Creating immersive NPCs: Piranha Bytes vs CD Projekt RED vs Bethesda Softworks

[Naraya]

I voted Witcher 3 but I quite liked how Oblivion did it too. Years after playing this game I still remember certain NPCs. One issue I have with Beth games is that NPCs are so scarce that it looks completely unnatrual. Compare it to the bustling market in Novigrad and there is no contest.

 

[Zer0wing]

I voted Witcher 3 but I quite liked how Oblivion did it too. Years after playing this game I still remember certain NPCs. One issue I have with Beth games is that NPCs are so scarce that it looks completely unnatrual. Compare it to the bustling market in Novigrad and there is no contest.

Which means there are no good known recipe, you gotta mix'n'match approaches from either of these games.

 

[Funposter]

if I don't hear some random emaciated looking man saying "your mother sucks dwarf cock" every time I run past him the world is not believable.

the homeless people in Hyde Park say this to me sometimes

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

I voted Witcher 3 but I quite liked how Oblivion did it too. Years after playing this game I still remember certain NPCs. One issue I have with Beth games is that NPCs are so scarce that it looks completely unnatrual. Compare it to the bustling market in Novigrad and there is no contest.

Same. Witcher 3's NPCs have beggars, hookers out at night that try and proposition you, and guards at certain points that will stop you and demand to see a hall pass. Bethesda's cities may have more quest-oriented NPCs, but quest or not, they're colorless compared to the dirty bustling streets of Novigrad, and you can travel to more financially wealthy areas and the NPCs start dressing better and talking in more condescending tones. The NPCs may just be placeholders, but they're placed well enough to add more character to the game. These sort of details are generally overlooked in most open world games. Plus you can play Gwent with most of the inn-keepers and merchants, and get a night of hide the salami with the girls at the Passiflora.

All NPCs in all video games are dead, lifeless things. But at least CD Project Red tries to zap 'em with some lightning, get 'em to twitch and move around a little.

IMO Bethesda hasn't made any interesting NPCs since the days of freaks like Caius Cosades, Crassius Curio, and M'aiq the Liar. It takes real skill to try and turn NPCs into a representation of weird people. Nowadays we try and turn weird people into NPCs.

 

[sullynathan]

I voted Witcher 3 but I quite liked how Oblivion did it too. Years after playing this game I still remember certain NPCs. One issue I have with Beth games is that NPCs are so scarce that it looks completely unnatrual. Compare it to the bustling market in Novigrad and there is no contest.

Which means there are no good known recipe, you gotta mix'n'match approaches from either of these games.

There is. R* is already ahead of the curve by doing what CDPR, piranha bytes & BethSoft did combined but better.

Play Red Dead Redemption 2: You have large amounts of NPCs in large towns and cities and you can converse with all of them with at least 2 dialogue options each and they have responses.

NPCs have varied faces and clothes so you never feel like you run into the same characters twice like witcher 3 & oblivion.

All NPCs can be attacked, killed, intimidated, robbed and etc. while having their own daily schedules and notice crimes, report crimes, attack the player if they feel insulted, etc.
Breaking into someone's house or stealing from them is a crime. In other words, unlike most of the games from the aforementioned companies, RDR2 has a working & complex but flawed crime & punishment system.

NPCs continue on without you. Some of them commit crimes and police chase them and can kill them. Some of them rob places.

R* already succeeded in having both large amounts of npcs in the world to give the illusion of life and having a large amount of interaction with npcs and between NPCs. Unfortunately, other rpg devs that make these type of games don't have the $150 million+ to do these things unless they're cdpr or bethesoft.

 

[Ringhausen]

The PB approach seems better on the surface, but a lot of times those games feel cluttered with people who don't actually matter but seem like they matter.

Ah, the Rice Lord. The only fat guy in the game and the only one to wield a scythe, but he doesn't do shit besides bullying you at the start. No one even comments if you kill him.

Drove me nuts.

 

[Paul_cz]

RDR2, Gothic 2, KCD are furthest in my opinion.

Witcher 3 is amazing and immersive, but you can't interact with most of its characters, and those you can, are usually standing in one place. It is done in a way which is not very distracting, fortunately.

 

[luj1]

Creating immersive NPCs

Not that important when you think about it tbh. None of the renaissance RPGs had super immersive NPCs... what do you even mean by that anyway? Immersive? Are you alluding to VO?

