I am not misrepresenting your view point. We are disagreeing is all.
Nope. You said, "
I watch a few of these video channels; and do like their presentation. But that doesn't mean that Civ has to be all serious." I then objected, pointing out I never said anywhere "Civ has to be all serious". Your statement that "But that doesn't mean that Civ has to be all serious" erroneously implied that was my view. But as we already agreed a while back in this thread, *some* silliness is fine, and what's problematic about Civ VI
beyond that is how much of that lack of gravitas comes from cynical/overly-negative quotes, plastic-looking unit icons/main menus, and cost-cutting (leader backgrounds with smudged black edges and muted colors for example).
Sorry I disagree. It does have validity; but only at a suspicion level, not at any confirmation level. And we're all here allowed to suspect as much as we want. By prefacing that I suspect something I am making sure that everyone knows I am not claiming to have evidence which could make it factual.
Saying you "suspect" something implies a statement has more credibility than it does. For example, if I said "I *suspect* Civ VI cut costs in the graphics department." alone, without following it up with any reasons, I would say that has no more validity than any declarative statement, like
@Killer Rabbit's declaration "Say what you will about Civ 5 vs. 6 (I think 6 is far superior in everything aside from maybe endgame & ideologies) but you cannot honestly tell me with a straight face that Civ 6 is a product of “obvious cost-cutting”. It surely has the largest production budget of any title in the series so far and the production values are the highest in the 4X genre by far. You can disagree with how the budget was allocated but you can’t say it was a game made on the cheap because that’s simply untrue." Following up a statement like "I suspect" with reasons for that suspicion is more conducive to productive conversation, and also lends more clarity.
I suspect they used that to get the Haka down perfect, rather than try to have people animate it...which could have gone badly. I'll agree with you on Bean too. I loved the idea of him as a narrator; yet I think you are correct when you say that he's better suited in a vocal only role for something less dramatic. I think Nimoy set a standard yet to be broken.
Well, at least we can agree on that. I liked Nimoy a lot too. What did you think of Morgan Shepperd (Civ V's narrator)? I quite liked him as well, though not as much as Nimoy (who I was unfamiliar with when I played Civ IV, but liked anyway).
Some are. Most are fine; and more -than are bad- are brilliantly good. Just a few examples:
"There is little man has made that approaches anything in nature, but a sailing ship does."
"Bronze is the mirror of the form, wine of the mind."
"Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship."
"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."
Yes, agreed that those are good, but those good quotes are outnumbered by the following samples of problematic quotes in Civ VI which were inaccurately sourced, cynical, negative, irrelevant, or just bad jokes (note that there are more bad ones which are discussed at
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/85d0xr/what_is_up_with_the_sarcasticantiprogress_quotes/, but these are the ones that stood out on my last skipthrough):
- "As it turns out, Mount Kilimanjaro is not wi-fi enabled, so I had to spend two weeks in Tanzania talking to the people on my trip.”
- “It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut; they couldn’t hear the barbarians coming.”
- “Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for a universal one.”
- “I like to say I practice militant mysticism. I’m absolutely sure of some things that I don’t quite know.”
- "The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
- "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."
- “Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets.”
- “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
- "Who deserves more credit than the wife of a coal miner?”
- “I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”
- “The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.”
- “There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.”
- “Remember that people break down, too, not just machinery.”
- “You can’t go around arresting the Thieves’ Guild. I mean, we’d be at it all day!”
- “Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government … You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ‘cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!” - Arguably a good quote for fans of Monty Python (like me), but bad delivery.
- "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then you are a cartographer." - Not even a real quote. https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/5fab7c/one_of_the_quotes_for_cartography_is_totally_fake/
- “What can be labeled, packaged, mass produced is neither truth nor art.”
- “I saw a bank that said ’24-Hour Banking,’ but I didn’t have that much time.”
- “The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.”
- “Defense is superior to opulence.”
- "I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."
- “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
- “All the best romances bloom in the midst of a good siege.”
- “With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.”
