The Importance of NPCs in Modern Games

In many modern games, non-playable characters and PCs are an integral part of the experience they inhabit. This could be anything from a character sitting outside a store who tells you how he took an arrow to the knee to Zelda herself. You probably think if you haven't listened closely to the T's, that we're going to talk about AI and NPCs again like we did back in March. But no, this time we're talking about humans replacing NPCs.