Concerns about NPCs..

[Mikasa_Germanota]

"1,000 unique NPCs with daily routines" that news was mistranslated, right?

I was watching the Night City Wire gameplays (english and chinese + GeForce trailer) and realized that most NPCs in the clubs in both videos were different, but in the same positions and animations.
Random NPCs with predefined animations and positions.

But will they be static NPCs? or do they also move and do other interactions?
Ex: That NPC interacting with the soda machine, does he take the soda and walk down the street drinking?
Those NPCs sitting at the bar, do they get up to do other interactions?
or are they all just static NPCs repeating animations?

It is also possible to see some duplicate NPCs at the Afterlife club, in both videos + Night City Wire trailers
Is it so difficult to prevent the game from generating clones in the same location?

It would be good to increase the variety to avoid seeing the same NPCs everywhere in the Night City frequently.

 

[northrop]

If you hang out around the bar long enough, the couple standing by the wall will hook up, get preggers, and start raising NPC children. True story

 

[TheSKADRIL]

Could be because the beginning sequence with the three different lifepaths are somewhat scripted.

 

[fridgeband]

"1,000 unique NPCs with daily routines" that news was mistranslated, right?

I was watching the Night City Wire gameplays (english and chinese + GeForce trailer) and realized that the NPCs in the clubs in both videos were different, but in the same positions and animations.
Random NPCs with predefined animations and positions.
View attachment 11057711

But will they be static NPCs? or do they also move and do other interactions?
Ex: That NPC interacting with the soda machine, does he take the soda and walk down the street drinking?
Those NPCs sitting at the bar, do they get up to do other interactions?
or are they all just static NPCs repeating animations?

It would be good to increase the variety to avoid seeing the same NPCs everywhere in the Night City frequently.
It is also possible to see some duplicate NPCs at the Afterlife club, in both videos.
Is it so difficult to prevent the game from generating clones in the same location?

I understand your concerns. I want it to be deep too. But how deep? How deep do you think is deep enough? I am not 100 sure myself what I would consider deep enough in this specific situation.
>Inb4 "that's what they said" style puns (none intended)

If you hang out around the bar long enough, the couple standing by the wall will hook up, get preggers, and start raising NPC children. True story

Good one!

Could be because the beginning sequence with the three different lifepaths are somewhat scripted.

That's really smart actually

 

[Lady_Yuno55]

I'm gonna reserve my judgements until i play the game myself.

 

[msxyz]

I wonder what happens when one of these NPCs die. Did they get replaced by a new one with different name, randomly generated appearance, with the same pre-programmed routine?

One of the good things I remember about Morrowind was that its NPCs were unique. Although they would stand there all the day and night, if killed they wouldn't be replaced, 'vacated' homes could even be taken over and turned into a personal abode: the game mechanics would remember the position of every object dropped by the player. Same with bandits and caves: they wouldn't be populated again in a few days by generic 'outlaws' (one of the biggest grips I have with Oblivion and Skyrim). It would be nice to have a game were everything feels handcrafted again. And if somebody wants to go on rampage against the population of Night City, or one of its districts, let them enjoy the outcome: empty streets everywhere!

 

[fridgeband]

I wonder what happens when one of these NPCs die. Did they get replaced by a new one with different name, randomly generated appearance, with the same pre-programmed routine?

One of the good things I remember about Morrowind was that its NPCs were unique. Although they would stand there all the day and night, if killed they wouldn't be replaced, 'vacated' homes could even be taken over and turned into a personal abode: the game mechanics would remember the position of every object dropped by the player. Same with bandits and caves: they wouldn't be populated again in a few days by generic 'outlaws' (one of the biggest grips I have with Oblivion and Skyrim). It would be nice to have a game were everything feels handcrafted again. And if somebody wants to go on rampage against the population of Night City, or one of its districts, let them enjoy the outcome: empty streets everywhere!

There are many things I like about this, and many things I don't like about this. I would feel really bad if the game just stayed permanently quiet and empty just because, so I would like the option to repopulate it. Or maybe it's on a refresh timer that lasts a couple of days.

 

[Mikasa_Germanota]

I wonder what happens when one of these NPCs die. Did they get replaced by a new one with different name, randomly generated appearance, with the same pre-programmed routine?

One of the good things I remember about Morrowind was that its NPCs were unique. Although they would stand there all the day and night, if killed they wouldn't be replaced, 'vacated' homes could even be taken over and turned into a personal abode: the game mechanics would remember the position of every object dropped by the player. Same with bandits and caves: they wouldn't be populated again in a few days by generic 'outlaws' (one of the biggest grips I have with Oblivion and Skyrim). It would be nice to have a game were everything feels handcrafted again. And if somebody wants to go on rampage against the population of Night City, or one of its districts, let them enjoy the outcome: empty streets everywhere!