- “Being a mercenary, though … Hey, we just go wherever there’s a mixture of money and trouble.”
- “It’s all papers and forms, the entire civil service is like a fortress made of papers, forms and red tape.”
- “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.”
- "I don't like to commit myself about Heaven and Hell, you see, I have friends in both places."
- “The key words of violent economics are urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, speed.”
- “If facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” - This for Scientific Theory, no less.
- “Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?”
- “Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.”
- "Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe."
- “It’s one thing to surmise what happened, but we don’t speculate on that until ballistics confirms what happened …”
- “Let’s get on our knees and pray. I don’t know to whom. Is there a patron saint of ballistics yet?”
- “It’s the Industrial Revolution and the growth of urban concentrations that led to a sense of anonymity.”
- "Always try to rub up against money, for if you rub against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you."
- “The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.”
- "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed."
- “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?” - The other Professional Sports quote is much better.
- “Chemistry is the dirty part of physics.”
- “Chemists do not usually stutter. It would be very awkward if they did, seeing that they have at times to get out such words as methylethylamylophenylium.”
- “The cars haven’t advanced that much since we were kids. When you boil it down, it’s still a gas combustion engine.”
- “NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.” - A false story. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/
- “Sure, jets are fast and economical, but, oh my, what fun we’ve lost and what leisure we’ve sacrificed in the race for efficiency.”
- “If God had really intended men to fly, He’d make it easier to get to the airport.”
- “Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.”
- “When you launch a rocket, you’re not really flying that rocket. You’re just sort of hanging on.”
- “Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.”
- “In the hierarchy of the major poetic substances, plastic figures as a disgraced material, lost between the effusiveness of rubber and the flat hardness of metal.”
- “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
- “There’s so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.”
- "There may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this one matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement.”
- “Mr. Watson… Come here… I want to see you." - There are many better, more illustrative quotes that do not rely on knowing the context of this particular conversation and what it led to.
- “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
- “A satellite has no conscience.”
- “Right now there are thirty-one satellites zipping around the world with nothing better to do than help you find your way to the grocery store.”
- “I love watching my mom argue with the GPS on the way home.”
- "I would say invisibility would be sort of a fun power to have just to see what it was like to move through the world and not be looked at."
Of note, I would say overall that Civ IV had more serious quotes than Civ V did. It's because Civ V had fewer truly awful, cynical, negative or "dad joke" quotes than Civ VI that the above quotes really stand out.
For what it's worth, I generally prefer the presentation of Civ V. It is not a huge deal, but it does matter a bit. I prefer the general art style, the map, the leader scenes, and believe it or not, the wonder paintings. It seems like the 3D animations of wonders being "built" should be more impressive, but to me, it makes all the wonders feel samey, and I got more out of the rich, detailed paintings of Civ V. Other games have used full blown cut scenes, which are also cool, but perhaps not necessary.
And yes, the quotes are bad.
I agree. Initially I was annoyed at the Civ V wonder paintings replacing the wonder building videos, but I was won over by the music, the great quotes (especially the Pyramids and Chichen Itza), and yes, the historical context (I only found a few I didn't like, like the Roman soldiers at the Parthenon). Civ IV had better wonder building videos than Civ VI I would say, if only because they were more creatively presented. Who can forget these? (skip to the 0:18 mark to get to the start of the wonder videos)
Of course, the Civ IV wonder videos don't have quotes, in which regard Civ V and VI wonder videos are superior.
Yea, the wonder animations in VI are cool, but I got a much bigger sense of actual "wonder" when seeing the small slice of life pictures of the wonders in their glory time, combined with the music and quote.
Building Chichen Itza, the Eiffel tower, Prora, the Colossus, and several others in V still gives me goosebumps.
Exactly--it's the historic flavor from those videos and the mix of various cool audiovisual media (the quotes, the music, etc) that really made them glorious.
I also miss Civ V's era progression videos and those nice banners you would see floating at the start of each turn, like "Consul Montezuma, 2000 BC", and so on.
