Designing convincing villagers in open-world games comes with unexpected hurdles, as CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber recently explained in an interview. When building the countryside settlements for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the development team focused heavily on day and night cycles rather than anticipating every nuance of how NPCs would react to Geralt's actions.
Quick Facts
- Developer: CD Projekt Red
- Game: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Key Issue: Unintended NPC fear reactions caused village women to drop babies
- AI System: NPCs used spots of interest and independent pathfinding rather than strict paths
The Challenge of Player Curiosity
Weber noted that because villages in the game often consisted of only about eight houses, players naturally became curious about whether the inhabitants felt like real people or mere background fakery. Building convincing characters in such small spaces proved tricky due to the team's lack of prior experience with those specific details at the time.
When players initiated combat and started slicing and dicing as Geralt, NPCs were programmed to run and scream in fear. That standard panic reaction triggered an unforeseen glitch: for a brief period of a few weeks, women in the villages were continuously dropping their babies left and right.
How Village AI and Pathfinding Worked
To populate settlements without hardcoding every step, CD Projekt Red utilized spots of interest instead of rigid paths. Once an NPC finished an activity like woodcutting, the character's internal pathfinding evaluated available points and selected a new task, such as carpentry in front of a house. At the Novigrad harbor, for example, developers created 200 possible spots for 50 active sailors to ensure everyone had viable movement options.