 

[thesecret1]

Kingdom Come uses the "PB approach" if having an old game in the poll triggers you so much. I like it better too - the NPCs might not form large crowds like in Witcher 3, but since each has a schedule, each needs a place to sleep, somewhere to eat, somewhere to work, etc., meaning you're forced into having a much more realistic city layout (can't have half the population living as hobos) and have each and every NPC sort of important as a consequence, since they aren't an interchangeable object that despawns forever after you leave location to be replaced by some other generic object after you come back. I find these things to be a lot more immersive than just randomly creating crowds of people in a city, where people stroll around going nowhere and where the crowds are often excessive in size, being more fitting to a major metropolis than a modestly sized city usually present in the game.

 

[Carrion]

I'm not even that big of a fan of Gothics, but when playing them for the first time, the thought that came to my mind was "this is how it should be done", although it was probably more about the sum of different parts regarding how the open world is designed, not just the NPCs.

CDPR's approach was changed quite a bit from TW1 to TW3. I thought the former had pretty neat NPC schedules, and Vizima felt like a lively place. TW3, on the other hand, doesn't really even have NPC schedules as far as I know. Named NPCs will stand in the same spot for all eternity unless the plot dictates them to go somewhere else, while generic townspeople effectively stop existing when Geralt is not in the vicinity. What the game has could be more accurately described as "location schedules", meaning that the fish market is going to be densely popluated in the morning, whereas in the middle of the night the stalls are empty and the place is deserted except for maybe a band of cutthroats. Visually it does create a nice impression of a living, densely populated city, but the NPCs don't really feel like actual people, more like robots that are there just for the show.

I like the Bethesda approach in principle, although it's gone through some changes with each TES game. Daggerfall and Morrowind are often criticized for their "wiki dialogue", but I really like being able to talk to generic townspeople and ask them about whatever comes to mind. It helps create the illusion that they're actual people and not just walking props or quest dispensers. The downside with these games, obviously, was how static the game worlds were, with most NPCs never moving from their spots. Oblivion added NPC schedules and tried to make each NPC unique by giving them one or two lines where they told you about themselves or the town, but Bethesda shot themselves in the foot with full voice acting among other things, so you got empty towns where every character felt generic and no one had anything of interest to say, just a couple of lines about latest rumours and maybe an additional one about some quest. Skyrim made a clearer distinction between important and fluff NPCs, meaning that you could no longer talk to everyone but the important characters had more things to say, and the towns felt slightly more alive than before.

Obviously it comes down to what you want to achieve, but I'd like to see someone taking the Daggerfall/Morrowind approach and combining it with well-made NPC schedules.

 

[sullynathan]

What is the dagger fall / morrowind approach?

 

[undecaf]

I don't find too much "immersion", identifiability or belieavablility in NPC's that have no interactivity to them beyond killing or touching them, such that exist merely as stage decoration. That might sound like I'd vote for Bethesda in the poll, but no.

That's not to say that if a game has 100+ "random" NPC's or if it generates them randomly (so they're basically infinite), they all needed fleshed out dialogtrees or some such, but that there's a multitude of abstractable ways of providing interactivity. From pickpocketing, to intimidating, to observing (i.e. learning behavior if there's a skill for that), to persuading temporary companion-mooks, asking for direction or the infamous "rumors" (that might reveal some random occurence nearby), plus what ever other forms the context of the game might open up (i.e. in Cyberpunk 2020 there wer skills for "interview" and "interrogation").

 

[sullynathan]

That's not to say that if a game has 100+ "random" NPC's or if it generates them randomly (so they're basically infinite), they all needed fleshed out dialogtrees or some such, but that there's a multitude of abstractable ways of providing interactivity. From pickpocketing, to intimidating, to observing (i.e. learning behavior if there's a skill for that), to persuading temporary companion-mooks, asking for direction or the infamous "rumors" (that might reveal some random occurence nearby), plus what ever other forms the context of the game might open up (i.e. in Cyberpunk 2020 there wer skills for "interview" and "interrogation").

You might like RDR2 because it has all of this but it isn't an rpg.

 

[undecaf]

You might like RDR2 because it has all of this but it isn't an rpg.

Interesting.

But I don't own a console (nor will I) and I haven't been all that interested normal action games for a some years anymore. And I'd kinda want the RPG systems of the game to handle those interaction (their success/failure rate).

 

[Sigourn]

What is the dagger fall / morrowind approach?

I didn't mention Morrowind because:

• Yes, NPCs are unique, but most are virtually indistinguishable from each other as characters since they use the same generic lines.
• Guards are generic.
  
• There are no schedules.
• The world is also sparsely populated.

It handles NPCs worse than Skyrim IMO, regardless of the writing quality of the latter. Ideally we vote on the poll just thinking about the approach to NPCs, but not about how well written they are in their respective games.

