A lead developer on The Witcher 3 has said that designing the role-playing game around players’ curiosity made village-building unexpectedly demanding. The team wanted settlements to feel inhabited by believable people rather than functioning merely as places to collect quests, helping establish the game’s reputation for a detailed and reactive open world.

The developer explained that players closely inspect environments and notice inconsistencies, so the team had to consider what villagers did, where they lived and how spaces suggested everyday life. This approach created extra work because even small details could be examined or tested, but it supported the sense that the game’s communities genuinely existed beyond the player’s immediate actions.