"For a few weeks, women were just dropping their babies": The Witcher 3 lead on designing NPCs that react appropriately
Gone are the days where a developer could give an NPC maybe two lines of dialogue and call it a day. The steady shift to realism essentially enforces the idea that characters must behave realistically, which is why whenever some kind of glitch or bug makes an NPC move about in an impossible manner it does numbers on Your Favourite Social Media App. And according to CD Projekt Red quest designer…
In the early stages of development for The Witcher 3, creating convincing NPCs, especially in small villages, proved to be a significant challenge. Lead quest designer Philipp Weber explained that the team aimed for realism, so players should feel the villagers genuinely existed in the world. However, this pursuit often led to bugs and glitches, causing NPCs to behave in impossible ways.
The most notorious issue arose when mothers would drop their babies, seemingly in response to Geralt's actions, causing a wave of concern among players. Weber noted that the team lacked experience in designing such NPCs at the time, which contributed to the glitch. While most NPCs didn't have specific paths, they would choose spots of interest for pathfinding.
For instance, the 50 sailors at Novigrad harbour were given 200 possible spots to move to, ensuring they wouldn't all converge on a single location. Despite the glitches, some players found humor in the situation, with one joking about dropping their own babies and seeking a brief escape from the game's horrors on social media.
Written by urgent.news from Rock Paper Shotgun's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
