About The Graphics of Civ VI

[dexters]

My father, who is 75 and plays Civilization V quite a bit, called me up after having played Civ VI some this morning. His very first comment was to complain about the graphic style. "I don't think it's a step forward," he said.

I'm so used to the way the game looks now that I had to think back to my original reaction to the first screenshots, which was essentially the same. I think the graphics are clear and functional, but garish and unattractive. And it's not just the civ fanatics who think so.

Since I'm used to the look, it doesn't bother me anymore, but having played the game for the first time I'm disappointed in the flow and usability of the UI. There are lot of hiccups and unnecessary extra clicks and lots of waiting for no good reason (especially in the diplomacy screens). I'm very surprised that it's so clunky.

I thought the map elements is essentially what Civ4 would look like if it was made with 2015-2016 graphical tech, it had more colour than 5 and a lot of whimsy to it.
My biggest gripe is the in-game art; literally the pop-up artwork that look like they belong in an iPad game. Just not for me. But the actual graphics is really nice. The fidelity of the graphics are astounding.

My biggest gripe is the as with you, the UI. I expect menus and clickies to be in the middle of the screen, but I often find them tucked away in the corners and edges of screens (Wonder screens has this really weird overlay where when the animation finishes, you'd expect to hit any button to exit and back to your game, instead of clicking an 'x' hidden to the side)

I also constantly move units I didn't intend to because the previous unit ran out of Movement points and the game immediately hands me off to the next unit without enough of a lag/visual cue to confirm that it is switching to the next units. So I'd be doing my thing and five turns later, I notice my builder is on his way going to an island... because I was clicking on a tile on that island with my scout 5 turns earlier...

 

[Lord Tirian]

I thought the map elements is essentially what Civ4 would look like if it was made with 2015-2016 graphical tech, it had more colour than 5 and a lot of whimsy to it.
My biggest gripe is the in-game art; literally the pop-up artwork that look like they belong in an iPad game. Just not for me. But the actual graphics is really nice. The fidelity of the graphics are astounding.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the art direction in general, especially with some of the leaders and, my pet peeve, the bland terrain (especially forests, everything's a loose pine forest!?). Nevertheless, the sheer detail, animation and consistent execution makes me respect it a lot. It's too well done not to acknowledge its high quality. I might never truly love it but it's still enjoyable to me (despite my gut reaction at the start).

 

[darko82]

Overall the feeling is very good. Music, high quality ambience, and sounds effects help a lot. A lot better than Civ V. Technologically, the graphics is the best in the series, too. With night and day cycle, I can change a feeling a bit - a great idea. The artstyle - it depends, but mostly I like it.

But OK, UI is not perfect. There is not even a back button in the civilopedia. Come on, guys. This is not finished.

 

[dexters]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the art direction in general, especially with some of the leaders and, my pet peeve, the bland terrain (especially forests, everything's a loose pine forest!?). Nevertheless, the sheer detail, animation and consistent execution makes me respect it a lot. It's too well done not to acknowledge its high quality. I might never truly love it but it's still enjoyable to me (despite my gut reaction at the start).

The choice of art direction is not my 1st choice, but when animated (and I am privileged to be able to play at max settings) , the leader scenes are really quite good. Immensely expressive that I can see why they went with a less realistic look as humans in real life tend not to be that expressive, and it makes more sense to slot the leader in more as cartoon characters/caricatures with exaggerated features and motions.

Even the static backgrounds that looks like just a quickly painted backdrop consists of parallax layers with a film grain filter applied that gives the scene a kind of quaint quality. The 3-D rendered stuff I mostly like, or don't mind.

I think my biggest issue with art are the tech tree/civic tree pop ups. They just look too cartoony.

Edit: I almost forgot about the Fog of War

In every Civ game up to 6, it's very easy to visually see which part of the map I have explored but is in the fog, and which part is the actual unexplored fog. In Civ6, this is surprisingly hard to see quickly.

