10 Secret NPCs Hidden In Video Games
You've never seen these sneaky, secret NPCs before.
Non-player characters (NPCs) are something that most gamers take for granted, accepting them as background noise they often ignore, even though they're absolutely vital in helping flesh out the ambience and atmosphere of any video game.
Like so many aspects of game design, you would immediately notice an absence of NPCs if they weren't there, and they're one of the easiest ways for developers to make their game worlds feel thoroughly lived-in.
While NPCs are generally just hanging around waiting to be discovered, some are a little trickier to discover, either because they've been deviously hidden by the developers or you actually weren't supposed to find them at all.
These 10 video games all sneakily concealed NPCs within their worlds, yet with gamers being as obsessive and meticulous as they are, they of course eventually discovered them.
These NPCs range from test characters we were never meant to see, to those who were accidentally hidden from view due to a glitch, and those you've got an extremely small chance of randomly encountering.
Here's to you, NPCs, in all of your weird, wonderful, and sometimes inexplicably hidden forms...
10. Wooby - Fallout 76
One of the biggest complaints about Fallout 76 upon launch was the total lack of human NPCs in the game's sprawling open world, yet a few months after release players stumbled upon one hidden within a secret room.
Players eventually discovered they could glitch their way into a concealed "developer room" - a room which Bethesda's dev team would use to test out various aspects of the game.
Beyond including every in-game item, the room also housed a single, solitary human NPC by the name of Wooby, who presumably exists solely for the developers to test weapons out on. In an existential sense, that's totally horrifying.
Once word got out that there was a lone human NPC in the game, Bethesda began suspending the accounts of players who entered the developer room, and later patched out the ability to access it entirely.
After much player hand-wringing, Bethesda did at least finally add "real" human NPCs to the game in its Wastelanders update. Even so, we'll never forget you, Wooby.