The voice artist behind The Witcher 3’s Yennefer of Vengerberg has told Eurogamer that she doesn’t know yet if her character will return in CD Projekt’s in-development The Witcher 4.
Work on The Witcher 4 ramped up in earnest last November, following several years of pre-production. Now, over 400 staff at CD Projekt are assigned to the game – though it won’t launch until at least 2027.
Still, we already know the basics – that The Witcher 4 is a continuation of CD Projekt’s existing trilogy, that Ciri will now be its protagonist, and that hero Geralt has already been locked in as reappearing in some form, still voiced by Doug Cockle.
But what about Yen? After Geralt and Ciri, sorceress Yennefer is arguably the next most important. Her relationship with Geralt is featured in numerous Witcher stories, and the character is also a prominent part of Netflix’s The Witcher TV series.
“I don’t know any of this,” claimed The Witcher 3’s Yennefer, Denise Gough, when asked by my colleague Mat Jones what she knew of CD Projekt’s progress on The Witcher 4.
Gough – now starring in the Star Wars series Andor as Dedra Meero – went on to suggest she hadn’t known what to expect when recording for The Witcher 3 years ago.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Gough continued. “I’d never done a video game before. And then lots of, usually men, would come up to me in sound departments on film sets, would come up and go [whispers] ‘are you Yennefer?’ And I was like ‘who’s Yennefer?'”
Eurogamer recently sat down with The Witcher 4’s game director Sebastian Kalemba and narrative director Philipp Weber to try and tease some information about when the game will be set, and how much Geralt might appear.
“Currently, he’s having the best time of his life,” Kalemba joked, when we asked whether Geralt would be back in action and playable at any point. “[He’s] playing with some wine, and dealing with vineyards. This is where we left him last time. But obviously we can promise that Geralt will appear, but we cannot tell you if it’s going to be playable or not right now. But yeah, he will appear. He’s going to be present in The Witcher 4.”
As for Netflix’s TV adaptation, we just got our first proper look at Liam Hemsworth in the role of Geralt on set while filming its fifth season.