I haven't played Daggerfall so I'm unable to comment on it.

 

[sullynathan]

You might like RDR2 because it has all of this but it isn't an rpg.

Interesting.

But I don't own a console (nor will I) and I haven't been all that interested normal action games for a some years anymore. And I'd kinda want the RPG systems of the game to handle those interaction (their success/failure rate).

It's likely coming to windows in the next few years so it shouldn't be out of reach for long.

The reason I bring up the game not being an rpg is because there's an existing base of would be rpg mechanics there that would've made for even more interesting gameplay if R* tried but they didn't. It's a story focused game and it's other systems a lot of times just exist for cosmetic purposes so having tempered expectations is good. It's an immersion fag's game even compared to the ones mentioned here.

 

[Cadmus]

Gothic had the best voice actors = best NPCs.
In Oblibion and Skyrim everybody sounds like a retard = worst NPCs.

 

[Sigourn]

Not that important when you think about it tbh. None of the renaissance RPGs had super immersive NPCs... what do you even mean by that anyway? Immersive? Are you alluding to VO?

I couldn't think of a better way to condense the title, but basically the question is "which of these approaches are better at creating a believable NPC population?".

 

[vonAchdorf]

I don't find too much "immersion", identifiability or belieavablility in NPC's that have no interactivity to them beyond killing or touching them, such that exist merely as stage decoration. That might sound like I'd vote for Bethesda in the poll, but no.

That's not to say that if a game has 100+ "random" NPC's or if it generates them randomly (so they're basically infinite), they all needed fleshed out dialogtrees or some such, but that there's a multitude of abstractable ways of providing interactivity. From pickpocketing, to intimidating, to observing (i.e. learning behavior if there's a skill for that), to persuading temporary companion-mooks, asking for direction or the infamous "rumors" (that might reveal some random occurence nearby), plus what ever other forms the context of the game might open up (i.e. in Cyberpunk 2020 there wer skills for "interview" and "interrogation").

It's even debatable, if NPCs with whom you can't interact even should count as NPCs and not just as decoration like a planter. They aren't a "character".

 

[undecaf]

It's even debatable, if NPCs with whom you can't interact even should count as NPCs and not just decoration like a planter.

Yeah, they are basically the tumbleweeds of games.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How about a "none of the above"?
Enderal absolutely nailed this sort of stuff.

 

[cherry blossom]

the homeless people in Hyde Park say this to me sometimes

Have you checked in with your mother?

 

[Zer0wing]

There is. R* is already ahead of the curve by doing what CDPR, piranha bytes & BethSoft did combined but better.

Yes, R* placed a bet on mix'n'matching ALL three, how does this contradicts me?

This would be a solid Arcanum sequel/spin-off on such an engine, a shame RDR2 is not a RPG indeed.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I cannot believe people are actually praising Enderal here... I thought it had the most Mundane world building I have ever seen, comparable to Pillars of Eternity. Enderal is a freezing simulator, where it will freeze you in place to listen to conversations you give the slightest fuck about, it rehashes the same mistakes obsidian did with pillars, in that it forces copious amount of lore down your throat before you could even begin caring about the setting.

 

[JarlFrank]

Gothic and Witcher > Elder Scrolls NPCs.

The uniqueness of Elder Scrolls NPCs restricts itself to their names, usually. They all have the same pool of generic topics to talk about, which worked in Morrowind as those topics were plentiful and would often incorporate the NPC's social class (when asking about his job, for example), but it doesn't work in Oblivion and Skyrim where the pitifully small roster of voice actors made sure that there couldn't even be half as many topics to talk about as in Morrowind. Therefore, Oblivion and Skyrim NPCs feel very shallow and generic, despite technically being "unique". Practically, there's no real difference between Suckius Offius in Oblivion and generic unnamed Citizen in Gothic or Witcher.

You may not be able to talk to the generic citizens in Gothic and Witcher beyond a single line of "Hello. I'm too busy to talk." or something, but that makes the world more believable than the Oblivion and Skyrim approach of being able to talk to everyone, yet nobody having anything much to say. When every noblewoman in town talks with the same voice, no matter if she looks young or old or human or elvish, and all you can ask her about is rumors... yeah no. That's kinda immersion-breaking.

The Gothic and Witcher approach of simply having these no-name NPCs go after their day and tell you to leave them alone is much better. The generic citizens walking around and doing jobs adds to the immersion, them not talking to you isn't jarring because in real life, that's what would happen too, and more of the writing and voice acting budget can be used for the actual important NPCs who have quests for you and shit.