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[LectureMaster]

The Witcher 4 NPCs will offer a "more immersive experience" than other CD Projekt games: "We are trying to push the bar here"

Are you ready to be immersed?

www.gamesradar.com

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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.

"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."

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[R3TRO]

In my veins.

 

[LectureMaster]

Well, CDPR, you better not making your NPCs too smart.

Dragon's Dogma 2's performance issues were caused by the game's NPCs thinking too much

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/galaxy-brained-npcs-thinking-too-much-were-the-source-of-dragon-dogma-2s-performance-woes-in-towns-say-devs/ Well, turns out, Capcom's got the answer—the NPCs were thinking too hard. That's as per a Famitsu interview in the wake of a recent patch, which tidied...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Raven117]

Sounds good to me

 

[Guilty_AI]

They'll tell you their pronoums before starting conversation

 

[Guardian Monkey]

Like cyberpunk?

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Empty words from a dev that is notorious for back tracking on their promises.

 

[Kupfer]

The game has only just gone into full production and CDPR are already promising us the blue sky again - even though they swore to do better after the CP2077 release debacle.

Again we get a very early CGI trailer as a teaser, again we get 'groundbreaking' promises made far too early ...

Anyone who is seriously impressed by such empty phrases has learned nothing

 

[peish]

Best cdpr rpg was TW1.
TW2 was watered down too much into a “cinematic” rpg.
TW3 while expanding the world size, still felt small in event of interests
CP is even worse than TW2 in terms of “cinematic “ attempts

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I think they are comparing it to their own previous games.

Will be surprised if they matched Dragons Dogma 2 or Skyrim. Considering what went down with Cyberpunk.

 

[Exentryk]

Witcher 3 NPCs were pretty good already. So yeah, sounds great.

Day 1 and will update PC for this game.

 

[Gaiff]

NPCs in CDPR games are static and lifeless, so that’s a very low bar. As much as people love meming Bethesda, they probably have some of the most diverse, interactive, and dynamic NPCs. They have their own schedule, they interact with each other, they have an inventory, a class, skills, weapons, an AI based on what they can do (villagers will normally flee from danger. Soldiers will fight), and many other things.

Rockstar is obviously amazing at it too, but their approach is different since their NPCs for the most part aren’t named, so it’s more of a generic AI.

 

[lh032]

"We are trying to push her bra here"​

Excited for a moment here .

 

[Mister Wolf]

There first foray with UE5. You already know this game will tank your PC and run like shit on console.

 

[MajinSweet4]

Can't wait, eurojank garbage combat at 12 fps, but now the side quests will have two dialogue options when you get your meaningless reward. Will get so many gamers calling it goty after dropping it 1/3 through its slog of a campaign.

 

[SABRE220]

Best cdpr rpg was TW1.
TW2 was watered down too much into a “cinematic” rpg.
TW3 while expanding the world size, still felt small in event of interests
CP is even worse than TW2 in terms of “cinematic “ attempts

This is going to be an unpopular opinion but witcher 1 enhanced edition was my favorite of the series. I loved the atmosphere and the world and interactions felt much more personable, drawing me into the world. Witcher 2 was the weakest but even 3 lost quite a bit of its unique charm expanding the scope via open-world still a great game mind you.

 

[samoilaaa]

they said the same thing about CP 2077 and we got zombie npcs

Do these guys think we forget that easily ?

 

[bbeach123]

rdr2 npcs level was good enough . Balance between performance and quality .

 

[DoubleClutch]

Please…. Just no woke shit.

 

[//DEVIL//]

I saw the dialogue experience you did in cyberpunk.. you don’t have a bar to begin with -_-

 

[Wintereq]

Day One for me.

 

[Seomel]

They really need to learn to stfu and just start talking when games foundations have been built. This wont age well.

 

[gaming_again]

They also said this prior to the release of Cyberpunk.

 

[Mortisfacio]

I've loved every CDPR game and they're about the only dev I pre-order, but I take all their quotes with a grain of salt and/or ignore them. I love their games, but for me it's best to play for the good game it's going to be. Don't get any hype for the promises or what's said along the way as too much of it never reaches their allegations. Enjoyable gameplay and some of the best writing in the business. That's what I've come to expect. Anything else, if they reach it, cool, but I expect t-posing generic NPCs and compelling side quests intertwined into that mix.

 

[xrnzaaas]

They really need to learn to stfu and just start talking when games foundations have been built. This wont age well.

Gotta keep the buzz and investors happy, that's rule number one.

 

[Duchess]

Please…. Just no woke shit.

Too late for that, my friend - in this game you're playing as a lesbian!

