Although players initially thought it was a hoax, the Polish developers clearly put a lot of effort into their 2015 release.
In a world full of Red Dead-style clover fields, it might seem silly to ask this, but where’s the line between too much and too little detail? If we don’t prioritize the things players actually notice, game development can drag on forever, but when creating a fantasy RPG built on immersion, it’s essential that the designed illusions – bustling cities, lively taverns and foul-smelling tunnels – don’t fall apart. CD Projekt RED (CDPR) has become increasingly adept at this balancing act over the years, but the danger was ever-present during the development of The Witcher 3, as Philipp Weber of CDPR told Edge. The reason is simple: players love to peek behind the scenes whenever possible.
One example he cited was when a player started performing combat moves in the middle of town, causing the non-player characters (NPCs) to drop whatever they were holding and run away. This mostly worked, except for the fact that mothers swaddling their babies did the exact same thing. An important element of realism is giving NPCs appropriate actions to perform and making them switch between these actions unpredictably.
“If a village only has eight houses, people will want to see if the inhabitants truly exist or if they’re just fake. Nowadays, lots of people are interested in those kinds of details, and it really came to haunt us. Nowadays, if you asked me to create a Witcher 3 village with eight houses, I could do it in two hours. But there was a time when, when it came to actually reacting to the player, there wasn’t that much detail. For a few weeks, women were just dropping their babies left and right. We don’t give them specific paths. We provide them with points of interest and they do the pathfinding. For the 50 sailors at Novigrad harbor, for example, we created 200 potential locations, so even if all 50 were active at the same time, they would have options.” said Weber.
It seems that the human touch matters a great deal here. Cyberpunk 2077’s stylish and richly detailed non-player characters (NPCs) are a great example of just how valuable those handcrafted moments really are. While system-driven simulation plays a major role in making these digital characters believable, CDPR has previously stated that the quality difference between hand-programmed NPCs and their controversial AI counterparts is enormous.
Source: PCGamer, GamesRadar