A bit weird considering their whole rationale around the unit and art design is for players to quick pick out units/buildings/districts on a map, but the fog of war makes revealing the map difficult. They need to change the opacity of the fog for the explored area. The sketch art look for features under the fog looks nice, but it's not as functional as I first imagined it would be.

 

[Jabulani]

So I was watching a few preview videos for CIv 6 and I was completely bummed out by the graphics. There's something very "lacking" about the way the game's appearance, i think the best explanation would be that it looks "scarce" lacking detail.

Now I don't mind the actual graphics themselves, but where are the dense vegetation? The rich marbled landscapes? The thick forests? The gnarly jagged mountains that looked a little menacing as it rises over the empires?

What we got were ultra smoothed grasslands with little sprinklers of pine trees that look like upside down green ice cream cones. Little bumps that passes for hills, barely any details along river beds. Everything looks so perfect, like out of a dream. It's really strange, it seems more magical than a game about history. I really hope I'm wrong because I've been waiting for this game for years!

I have nothing smart to say nor I know the problem, I would like just to make my compliments for your beautiness

 

[Iron Angel]

Why is so many complaining on the looks of the game?
I think they look gorgeous and not at all "cartoony".

 

[Iron Angel]

This would had been a "cartoony" look.

 

[m_m_x]

this is by far the best looking Civ game ever!

Units animation, day and night cycle, and the overall atmosphere of the map is magical.
There are many AI and UX issues but i really enjoy playing and just looking at my empire grow.

good job Firaxis art team!

 

[Oregano]

This has been the biggest buzz kill for me. I don't mean to rag on the game, as I've been playing Civ since the late 80's when it was a board game, and 6 is interesting and fun(ish) so far, but man, I gotta say, the whole cartoony angle with the artwork just ... meh.

I was really, really hoping that they'd go with a touch more realism, but instead they decided to make the game look like a phone app, which I suppose they are.

My main frustration is that I'm in my 40's. I take history seriously. It's ugly, messy, convoluted, and a touch on the unnecessarily violent side - I don't need, and more importantly done want a goofy-assed cartoony gamey game. I'd like something that could visually stand up to Europa Universalis (while well done, is very limited, even with mods). That's not to say I want blood, guts and gore all over the place, but I keep thinking how much more interesting the game would be if the art assets where on the same level as say, something like Battlefield 1?

I think that'd it'd be fascinating to see more real representations of units, map tiles, cities across the board - literally and figuratively. I'd also be more inclined to take the game more seriously if I felt that the game was taking both the player, and history, more seriously.

Anyway. Not meaning to crap on anyone's day if you do like the artwork. I just hope we eventually start to move away from art assets that look like they're attempting to appeal to my 6 year old niece.

 

[Gorbles]

Why does a stylised art style mean that they're not taking the player and the history the game represents seriously? What other game apart from CiV in the series could you also say was also realistic in this manner? Because I can't think of any.

 

[Usama84]

i think some of it looks horrible (the choice of green colors look like vomit, not trees), the animals are worse than civ4, but I love the wonders and the ocean.... my biggest beef with the game is by far, this garbage 1upt rule

 

[Danzo_87]

the only thing I dislike about the graphics is the tech and civic icons, looks so out of place with the elegant dialogue box enclosing it

 

[Mrdarklight]

I really like the art. I don't see it as cartoonish, except the leader cutscenes to some degree, but they're so well done that I don't mind it.

 

[Oregano]

I don't see it as cartoonish,

Not trying to argue or focus on you specifically, but merely as a point of clarification from someone who does art (for games and other stuff), "cartoonish" art is typically characterized by lack of/simplification of detail (texture vs. no texture), bright primary-ish colors, simple lines/contours and exaggeration of characteristics. We have an overabundance of this Civ 6.

Someone else's example, just looking at the horses (and terrain) comparison from Civ 5 to Civ 6:

Civ 6 is without question very "cartoony."

