I play single-player games, so I mostly can’t relate.

However, yesterday while playing The Witcher 3, a child who was skipping stones at the pond got up and charged right into Geralt. I had passed her and her brother on the way into town, and I think I set the controller down to look at something on the phone, when a tiny NPC comes charging up and rams me. Twice. Then goes back to the pond. I don’t know if it was a bug or what.

It’s very early on in the game. I had to go talk to a witch, Keira or something like that. Striking blonde young woman. It was adjacent to or part of the Bloody Baron’s quest, I think. Or Ciri’s. I’m still kinda trying to get my bearings. Anyway, it told me to go to the pond, then look for a stone, then a cart, then the shack. Anyway, the pond in question was where the child was skipping stones, so I went to speak to her, and she didn’t say anything special.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if the child had a scripted daily action (e.g. run home and get a picnic basket of lunch for her and her brother) and I just put Geralt in her path. Still, it was weird. She rammed into me twice and then returned to her spot.

If it’s a boy named Louis Pan and we’re playing Deus Ex, we usually do something else (everyone kills him, since the first two Deus Ex games let you kill kids).