'Suddenly I can play anybody': what it's like to act in a video game

As an actor, Doug Cockle is no stranger to unsettling workplaces. From battling Nazis in Spielberg's Band of Brothers to rubbing shoulders with Christian Bale in dragon romp Reign of Fire, disappearing into a role on set – whatever the set may be – has become second nature. Yet when he landed his first video game role in 2001, Cockle found himself suddenly standing completely alone in a vocal booth. "It is bizarre," he says. "You just have to be in the character in that moment in that world, in your brain. On stage and screen, you have other actors, you have props, costumes … all these things that are helping you do this thing called'acting'. Cockle got into video game work while filling in his Hollywood downtime by contributing additional voices to PS2 games such as Timesplitters 2. Inadvertently he was laying the foundations for acting in this fledgling medium. He has now appeared in more than 45 video games, including last year's megahits Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, though he is best known for voicing the gravelly Witcher, Geralt of Rivia. "There weren't a lot of voices in video games when I started out,' Cockle recalls.