I hope that at least NPCs are not very static and reduce clones.

I love the unique NPCs with routines handcrafted in TES and RDR2.
I would like the CD to improve the NPCs in their next games.

 

[msxyz]

I hope that at least NPCs are not very static and reduce clones.

I love the unique NPCs with routines handcrafted in TES and RDR2.
I would like the CD to improve the NPCs in their next games.

Well, that was just an example. Morrowind came out in 2001. With the sole exception of Gothic 1 & 2 I don't think I've seen any other open RPG populated solely by unique NPCs.

 

[Suhiira]

If you REALLY want your game to run at the speed of a glacier then certainly each and every NPC in Night City can look unique and have detailed custom interactions. But to get a reasonable game speed corners MUST be cut.

 

[EMT-Fields]

It's a game, so of course NPCs will have copied and pasted animations. People really need to curb their expectations.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

I wouldn't expect every NPC to have a unique physical appearance. I also don't expect every NPC in the game world to be a copy/paste of the same handful of models with minor alterations though. Without naming any names, certain other games I've experienced took this exact approach. It didn't ruin them. It did stick out like a sore thumb though.

 

[Suhiira]

I wouldn't expect every NPC to have a unique physical appearance. I also don't expect every NPC in the game world to be a copy/paste of the same handful of models with minor alterations though.

Very true.
But these days CPU/GPU/RAM speeds FAR exceed what was available only a few years ago. So much more can be done without turning a game into a slide show. That said ... we're still not at the point where what are effectively movies can be rendered real time. And won't be for quite a few more years (it'll probably require quantum computing).

 

[CyberBrett]

If you consider Red Dead as an open worldish , it had unique NPC`s but i would be happy if every second NPC didn`t look the same .

 

[Alfa1561]

Naturally, NPCs are going to have scripted locations for certain animations. You see different NPCs in those same places because that's a point where NPCs are scripted to do that animation. You see that in any game. Go to a pier in GTA V and you'll find NPCs fishing. Go to the top of the mountain and find hikers sightseeing. Go to certain highway stops and see cops running radar.

It would be hard, if not near impossible to have NPCs randomly generate where they conduct these animations, when you consider that the animation needs to fit the location and context as well as not clip with objects etc. I'm not concerned at all by this. You're naturally going to see it in any game.

What you could expect to see is that they might eventually stop the animation and opt to go do something else. One might walk outside and light up a cigarette, one might just walk away, or head to another spot to sit down. This can again be observed in games like GTA V or RDR2, where NPCs will eventually end their animation, walk off then enter into a new one, e.g. walking from their position at a bar and lighting up a cig or looking at their phone, or simply walking off to a chair to sit down, or get in a car and drive off.

 

[Linear500]

It would be cool to see combat animations like Halo Combat Evolved has

 

[Pure-Grux]

As long as they act like people and stand around as if they are out of a cigarette break I'll be happy.

 

[Mikasa_Germanota]

Naturally, NPCs are going to have scripted locations for certain animations. You see different NPCs in those same places because that's a point where NPCs are scripted to do that animation. You see that in any game. Go to a pier in GTA V and you'll find NPCs fishing. Go to the top of the mountain and find hikers sightseeing. Go to certain highway stops and see cops running radar.

It would be hard, if not near impossible to have NPCs randomly generate where they conduct these animations, when you consider that the animation needs to fit the location and context as well as not clip with objects etc. I'm not concerned at all by this. You're naturally going to see it in any game.

What you could expect to see is that they might eventually stop the animation and opt to go do something else. One might walk outside and light up a cigarette, one might just walk away, or head to another spot to sit down. This can again be observed in games like GTA V or RDR2, where NPCs will eventually end their animation, walk off then enter into a new one, e.g. walking from their position at a bar and lighting up a cig or looking at their phone, or simply walking off to a chair to sit down, or get in a car and drive off.

NPCs spawn/despawn at specific points in the first trailer and demo, clones/duplicate NPCs.. make me think that they are randomly generated.
I hope I'm wrong.
Anyway, has anyone else noticed that the RTX trailer has some NPCs paralyzed? (the second seems to be fused into a trash)

I hope they can fix everything by November ;-;

 

[Cyberbole]

Worst case scenario it will be no different than the other AAA open world games where a certain % of NPC's are there just to make the world seem busier. The most important NPC's will obviously have a lot of scripts, dialogue, animations etc

 

[fridgeband]

Worst case scenario it will be no different than the other AAA open world games where a certain % of NPC's are there just to make the world seem busier. The most important NPC's will obviously have a lot of scripts, dialogue, animations etc

The good thing is that even if this was the worst case scenario, CDPR would probably still do it much much better than any other AAA dev or publisher. So even the worst case in CDPR is better than the best case elsewhere.