Mistranslated and spread on reddit:
FALSE:
"While there are some areas in the Witcher 3 where villagers don’t have a daily routine, they are planning to improve this with giving more than a thousand NPCs a handmade routine."
CORRECTION:
Most people have Automated Routines from a pool which can divert into branching options. Its mostly randomized but remains believable.
https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/corrected-german-podcast-translation.11032286/
I stand corrected, thank you for this. I remembered it from the 2018 gameplay video which I apparently misremembered. Wasn't spread just on reddit BTW. It was spread by pretty much everyone including medias.
Still, "we've greatly enhanced our crowd and community system to create the most believable city in any open-world game to date. The city's streets are bustling with crowds of people ... all living their lives within a full day and night cycle". No translation issue here.
That's something they had apparently achieved in 2018. Or so does the use of past tense implies. Yet, here we are in 2021 with NPCs popping in and out of existence, entire areas devoid of life because cars and pedestrians sometimes spawn in weird ways, etc. Routines? They don't do much more than 1 or 2 things. NC is certainly a gorgeous city and very believable, their crowd system though, not even close. Yes, yes, I know, WIP tag but there is a vast difference between saying "we've greatly enhanced" and "we want to greatly enhance".
Anyway, far from me to turn this into another 2018 gameplay video thread. My point is that they had envisioned something much greater than what they delivered and I'm not confident they will ever reach that point.