 

[Gorbles]

Not trying to argue or focus on you specifically, but merely as a point of clarification from someone who does art (for games and other stuff), "cartoonish" art is typically characterized by lack of/simplification of detail (texture vs. no texture), bright primary-ish colors, and exaggeration of characteristics. We have an overabundance of this Civ 6.

Someone else's example, just looking at the horses (and terrain) comparison from Civ 5 to Civ 6:

Civ 6 is without question very "cartoony."

Those images aren't comparable for a number of reasons, not least the Civilisation 6 image being drawn from a promotional screenshot of a WIP product that was artificially-zoomed.

Speaking on the topic of art, there are detailed textures present in both. Excessive "noise" in the texture doesn't correspond precisely to detail (or even good aesthetics), which is what a lot of CiV stuff suffers from.

 

[Oregano]

Those images aren't comparable for a number of reasons, not least the Civilisation 6 image being drawn from a promotional screenshot of a WIP product that was artificially-zoomed.

Speaking on the topic of art, there are detailed textures present in both. Excessive "noise" in the texture doesn't correspond precisely to detail (or even good aesthetics), which is what a lot of CiV stuff suffers from.

I think those images are fine for comparison, because they show what the two games looks like side by side. Below is an ingame screenshot I took just now, at game resolution. The colors and detail level appear to be about the same. There does not appear to be any change to the horses in the field. And we have bright primary colors (reds, yellows, greens) featured prominently on art assets as coloring (as opposed to national colors in the unit icons and borders).

We can also see the lack of detail on the terrain, units and buildings. I have my graphics cranked up to max, so I'm not missing anything. Visual noise is frequently used in things like terrain, or large swaths of color to break up the uniformity and give the impression of detail. It's simple and effective. When not employed, you end up with something that looks like it's made of plastic (which is why it is used - to get away from that. Early computer graphics suffered from this horribly).

The bottom line is, whether one likes the art or not, it's cartoonish.

 

[Gorbles]

I can tell from that screenshot alone you're not running the game at it's highest detail settings (where I know for a fact that the CiV screenshot has everything maxed as far as possible and possibly even has a modded zoom level - I did some comparisons of my own when that was flying around), though it could just be the aliasing that's throwing me off.

You're also missing the often-made point that while the art style is a particular way, the detail and / or technical quality is something else entirely. As an easy example, look closely at the building textures in CiV or even BE (though they're better there, I think the alien aesthetics hold up better under a zoomed view than the little boxes in CiV do) compared to the building textures here.

The use of primary colours (and large colour blocks) is for pattern recognition, it doesn't have to have anything to do with realism or a lack of detail. This is art theory that even Valve ascribes to (back when they released their DotA 2 design guide in PDF format).

 

[GhostSalsa]

The use of primary colours (and large colour blocks) is for pattern recognition, it doesn't have to have anything to do with realism or a lack of detail. This is art theory that even Valve ascribes to (back when they released their DotA 2 design guide in PDF format).

Eh, eyes didn't evolve to look at polygons. They're good at recognizing any pattern after a period of training. Case in point, VI's visual language is hardly without a learning curve: despite all the professions of being able to recognize terrain features without icons, the map we got is a huge mess.

Not that there's anything wrong with messes. Also, the post you are replying to isn't about technical quality, it's about style: so they are not confusing style with anything, just addressing style - you are misreading them.

 

[Roxlimn]

Yeah. That screenshot is horribad. Even the one with the Cristo Redentor in the screenie above it has clearly more defined rail on the mines. Civ V is nice, but it ain't got nothing on Civ 6.

 

[diegobueno]

no complaints in the graphics department, it look good to ok, i like the cartoonish art style of the leaders, since all the previous civ games look that way (minus civ 5).
i play this game on my laptop, so no complaints, the art is really good.
i took me like 3 mins to load my game but after that it runs smoth, i can't believe it since civ v take like 5 mins to reach the main menu and wont load any map at all;
that's optimization!
duel map size obs