Word. Idk how well it works in the game, but a lot of his aloof badass persona is Geralt coping with being an outsider in a violent, bigoted world. His long life, education, outsider status as a mutant, and regular contact with all kinds of people from different cultures gives him perspective that most normal folks don't have.

He's a smart, farily compassionate dude with superpowers in a world where trying to use his superpowers to help the oppressed and change things would very quickly get him and the people he loves killed. He's snarky and superficially cynical to try to protect himself from the weight of that.

But even in the first short story collection he shows that he does care for people deeply, is deeply wounded by bigotry and injustice, and has seen enough weird shit that he judges "monsters" only by who they've hurt and why.

It is an extremely macho series in many ways, but Geralt is the gruff badass with a heart of gold character rather than just edgelord badass. But he deliberately plays up the edgelord badass thing both to protect his own psyche and to create a legendary impression among the normal humans he interacts with that somewhat protects him from their bigotry and violence.

Also, it's been a while, but I think a large part of the reason all the cool ladies want to bang him is that he's genuinely a smart, respectful dude who takes women seriously. Being a gorgeous muscleboy who can't get sick, hence can't give you the clap, and can't make you pregnant doesn't hurt either.

I think Witcher 2 does a pretty cool job of fleshing this out, Witcher 3 relies more on the "omg cool swords and bewbz" that it's harder to see the characterization

In that case, that sounds awesome.

Reminds me a bit of how Cloud Strife tries to be cool and everyone just kind of humours him lol.

The novels are good and Geralt is actually a fantastic character with quite a bit of depth.

W1 is wildly misogynistic, even for mid 2000s standards, not to mention it's pretty shit in every way except maybe the story. It's really not worth playing.

I liked W2 mostly because of the characters and an engaging gameplay that was simple but not boring.

I never could get into W3. It's a beautiful looking world, but it's so immature and wish fulfill-y that I dropped it.

Honestly l was worried about that but actually came away fairly pleasantly surprised by his characterization when I played through the game. Although it's definitely undercut by the epic bewbz shit they like to put in these kinds of games

'the best ever at fighting'

he gets crippled by a mage with a stick. he gets killed by a peasant with a pitchfork. he is repeatedly put on the back foot by regular ass dudes.

every person in the setting that isn't also a witcher or a mage rightfully sees him as an inhuman monster

he's literally just a human, the myth that witchers are some kind of monster comes from the fact that many of them turned to banditry in order to survive because they had already hunted all the monsters (there are a finite number of monsters in the world since they are extradimensional beings that don't breed). geralt is constantly starving because he doesn't have any money because he's above banditry.