I've been taking notes and have some thoughts on the pedestrians and general NPCs in the game. I’m not talking about the enemy AI or driver behavior here, as you’ve got plenty of that feedback, just the cities many pedestrians, their appearance and behavior. And this is after the 1.1 patch, spending time walking around the city. Hope this is a helpful list.
This is the single biggest immersion breaker in the game from my experience. The city itself is so impeccably designed that it deserves to be inspected, explored, and paid attention to and these NPC behavior issues really limit how much one is allowed to do that. I really hope CDPR (if you're reading these) prioritizes and we see it improve significantly. I've attached screenshots to illustrate.
1. Duplicate NPCs still appear very often. I'm walking down one side of the street, see a guy in a plaid shirt and a mohawk - I look across the street and it's the same exact guy walking in the opposite direction. Happens frequently, like every minute or so in heavily trafficked areas. Even shows up in the Street Kid opening: (img 20210122234101_1)
2. NPCs will appear out of nowhere, sometimes on screen, but more often just around corners or when your back is turned. If you’re paying even an iota of attention to the screen it is off-putting and it happens constantly.
3. Items NPCs are holding will stick in the air when animation changes. Eg: guy talking on his cell phone, guy puts his hand down but the phone is left floating in air. This happens when NPCs walk or run away as well. Seen this happen with Johnny’s cigarettes and other items. This guy’s guitar just plain disappeared when I pointed a gun at him, and the guitar SFX continue to play. (20210122222855_1, 20210122223008_1)
4. Walking NPCs are aimless. There is no illusion that they have a destination in mind because if you watch one for more than a few seconds, often they will walk to a point, stop, then turn around and go back.
5. NPCs will transform into other NPCs when your back is turned. Very strange.
6. Some NPC’s lips don’t move when they speak. I am noticing this less after patch 1.1, but it still occurs frequently.
7. I wonder if there is any method in place for assigning which NPCs say which dialogue, or which types of NPCs spawn in which areas. From what I have seen there is a basket of dialogue lines, male or female, that any NPC has a chance to speak when you interact with them, and the same goes for types of NPCs. Obviously, gangs are different and are specific to certain areas, but the pedestrians I often find distracting – a corpo-looking woman in a suit walking like a drunk homeless person and when I interact with her says, “What do you want, friend?” and her lips don’t move. Adds to the feeling that all these people are hollow, random robots.
8. When I accidently (or even purposefully) dodge into, or jump on or into, an NPC, this person and the entire local population runs screaming. BUT when I pull a gun and aim it at an NPC’s head, they put their hands up and people in the area just walk away quickly (which I think is much more immersive than the former, a totally disproportionate response. I guess to the NPCs a dodge-into = an attack?) Would be great to have a stumble animation, as if when you bump into someone on the street. Not a screaming panic that makes my next civilian homicide even more necessary…
Suggestions
This is the single biggest immersion breaker in the game from my experience. The city itself is so impeccably designed that it deserves to be inspected, explored, and paid attention to and these NPC behavior issues really limit how much one is allowed to do that. I really hope CDPR (if you're reading these) prioritizes and we see it improve significantly. I've attached screenshots to illustrate.
1. Duplicate NPCs still appear very often. I'm walking down one side of the street, see a guy in a plaid shirt and a mohawk - I look across the street and it's the same exact guy walking in the opposite direction. Happens frequently, like every minute or so in heavily trafficked areas. Even shows up in the Street Kid opening: (img 20210122234101_1)
2. NPCs will appear out of nowhere, sometimes on screen, but more often just around corners or when your back is turned. If you’re paying even an iota of attention to the screen it is off-putting and it happens constantly.
3. Items NPCs are holding will stick in the air when animation changes. Eg: guy talking on his cell phone, guy puts his hand down but the phone is left floating in air. This happens when NPCs walk or run away as well. Seen this happen with Johnny’s cigarettes and other items. This guy’s guitar just plain disappeared when I pointed a gun at him, and the guitar SFX continue to play. (20210122222855_1, 20210122223008_1)
4. Walking NPCs are aimless. There is no illusion that they have a destination in mind because if you watch one for more than a few seconds, often they will walk to a point, stop, then turn around and go back.
