The Witcher 3 developers ran into a funny problem while trying to make the game’s villages feel realistic. They wanted NPCs to have daily routines and react naturally to what was happening around them, but early in developments, the reaction system was pretty basic. If something scared the villagers, they would simply run away, including mothers carrying babies. “For a few weeks, women were just dropping their babies, left and right.” He also said the team’s focus on making players curious about the world “really came to haunt us.” In small villages with only a few houses, players would naturally want to see if the people actually felt like they existed there. At the time, the developers were focused more on NPCs having proper day-and-night routines than on how they reacted to the player. Instead of giving villagers fixed paths, they gave them different places to visit and let the NPCs choose where to go next. For example, the 50 sailors at Novigrad’s harbor had around 200 possible locations they could move between.