CD Projekt Red has always placed great emphasis on realism in its games, which is one of the key reasons why The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt became one of the most immersive open-world RPGs of the past decade. However, this pursuit of realism also led to some哭笑不得 (laughable yet frustrating) issues during development. For instance, the team tried to make NPCs respond to Geralt in a more realistic and natural way, but this resulted in a rather absurd situation: whenever the witcher burst into a house, the mother NPCs inside would promptly drop the babies they were holding straight onto the floor.
In a recent interview with Edge magazine, The Witcher 3 quest designer Philipp Weber stated that because the game focuses on rural areas, players are easily intrigued to explore and observe.
"Because we focused on rural areas, players were more likely to become curious. If a village had only eight houses, players would wonder if the people there really lived in this world or if Everythinggj was just fake. Many players now pay close attention to these details, and that attention eventually came back to haunt us."
The NPCs in The Witcher 3 didn't have highly complex schedules based on day-night cycles, but they did switch between different activities, such as chopping wood or eating. These activities kept the NPCs moving around the world, making it feel more alive rather than having them stand still like background props.
However, the developers also wanted these ordinary NPCs to react to Geralt's actions. For example, when Geralt drew his weapon inside their homes, the NPCs should have been startled and interrupted what they were doing.
Weber explained: "Our NPCs were originally supposed to have fear reactions. They would drop whatever they were holding, let it fall to the ground, and then run away in terror."
"The problem was that one of the mother NPCs' 'jobs' was to hold babies and soothe them. So for several weeks, we watched as women dropped their babies on the ground one after another."
Nowadays, fear reactions are common in open-world games, designed to enhance interactivity and prevent immersion-breaking moments where NPCs seem like scripted robots when interacting with the player. However, this was clearly a bigger challenge during The Witcher 3's development in the early 2010s. Personally, I think they should have kept the fear effect in at least one side quest. I'm sure the writers could have gotten creative with it. At the very least, we still got that famous "baby in the oven" moment.