The Witcher 3 developers were so focused on making a realistic environment for players that they accidentally created a morbidly hilarious side effect for the game’s female NPCs.
In an interview with Edge Magazine, CD Projekt Red quest designer Philipp Weber opened up about the unintended consequences of this strategy, saying the team was so honed in on creating a believable world that they ended up causing chaos, instead.
Weber explained that they wanted to give NPCs authentic behaviors to increase immersion and reward players for exploring the nooks and crannies of The Continent, particularly where small villages in the countryside were concerned.
“Because we were focused on the countryside, it was easier for players to become curious,” he began. “If a village only has eight houses, people will want to see if the people truly exist in the world, or if it’s just fakery. Lots of people nowadays are interested in those kinds of details, and it really came to haunt us.”
At the time, Weber said the dev team was “more focused on simulating their proper day and night cycle” for these NPCs rather than giving them believable reactions to Geralt as he wandered around their world. “When it came to actually reacting to the player, there wasn’t that much detail,” he admitted.
This meant that, although the NPCs had their own highly-specific schedules that made them seem like living, breathing people going about their daily lives, they weren’t exactly logical when it came to Geralt barging into their homes and swinging his weapons around.
“They would drop what they’re currently working on, that thing would fall to the ground, and they’d run away, afraid,” Weber said.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, since it’s objectively funny) those ‘things’ included babies, which female characters would throw to the floor as they fled from danger. “For a few weeks, women were just dropping their babies, left and right,” he said.
While this problem ended up getting solved, it would have been absolutely wild to see in the final product. Weber shed a bit more light on their strategy when making NPCs in general, saying that rather than giving them specfic instructions, they’re able to choose from certain “spots of interest.”
“Most NPCs in villages, we don’t give them specific paths,” he explained. “We give them spots of interest that are available and then they’re the ones doing the pathfinding: ‘Once I’m done with woodcutting, I’ll choose another point, and maybe do carpentry in front of my house’. For the 50 sailors at Novigrad harbour, for example, we made 200 possible spots, so even if all 50 were active at the same time, they would have options.”
The next entry in the Witcher series is currently in development. Centering on Ciri, it does not yet have an official release date, but early gameplay footage was shown off for the State of Unreal 2025 showcase. We can’t imagine NPCs will be tossing their babies in this game, either, but you never know. (It certainly wouldn’t be wilder than the ‘put the baby in the oven’ option.)
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.