Games like The Witcher 3, which was at one point stocked with NPC clones, and Cyberpunk 2077, whose NPCs were mechanical upon launch, have made it so developer CD Projekt Red has a middling track record when it comes to non-playable characters, but The Witcher 4 could reverse the curse.
"We have this rule," game director Sebastian Kalemba tells Gamertag Radio co-host Parris Lilly in a recent interview, "to make every single [The Witcher 4] NPC looking like they're living, with their own story."
You get a glimpse of some of that energy in The Witcher 4's reveal trailer, which features the small and snowy village Stromford. In the trailer, a girl wearing a crown of twigs is forced to pray alone in a sunless forest, believing her sacrifice will protect Stromford.
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"This is exactly how villages are working, right? Every single character has its own role," Kalemba says. Stromford is "super isolated, followed by superstitions and beliefs that are false. [...] They believe that, in this forest, there is a god."
The girl's face twitches with nervousness as she prays until protagonist Ciri arrives to take on what turns out to be the forest's monster, sending the girl sprinting back home.
"We're definitely pushing the quality of NPC – the way they look, their behavior, their facial performance – as much as possible," Kalemba says, "because we want to make even more immersive experience than we used to. We are trying to push the bar here."
