Right
Stiler the problem here is you clearly don't understand multiple basic realities about animation and modelling and art production in videogames. I'm out after this.
I just don't see why you think the npc's are going to have poor animation quality when it comes to walking and running
I never said poor animation quality - I simply said a vastly
lower standard than for the playable character. This is obvious. Even if an NPC receives 1/100th the work time as protagonist, they still won't be aiming for "bad" animations, they'll be aiming for "great animations but not as sublime/frame-perfect as the protag".
NPCs are usually far away and transient, whereas the protag is near the camera and locked to centre at all times. It needs a lot more work to animate a character which is right in front of eyes the entire time than it does one who walks by in the distance for a few seconds.
Well, you can skimp on it if you want but thousands of people will notice it and slag it off, ruining the perceived quality of your work.
As I said, I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about simply 2 animations, a walk, and a run animation,
No, you're not talking about "simply 2 animation".
Running and walking is not two animations. In a game like this, running and walking is
tens of animations at least. Basic movement animation nowadays includes pivoting, heel movement, whole body tilting, joins at the waist and head relating to movement, etc.
It's easy to say "just copy walking and running animations" but you're really talking about tens of smaller bits of animation which then have to fit into a huge cohesive whole which comprises
hundreds or thousands of animations.
And guess what? None of the NPCs will have this animation minutiae. Their rig will have a fraction the complexity of a protag's. Geralt's skeleton and rig will be so much more complex than a random civilian from Novigrad.
All of it would have to be re-developed if they added TPS for the protagonist.
I mean, they could do what you're proposing, as simple and quick a possible animation flip - but it would end up looking like a $5 asset-flip PC game from the Steam store.
which the npc's will already have and use the same rig as the player character.
No, they won't. This isn't how it works. They WONT have the same rig because the protagonist will have hundreds more joints and flexors than an NPC.
Everything outside of that is first person.
And again, this is a bad idea which only a couple of games have ever deigned to try and it had to link very closely to the game design (e.g. only TPS when you hold the cover button).
In GTA V Remaster you can have the option to play in first person and swap out to third person whenever you roll, take cover or get ragdolled. And guess what? They removed those options from Red Dead Redemption 2, because clearly they sucked and nobody used them.
Besides that was just my idea as a compromise, a simple solution to offer to those players that like third person or those that need it for health reasons, is it the best? No, is it as high quality as full third person? Nope, but you're making it sound like it'd take the world to do literally two basic animations that are already done for the most part and would mainly need touch ups to work for the player character.
1. CDPR are not going to compromise to make a "less good" third person view mode. Their vision is to have every millimetre the same super high standard. This is why Witcher 3's development was apparently 3 years of straight crunch.
2. It wouldn't be "two basic animations". See above. These things occupy several people's daily hours for months at a time. You can't flippantly say "just add it".