5. NPCs will transform into other NPCs when your back is turned. Very strange.
6. Some NPC’s lips don’t move when they speak. I am noticing this less after patch 1.1, but it still occurs frequently.
7. I wonder if there is any method in place for assigning which NPCs say which dialogue, or which types of NPCs spawn in which areas. From what I have seen there is a basket of dialogue lines, male or female, that any NPC has a chance to speak when you interact with them, and the same goes for types of NPCs. Obviously, gangs are different and are specific to certain areas, but the pedestrians I often find distracting – a corpo-looking woman in a suit walking like a drunk homeless person and when I interact with her says, “What do you want, friend?” and her lips don’t move. Adds to the feeling that all these people are hollow, random robots.
8. When I accidently (or even purposefully) dodge into, or jump on or into, an NPC, this person and the entire local population runs screaming. BUT when I pull a gun and aim it at an NPC’s head, they put their hands up and people in the area just walk away quickly (which I think is much more immersive than the former, a totally disproportionate response. I guess to the NPCs a dodge-into = an attack?) Would be great to have a stumble animation, as if when you bump into someone on the street. Not a screaming panic that makes my next civilian homicide even more necessary…
Suggestions
- I’d like to see pedestrians never spawn or despawn close to the player so that it is never noticeable. Having them be out of sight and at a certain distance for at least 10 seconds would do the trick.
- Different types of NPCs should be tethered to certain areas; Corpos in downtown, rockers in Japantown, homeless in the industrial area, etc. There is a lack of tailored NPC placement, something the Witcher 3 has in spades. Why does this guitar player change into a totally different NPC every time I come to this area? Maybe the procedural generation system in place was easier/faster to implement than a tailored system, but it's done the world you’ve tailored so beautifully a disservice. I don’t even need as much variety of NPCs as you have! I just want to see their placement, and their very existence have meaning in the context of the Cyberpunk world.
- NPC’s dialogue bits (I wish there were more of a variety) should be more tailored to their speaker as well. A homeless lady throwing up says, “What do you need, friend?” (I seem to hear this line a lot that’s why I’m thinking about it.)
- NPCs behavior should be more varied, and also be tailored to their type. If I punch a jacked-looking guy he should try to fight me, but a fat lady would try to run. Would be much more immersive and fun to play with. And I could practice my boxing skills with big dudes on the street!
- There needs to be more nuance to the way NPCs react to violence. Not everyone needs to run and scream at the first sign, and there should probably be several states of panic. Also, why does this guy run and crouch indefinitely, instead of seeing that he’s gotten to a safe place and go about his business? The level of NPC panic has been toned down since 1.1 I believe, but it could be more nuanced. (20201213051450_1)
- Overall, the population density is higher in this game than any other I’ve seen. I wonder if this is an effort to hide the shallowness of the crowd behavior, because I found it often overcrowded, or not realistically crowded. I don’t need to see 20 bodies walking around everywhere I see. I would much rather have less of them, but each has a bit of depth. I’m going to bring up GTAV, which I know has been a source of endless comparison and Cyberpunk is doing something much different (and in many ways, BETTER) than GTA, but I noted what felt good about the NPCs was not that they were particularly clever or smart, but that they did not draw attention to themselves. They were unobtrusive. They reacted the way you would expect an NPC to react, and there is enough tailored NPC placement and tailored voice-work that the experience feels consistent. The effect is not a successful illusion of dealing with real people, in all their variety and unpredictability, but actually a predictability that adds to the smoothness of the immersion of the game. This is not a small fix, I know, but I have never seen crowd behavior that is this… distracting – and in contrast with such a well told story and impeccably designed world. It deserves an extensive rewrite.