Cartoon or Grittyness

[BrendanM]

When I mull over world history, the rise and fall of numerous civilizations, I don't really think cartoon characters, silly animations, or any number of humorous details. I tend to think along the lines of death, war, deceit and a number of other R to X-rated things.

Which makes me wonder why Civilization doesn't have a gritty feel to it! The talking heads in the diplomatic screen are cartoonish, the units are cartoonish, even the whole design of the game evokes a Saturday morning cartoon. Sure, I know, it wouldn't make the game sell better if it was Mature or Teen, but my point is this game is exactly a mature game in a cartoons body.

We lead on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of soldiers to invade other nations, destroy their armies, capture there cities, and if need be, starve their populations. This ultimately kills millions of people within the game. Ours, theirs, and innocents caught in the crossfire.

That's why I like civilization 3 over civilization 4. Sure, the same cartoonish look applied (though not as much), but I felt more detached from my people, specialists, and so on. I felt more like a leader with absolutely no heart just launching nukes and razing cities without blinking an eye or repercussions. Maybe 1, am I going to lose this war if I start it? In C4, I feel like I'm doing it on the cartoon network.

My question to you is: Do you like the cartoon nature of Civ as it is, or would you rather it be more mature and actually hit on the hard points of Civilization by actually reflecting a more somber mood when it comes to nuclear holocausts, war and genocides?

 

[KMadCandy]

well i don't mull over world history. i have basically no grasp on world history, hubby sits there flabbergasted at my ignorance sometimes. i'd never heard of justinian til BtS. i told hubby he looks weird and way too skinny, he said "well honey he's the one they named that plague after" and i had no idea what he meant, so i went to wiki. he was a history minor, opposites attract. anyway, i play civ for fun, not for historical accuracy or realism, that debate always comes up but i know it's not your point.

i never thought of it as cartoony, but i really like the cute aspects. i get a real kick out of how the impis dance when i'm playing shaka. i'm not kidding. so personally, i'd really really really dislike a more somber mood. it would take out some of the fun and giggles for me.

edit: too many "he"s in the first paragraph. "he was a history minor" means hubby was a history minor. i don't know whether justinian was a history minor or not *giggle*.

 

[AnaNg]

The talking heads in the diplomatic screen are cartoonish

You know, they may be cartoonish but those heads, after a while, elicit a visceral reaction from me. Now this may be due to events in previous games more than the cartoonish aspects, but the fact that they're caricatures make me associate those events to the leader that much better, I think. What I mean is, a blood-covered Monte holding a still-pulsing human heart in his hand ** isn't going to elicit any more reaction from me than having that idiot show up numerous times with eleventy-jillion outdated units on my door.

Besides, in this regard much like in books/movie comparison of characters, I'll make up my own looks/personalities/grittiness thank you. Sometimes people, no matter how evil, are your pals. And you don't really see the grittiness of your pals now, do you?

** Yes yes, it's an example, not necessarily an historical accuracy

We lead on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of soldiers to invade other nations, destroy their armies, capture there cities, and if need be, starve their populations. This ultimately kills millions of people within the game. Ours, theirs, and innocents caught in the crossfire.

That's why I like civilization 3 over civilization 4. Sure, the same cartoonish look applied (though not as much), but I felt more detached from my people, specialists, and so on. I felt more like a leader with absolutely no heart just launching nukes and razing cities without blinking an eye or repercussions. Maybe 1, am I going to lose this war if I start it? In C4, I feel like I'm doing it on the cartoon network.

I never played Civ3 so I can't comment on that but your comments seem weird. You felt more detatched from your people and units - seems like that's what you're after so wouldn't cartoon units help with that detatchment? Do you want it "gritty" (which to me means showing the body parts of your soldiers after the ill-fated battle you sent them into, for instance) or do you want detatchment from your units. Frankly, NOT having that detatchment makes it more realistic than having it. Sure, there were some pretty psychotic leaders out there, but many of them DID consider loss of life/defeats if only because it would deplete their available forces or populations and you can bet that almost every leader considered repercussions if only to defend against them.

Yeah there are some things that civ can do better but your comments seem to contradict themselves. Besides, it's not an FPS and it's not really an RPG, there's not going to be gore and corpses to step over. I think Civ does a decent (thought not perfect) job of telling you what your citizens are feeling. Whether you choose to me moved by that or not is more about you than the game. I feel bad when my citizens are starving (course sometimes I still do it anyway) or unhappy but I'm the leader of this Civ so I decide. I'm not really sure I need a "Passion of the Christ" scourge scene every time I want to rush a courthouse.

My question to you is: Do you like the cartoon nature of Civ as it is, or would you rather it be more mature and actually hit on the hard points of Civilization by actually reflecting a more somber mood when it comes to nuclear holocausts, war and genocides?

