The role-playing game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt faced a strange crisis early on in its development when it almost simulated the behavior of local residents too literally. CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber discusses quests and character behavior in the new issue of Edge magazine.
According to the developers, the studio focused on each NPC’s real-life daily life and schedule, but in the early stages, the characters were completely unable to fully react to the player’s actions. Because of this, civilians will scramble to escape at the first sign of danger or a swing of a sword, while the women in the game literally drop their babies on the ground and run away.
Although the Polish studio fine-tuned the system of simulating lives and points of interest over time, it took a lot of time to correct these mistakes. Today, it would take an engineer just a few hours to create a similar village, but in 2012, such details almost drove the team to despair.
