As co-creator of the Fallout series, director of The Outer Worlds, and a contributor to numerous other games, Tim Cain has a pretty strong idea about what makes a good RPG. In a rundown of features nobody likes, he gives devs a few pointers on what to avoid, and a lot of it comes down to bad NPCs.
"It just gets really tiresome to see them roll out over and over and over," he says, of stereotypically-designed NPCs. "Where sarcasm or judgment is the entire NPC's personality. It's annoying." A frustrating facet of this, he adds, is when you encounter a character like this, but the player can't rebut or react to them.