I don't understand this statement. You said above that you liked Civ3 because it made you feel like a leader with no heart, now you want a somber mood? It sounds to me like you want an admittedly non-cartoony but yet less reaslitic view of civilizations and war, not a more realistic one. You just want Hollywood, not Hanna Barbara as the producer.

As a disclaimer, it must be said that I tend to anthropomorphize animals and inanimate objects pretty easily so for me to apply mood, personality and other factors to random animations (cartoony or not) and events is standard.

edit: I do want to say though, and maybe this is a failing of my Greek history, but WTH is with Pericles "blind man walking" act in his diplo screen. It is the only one that annoys me.

 

[King Flevance]

If I catch the OP's drift, then I agree. I would like to see a more serious nature to the game flavor. But almost everything in the game is very cartoonish so this isn't going to happen. The interface is cartoony, the map is cartoony, all of it. Too late now really for Civ 4, its too much effort to go in and change the flavor now. Maybe down the road you will be able to grab this and that from different mods, merge them and possibly do it up a little better. Sort of like Blue Marble. It doesn't make the map feel a lot less cartoony, but it helps some for me. I can't even play without blue marble anymore. It irritates me too much. Same thing for the size of the units now.

Little things can help overcome some of the cartoony-ness slightly but the leaderheads are going to be a "G-rated South Park version of reality". For a little while at least. Willowmounds actual quotes mod helps. I also wouldn't mind going in and toying around with the other phrases outside of their initial greeting.

 

[Catharsis]

Civ II's diplomacy was boring and Civ III's leaderheads were ugly. Civ IV gets it about right, IMO.

 

[puglover]

Too many graphics clutter a game for me. That's why I just bought Civ2 again.

Don't get me wrong, I love Civ4, but I just like the classic, board-game-like feel of the originals.

 

[Airefuego]

Hmmm... many games of Civ IV are not too grim or gritty. Many are joyous romps through sun-drenched wheat fields on the way to a mighty cultural victory. I think the current graphics are good.

I don't find it too cartoonish. But one compromise that could have been cool would be to include a new (optional) graphics set, say with Warlords, that makes everything darker and grimmer - circling carrion crows, skulls in the city ruins, meaner-looking axemen etc, for those who want it...

 

[BrendanM]

If I catch the OP's drift, then I agree. I would like to see a more serious nature to the game flavor. But almost everything in the game is very cartoonish so this isn't going to happen. The interface is cartoony, the map is cartoony, all of it. Too late now really for Civ 4, its too much effort to go in and change the flavor now. Maybe down the road you will be able to grab this and that from different mods, merge them and possibly do it up a little better. Sort of like Blue Marble. It doesn't make the map feel a lot less cartoony, but it helps some for me. I can't even play without blue marble anymore. It irritates me too much. Same thing for the size of the units now.

Little things can help overcome some of the cartoony-ness slightly but the leaderheads are going to be a "G-rated South Park version of reality". For a little while at least. Willowmounds actual quotes mod helps. I also wouldn't mind going in and toying around with the other phrases outside of their initial greeting.

That's the sum of what I was trying to get at. I just phrased it all poorly.

It's the games atmosphere, not the game's content that evokes this G-rated environment feeling.

In Civ3, the units had very little animation that didn't evoke any emotion. It was, to put it in puglovers words, a board game, or as I saw it, a general's map being looked down upon by a ruler. In Civ4, I feel like a godlike figure, but with control over one nation instead of the fates of all nations. An impotent deity, a mortal pharaoh up in an orbiting space station looking down on the world.

Guess civ3 is where it's at for me, to bad I love all of civ4s additions.

 

[FoxURA]

If anything, I think the animation is one of the bigger things that makes Civ IV so popular as a civ builder. Sure, if every unit looked like statues it would be all right... For a while... But then were would be all the fun in animation graphics glitches (take a look through the first few pages of funny screen shots for something involving cows) and far out zany facial expressions that the leaders have. What do you think is more entertaining? Dealing with leaders who are often over zealous exaggerating nut jobs or a stale stagnate picture. Besides, if nothing else the animation of units is an indicator for those with slower computers (not that I have one) that yes, in fact, the game is not frozen.

 

[Byrath]

I'm ok with the feel of CIV as is, but I do think I would like to have a more somber, gritty feel to it. Complete with rape and pillage cutscenes after razing a city if possible.
Most of the graphics aren't overly silly. I got a chuckle when I noticed my French musketeers pulling out a hankercheif. The quotes used upon tech discovery are a nice blend of serious and not. By far the worst are the leaders initial dialogues if you don't have a mod for it. The leaderheads themselves are pretty good.

