If I was to say that I met Geralt of Rivia, you’d probably assume that I’d met either Henry Cavill or Doug Cockle. While they have each famously performed as Geralt, I’d argue that Maciej Kwiatkowski is the original embodiment of the Witcher. The thing is, unless you’ve dug into the credits of the games, you probably don’t know his name.
Maciej is the founder of Alpha 7, a motion capture team based in Poland, and it was his movements and fighting skills that Geralt is based on from the original game, right up to The Witcher 3.
As a kid and a teenager, Maciej fell in love with martial arts, scrapping with his friends and family in his local neighbourhood. This led to a passion for stunt work due to his martial arts teacher being a stunt coordinator, too. Inside Platige Studio, Warsaw, still dressed in his motion capture suit, he described to me how he and his friends would playfight, grabbing anything they could use as prop swords, spinning them around, leaping through the air, and pirouetting to land complex blows.
Away from the streets and parks where he and friends - many of whom make up Alpha 7 - acted out martial arts, they would devour the books of Andrzej Sapkowski, reading Geralt’s adventures as The Witcher. They understood that with Geralt, there is no sense of black and white, only shades of grey with the balance between supposed good and bad blurring.
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When he and his friends read the saga at the age of 13 it “blew their minds” and they became incredibly passionate about it. "We started training martial arts, and medieval fencing, combining those skills," Maciej told me, over the noise of his crew practicing sword choreography in the background.
Speaking passionately, which is Maciej’s natural state, he described those days: “At 15, or 16, we started brainstorming pirouettes and spins, based on the fancy descriptions of Sapkowski’s. We were giving live shows, showing our choreography.”
Aged around 20, Maciej saw that CD Projekt RED was working on a video game adaptation of the books. His first thought was that the game would be terrible, noting that Polish developers at the time were not as renowned as they are now and a recent Witcher film “wasn’t spectacular”. He took a chance to audition saying, “We couldn’t not give it a try,” hoping that his fighting style, which he describes as “Witcher-style”, would become the foundation of the hero Witcher.
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CD Projekt RED looked at what Maciej brought them and weren’t convinced. This was because, as the stunt performer and actor notes, it wasn’t the style the developer had in mind. His first thoughts were to ground the Witcher combat in Chinese martial arts and swordplay, mentioning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Jet Li as his inspiration for the audition and tests.
His thoughts went to the grace and acrobatics of styles that were popular in cinema at the time, and Maciej notes, “This was the early 2000s. Back then, everything was drifting into Asian inspirations and Hong Kong action styles, especially for sword choreography.” But after meeting with CD Projekt RED, he was told that they wanted a strong connection to European fighting styles instead. To this, he said, “Okay, actually, I have something for you - this thing we’ve been developing for so many years now.”
He then showed off his own style of fighting that encompassed his acrobatic stunts and a brutal wielding of the sword. “As soon as I showed them the pirouette [with the sword], they said, ‘That’s it! We want more of this’.” To this, Maciej said his reaction to becoming Geralt, stepping into his hero’s shoes, was “mind-blowing”. Of course, he and his team of friends, who are more of a family, didn’t know what to expect next. “Finally, professionally, I would spend my time creating ‘Witcher-style’ [choreography], and the further we went into the process [with CD Projekt RED], it would become bigger, and then with The Witcher 3, we saw huge success,” Maciej recalled.
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From those early days in the mid-2000s to now, Maciej has provided the motion capture movement of Geralt, all part of his extensive “1200 performances in motion capture”. This isn't just sword fighting, but animations from walking, to running, and even idling in place. He was listed as ‘swordmaster’ for the first game, ‘stunt coordinator’ for the second game, and ‘stunt performer - Geralt’ for the third. The movement, the style - every action that Geralt makes - has Maciej beneath it all; he prides himself on “becoming those characters,” and his talent extends far beyond this performance. That fight scene for Ciri in The Witcher 4 cinematic trailer, was planned and scripted meticulously by Maciej and his team, all of whom consider themselves to be perfectionists.
So, is he working on The Witcher 4? “Yes, I guess I can admit that,” he said hesitantly, a wry smile cracking on his face, “I cannot say more,” he continued. Though he did tell me that he can’t wait for us to see more: “This is the style I’ve been evolving for over 20 to 25 years, and with each game and project, I have the opportunity to do more and have a more cinematic approach.”
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After our chat, we went back into the main staging area of Platige Studio for Maciej to show off his swordplay. With three of his friends storming towards him, each holding oversized plastic weapons, he leapt through the air landing a blow on the first, spinning around the second, before using the butt of his sword to knock out and decapitate the third. As he landed in a pose, over the ‘dead’ forms of his friends, his body instantly went into a video game idling state, swaying in a Geralt stance that has become so familiar to players.
“It’s crazy to think that mine and my friends’ journey through stunts and motion capture all started with The Witcher books,” said Maciej. “The Witcher is our biggest and most beloved project, and it’s also our dream project.”
Topics: Features, The Witcher, The Witcher 3, The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red