There are pros and cons to having NPCs. It opens up a world where there are characters you can have conversations with instead of just reading left-behind books, notes, and graffiti. This brings a lot of possible story options.
On the other hand interacting has a certain normalcy to it that might drain tension. We'd need to be careful to make this rare or odd enough to avoid that.
(Conversations could be completely scripted exposition, but if we allow conversation trees we have a new puzzle type... the conversation puzzle.)
Should this game NPCs you can interact with?
There are pros and cons to having NPCs. It opens up a world where there are characters you can have conversations with instead of just reading left-behind books, notes, and graffiti. This brings a lot of possible story options.
On the other hand interacting has a certain normalcy to it that might drain tension. We'd need to be careful to make this rare or odd enough to avoid that.
(Conversations could be completely scripted exposition, but if we allow conversation trees we have a new puzzle type... the conversation puzzle.)