 

[Bast]

The talking heads in the diplomatic screen are cartoonish, the units are cartoonish,

Hang on. I don't think the units are cartoonish by any stretch of imagination.

I think this is damn good for a computer game. I love how the impis make dance moves and the redcoats take a drink. There's nothing cartoonish about any of it.

The leader heads are light-hearted I agree. But at least they're not doing silly things. I don't like some of the things they say though like Julius's salad joke or whatever.

 

[Elros]

I actually find it kind of funny the way how war and holocausts and the like can be depicted in such a cartoonish manner. While it probably wasn't intentional on the part of the designers, it's almost black humour.

Anyone who's played Defcon can probably see what I mean, where it could so calmly and somberly say "8.4 million dead" as if it's of no import whatsoever. It's kind of similar (although in that case the black humour was kind of deliberate).

 

[troytheface]

civ3 was cartoony, but harsh cartoony, at least civ4 is softer cartoony.
But, to answer the op yeah, i could see making a history based strategy game real serious, just use photographs instead of animated leader heads,
and tune down all the colors with brown or grey, then have any event (random or whatever ) have significant impact culturally , militarily or economically (as it should be if it is important enough to be historically recorded)
Also a war room screen where it is first person and u are looking at a map of everything on a table while accompanied by some people (maybe a great general or something - u and hannible checking out the map) in your palace.

lastly add more military eras like ww1, napoleonic crimean.
Have only stacked armies smaller in size and the cities bigger. And during battles u go to first person again -in a tent or building- and can watch the battle -if u lose u flee back to non first person.

 

[GuitarHero]

If you want gritty, BrendanM, go freakin' play GTA. Civilization is for intelectuals, not people who whine constantly about how different this game is from a PS2 game. If you don't like the flavor, don't drink the damn soda.

 

[Gooblah]

Cities could be redone to include population flight from war and starvation. Civ3 had Crime and Corruption and random riots, like the real world, but those detracted from gameplay. City Maintenance replaced these in Civ4, of course, and Civics/Anarchy associated with Changes replaced the different "government styles".

Graphics? Well, I'd say they're fine the way they are. The units look real, are historically accurate (for the most part), and maybe, at the max, a graphic option could be added for "Realistic War" with blood/gore, agony noises, cannonball shots, arrows whistling through the air.

Troytheface's suggestion for the "military eras" are basically mods. Napoleon and WWI are all mods that can be downloaded.

 

[Lorderon]

Well, I agree completely with you, BrendanM. I also miss the, as you put it, more "somber and gritty" look of Civ III.
The map in Civ IV is too animated and colorful for me.. not the way I picture a "serious" strategic game.

And frankly I am surprised that the others don't feel the same way. I always thought that somehow Civ players would not want cartoonish graphics and unit animations, but judging from the posts in this thread, I guess I was wrong...

 

[FoxURA]

Could you post some somber and gritty screen shots of CivIII? I have never even seen the game itself because I was holding out for CivIV because I didn't like what I was hearing about CivIII.

 

[Civinator]

Civ 3 started with the "cartoonish" looking of units and other civ stuff. Do some of you remember that incredible bad looking cartoonish Civ 3 tank?

But with the graphic engine of Civ3 it was much more easy to replace all these cartoonish elements with more serious graphics. With that -in my eyes-
incredible bad 3d graphics engine in Civ 4 this is much more difficult or nearly impossible. Per example completely new leaderheads done by modders in Civ 4seem to be a very difficult job. They are almost looking to me as a copy of an existing Civ IV leaderhead, that came "out of the box". And a variant of an existing cartoonish leaderhead looks cartoonish too.

With the new Civ Revolution screenshots FIRAXIS proofs, that it is -in my eyes- consequently on the complete wrong way with their Civ graphics. What started bad with Civ 3 but was there easy to correct, did culminate with Civ IV and the cities in some of the screenshots of Civ Revolution look like an exploded toilett brush where the the buildings are standing in cartoonish different and bad angles as if each one of them would be a tower of Pisa that is showing in a different direction ( a cartoonish sight of the round globe).

@ FoxURA, please look into the Civ 3 forums. There you can see lots of Civ 3 screenes. There is no need to post them here too.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

I think "realistic" leaderheads would be boring. Real world leaders rarely show much emotion. I quite like the little nuances...it makes them feel more human, ironically. It's funny that, some people complain about graphics not mattering, and some complain about the graphics not being X....

 

[obliterate]

When Civ4 was first announced and I was wondering whether to buy it or not I was looking at some screenshots. At first the catoonish feeling did put me right off buying. But I eventually bought it and have gotten used to the grahics. But the graphics really put me off for awhile though.