The Witcher 4 Director reveals how NPCs are evolving like never before

The Witcher 4 director teases how the upcoming game will place a major focus on NPC interactivity as a way to immerse players like never before.

When it comes to open-world games and larger experiences, NPCs are crucial to immersing the player in the world and allowing them to feel as though the people they meet along their journey aren’t just robots but, in fact, real individuals and smaller but important pieces to the larger puzzles of the title.

For The Witcher 4, game director Sebastian Kalemba has vowed to make every NPC in the upcoming installment look like “they’re living, with their own story.” 

In an interview with Gamertag Radio, Kalemba broke down how the development team is placing huge importance on NPC interactions, movements, and more to ensure each location, whether that be a big city or a small, rural village, is fully realized.

The Witcher 4’s NPCs will “push the bar” to new heights

When breaking down the cinematic trailer that revealed The Witcher 4 at the Game Awards 2024, Kalemba explained how this brief snippet of footage of Ciri interacting with a local village, Stormford, is representative of how all NPCs will interact with the player.

The game director noted how Stormford is “super isolated, followed by superstitions and beliefs that are false. […] They believe that, in this forest, there is a god.”

In the footage, each villager has a unique voice, opinion, and objective. “This is exactly how villages are working, right? Every single character has its own role,” the game director added.

The Witcher 4 director further detailed how the dev team is “definitely pushing the quality of NPC,” highlighting how they are placing greater emphasis on “the way they look, their behavior and their facial performance as much as possible,” 

The intention behind revamping NPCs for The Witcher 4 is to “make [an] even more immersive experience than we used to. We are trying to push the bar here.”

How NPCs have evolved in videogames in recent years

While NPCs have been present in video games since the dawn of time, recent titles have worked hard to break away from preconceived notions of what these characters represent and instead, make them an important part of the title rather than an annoying presence.

Red Dead Redemption 2’s interactive NPC system is one of the best examples yet of how these roaming characters can be much more than a body in a world but rather, offer the chance for unique dialogue, small but important gameplay shifts, and much more.

Almost every NPC can be interacted with in Red Dead 2, with the player’s response and style of engagement completely altering how they then engage with you throughout the rest of the game. Players have gone so far as to follow particular NPCs for an entire day, the results as interesting as they are innovative.

This aspect of Red Dead 2 garnered major praise when the sequel was released in 2018 and from the sounds of things, The Witcher 4 will be building on a similar system and once again raising the bar for NPC interactions and importance in videogames.

As well as a greater focus on NPC interactions, The Witcher 4 will also build upon some other important aspects of previous entries in the franchise such as Gwent.