who has some waiting staff... Trisha or Jenny or something like that.' But who knows? They may... I hope they've enjoyed working with me and bring me into audition for characters in that, we have a good working relationship. But the industry does what it does."

It's dark by the time I leave Doug Cockle. He calls me a taxi and waits by the road barrier with me for it to show up. It's cold, maybe even raining. I'm so wrapped up I can't tell. Like so much else today it's an ordinary scene, two acquaintances stretching out a goodbye. In so many ways Doug Cockle is an ordinary guy, no glitz, no glamour, no razzamataz. But what he's done is anything but ordinary, so for your extraordinary work and story, Doug, I thank you.