So I was looking over the inhabitant list of Ordon Village, the starting location of The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess, and realized something.

The entire village consisted of 13 people.

Sure, that might seem normal for a fantasy fantasy middle ages village, but then I looked over the demographics.

Basically, of the 13 villagers, 5 are children, there are only two females of age, and the rest are men.

To get to the point, I was wondering how you liked your populations in games. Do you prefer that each town and place have a carefully crafted cast who each have something to remark (while leaving the towns looking largely deserted), or do you prefer bustling hubs where only a few speak and even fewer are aware that you exist?

Medium rare.

I prefer a higher population count even if some of them just utter the generic "Hello Player" otherwise the world just feels sort of empty. In the case you mentioned adding about 10-15 generic npcs should help.

I like my populations headless and running screaming at me with bombs for hands...

Seriously!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH YOURSELF!

I understand technological limitations, for earlier titles for example, when every byte was precious. Even Twilight Princess was made for a 1.5 GB disc.

I kind of like both, depending on the situation.

But I do always question why a village of 12 people needs an inn, a tavern, a weapon shop, an armour shop and a magic shop (and probably an item shop and some kind of guild or college or something too in most RPGs).

I know it's easier (and less annoying to an extent) to just have a few people who all have something interesting to say or play a role, but it would be nice if the places felt a little real...

On that note I also take issue with capital cities that are just four streets and a few dozen houses and shops. I'd rather they actually filled out the towns and cities, even with non communicative NPCs and unenterable buildings, for a feel of realism.
Assassins Creed 3 did this quite well I think, the places all felt reasonably genuine and alive, even if most of it was filler and eye candy (ok, you could climb the buildings)

No strong preference, depending on the game.

I liked the one in BG. Towns were scattered with people, many of whom were just "Commoner" or similar and had random things to say. But as long as it fits the game overall, I'm happy either way.

You would probably enjoy Arcanum, then. Even the villages tend to be rather sprawling, and the main city is large enough to have its own subway system. And explorable sewers.

I usually take it as read that the townspeople rendered in a game's town don't truly represent the entire population.

If you watch Disney's Snow White, you'll notice that the only human characters represented on screen are Snow White herself, the queen, the huntsman, and the prince. Does this actually represent the entire population of the kingdom?

The less NPCs I have to talk to, the better.

(But I don't mind NPCs that just walk around to make the town more lively as long as you can't talk to them.)

I do have it, but couldn't really get into it when I tried it. I'll probably give it another go at some point but I'm not sure it's my kind of game (could never get into the original Fallouts either)

I think most RPGs has it handled pretty poorly to atrocious. I like the populated cities of Witcher3, but I rather have a little less NPC, but each have a bit of background and quests related. Don't mistaken this with redundant reading from Pillars of Eternity though.

No; but one has the assumption that there is an entire kingdom, but it is out of focus for the story.