(I actually think Ciri bats for both teams)

 

[Lucifers Beard]

They'd do better just keeping quiet and showing it off in a gameplay reveal in the future.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

This & Physics. Please, Dear Gaming Gods !!! I want proper technological advancements here

 

[Braag]

Didn't RDR2 have almost all NPCs have some sort of daily routine?
I saw videos online of people following them around town to see all the activities they do throughout the day.
I finished that game twice and wouldn't have know if someone didn't tell me.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

The game has only just gone into full production and CDPR are already promising us the blue sky again - even though they swore to do better after the CP2077 release debacle.

Again we get a very early CGI trailer as a teaser, again we get 'groundbreaking' promises made far too early ...

Anyone who is seriously impressed by such empty phrases has learned nothing

They are a stock listed company, it's what you do. See on the opposite spectrum - Valve, a private company, they don't care.

 

[samoilaaa]

Please…. Just no woke shit.

cdpr looking at your comment

 

[Big Baller]

Let me kill npc's when I want to

 

[ThatPolishGuy]

Just a reminder https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-...eveal-game-reveal-event-announcement.1678534/

Gameplay drops in a week. Witcher 3 core devs which left CDPR and founded their own studio Rebel Wolves.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Empty words from a dev that is notorious for back tracking on their promises.

Yep they will overhype and underdeliver big time.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Just a reminder https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-—-title-reveal-game-reveal-event-announcement.1678534/

Gameplay drops in a week. Witcher 3 core devs which left CDPR and founded their own studio Rebel Wolves.

Thanks, I'll keep my eye on this one. Didn't realise a lot of the core dev team had left.

 

[ThatPolishGuy]

Thanks, I'll keep my eye on this one. Didn't realise a lot of the core dev team had left.

Yeah some did also abandon ship, and apparently and moved from Poland to Czech Warhorse Studios to work with Daniel Vávra on Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

Vávra also said they considered Unreal Engine 5 for KCD2 but ultimately settled for CryEngine since UE5 was difficult to work with in an open world game and they were already familiar with CryEngine.

Which doesn’t spawn confidence for The Witcher 4 at all. CDPR will probably spend a lot of time with customisations for UE5 to at least perform OK and work well with open world game like W4.

Edit: someone corrected me that these were not core devs but leads. Anyways, it seems interesting. Definitely will watch gameplay and decide for myself .

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-—-title-reveal-game-reveal-event-announcement.1678534/#post-269913815 here's a list of at least some devs working on The Blood of Dawnwalker.

Some of them worked on Blood and Wine expansion which honestly was for me more enjoyable than main game. And Dawnwalker seems to be similar in terms of size. And apparently it's vampire game with vampire/werewolf hybrid. Worth keeping an eye out, it's only a week till we see it in action and if rumors are true about protagonist and setting. Someone mentioned it may be based on a book in the already link thread.

 

[mdkirby]

So long as they are interesting and well written and engaging, with variety.

I’m sure devs would have made the same statements in regards ff16 and horizon forbidden west. But all it meant was complex multi step quest design with lots of dialogue, that you zero interest in as they were very samey, and the characters so droll and bland you had no investment in bothering.

 

[Gonzito]

They are starting again the same tactic of over hyping the game before hand. They haven't learned shit huh

 

[HJuggernaut]

I hope they dont overpromise and underdeliver like they did with Cyberpunk2077

 

[Spiral1407]

I'll believe it when I see it

 

[Ridicululzz]

They'll tell you their pronoums before starting conversation

Stunning and dare I say it...Brave!

 

[CityHunter1981]

Sorry but for me it can’t be immersive as long as you play a female character. Nothing wrong with female protagonists, but for me it makes a game not immersive, because I don’t feel like a woman…

 

[gaming_again]

Didn't RDR2 have almost all NPCs have some sort of daily routine?
I saw videos online of people following them around town to see all the activities they do throughout the day.
I finished that game twice and wouldn't have know if someone didn't tell me.

Yeah there are some amazing vids of this on YouTube. One dude builds a house and goes to the pub every evening.

 

[b0uncyfr0]

Means nothing until non sliced gameplay is released.

Watch the trailer for CP77 and let that jog your memory haha.

 

[Pharaoh 117]

I see they've learned nothing from the Cyberpunk 2077 backlash.

Sorry but for me it can’t be immersive as long as you play a female character. Nothing wrong with female protagonists, but for me it makes a game not immersive, because I don’t feel like a woman…

 

[Luipadre]

They are starting again the same tactic of over hyping the game before hand. They haven't learned shit huh

Ikr. They talking about a game thats likely 4 years away and already making ridiculous statements.

 

[Clear]

The problem with adding AI is that it becomes an absolute shit-show to debug with all the dependencies and unpredictable race-conditions. And with the systems always running on some sort of scripting engine -never optimal- it quickly becomes a massive resource hog!

 

[Tams]

 

[Rush2112]

Bullshit I remember all the promises about cyberpunk. They’re FoS.

 

[Dampf]

Hopefully it will be truly next gen. I don't want to see the same 2 sentences repeated over and over again for non-story relevant NPCs. There's a lot you can do in that field thanks to LLMs now.