I would have loved this system as a kid playing civilization, we will see whether it rekindles my interest in narratives in civ, which has partially waned in favour of min-maxing. I'm optimistic about this part of the game, because it builds upon the things that made me interested in the game when I had a more robust imagination and didn't rush so much when playing video games.
I don't like calling it "emergent" when it's really more "scripted" - emergent narrative to me is what civ always had, a story that forms in the player's head based on the combination of gameplay occurences. Something like a unit defending a certain mountain pass long enough until reinforcements arrive. A scout who narrowly escapes barbarians only to find a natural wonder. If you create some flavor text and put a trigger on it, it's no longer emergent. I've got a bit of a fear that once this official term catches on and the system is widely marketed under it, we will end up robbed of the terminology to describe and discuss what we used to understand by it.
That being said, the dev diary describes the system enough to have me intrigued. I also like the transparency about it works under the hood as well as moderating expectations a bit by describing the various event classes and how not all will be a super deep custom storyline but nonetheless it's explained why these events still exist in the game.
In the end though it's something I feel like we just have to see how it plays in the end. So much of the quality of this system will come down to the quantity of stories, triggers, "narrative tags", etc.* involved and whether they will feel formulaic or more organic.
* either way, there are never enough and many devs, most famously Paradox with CK3, has already found themselves caught in a trap of their own making by adding such a system that is extremely hungry for more content all the time to avoid it becoming stale for veteran players.
I don't like calling it "emergent" when it's really more "scripted" - emergent narrative to me is what civ always had, a story that forms in the player's head based on the combination of gameplay occurences.
I don't like calling it "emergent" when it's really more "scripted" - emergent narrative to me is what civ always had, a story that forms in the player's head based on the combination of gameplay occurences. Something like a unit defending a certain mountain pass long enough until reinforcements arrive. A scout who narrowly escapes barbarians only to find a natural wonder. If you create some flavor text and put a trigger on it, it's no longer emergent. I've got a bit of a fear that once this official term catches on and the system is widely marketed under it, we will end up robbed of the terminology to describe and discuss what we used to understand by it.
This is exactly how I feel. The scripted events are by far my least favorite aspect of Paradox games and I'm nervous about their inclusion here. But I'll reserve judgement until we see it in action.
I'm not a fan of narrative events in strategy games. The narrative is in my head. It's the story of my people that I tell to myself.
And I'm skeptical that a mere thousand events is enough to keep them from getting stale on replay, especially the ones pertaining to specific civs and leaders.
I'm not a fan of narrative events in strategy games. The narrative is in my head. It's the story of my people that I tell to myself.
And I'm skeptical that a mere thousand events is enough to keep them from getting stale on replay, especially the ones pertaining to specific civs and leaders.
Also skeptical of events just based on a few games I’ve played recently, but I really enjoyed this dev diary! One of my favourites so far… very informative and clear. I guess no surprise since it’s from the narrative director!
Considering the thousands of hours I put into previous Civ games, it seems pretty feasible to play all the leaders and civs enough times to become disinterested in their narrative beats before more become available.
I am willing to give it a chance. But in previous 4x games, I've tended to gloss over the narrative events. And when the game tells me the bonuses I will get for each choice in advance, I tend to just pick the bonus I want to help me with my strategy and I don't even bother reading the narrative description.
If you are the first civ to discover Writing, then as soon as you discover Mining/Bronzeworking.....
also its partially emergent in that the triggers do depend on gameplay (and not just choices in the narrative itself).... probably because the Gameplay itself will have a bigger impact than the narrative choices.
I think as a base this is a fine system. they mentioned a bit about event chains taking into account past choices, like that Ashoka example. But one thing I'd like to see is certain leader/civ combos unlocking special chains inspired by either history or somewhat plausible alt history.
for example and just throwing some ideas.
Xerxes Greeks, having events regarding Ionian Greeks.
Alexander (when we inhevitable have him) Egypt, with events about Hellenization of Egypt of becoming Pharaoh
Or maybe events about culture unlocks, how does it look in Narrative event form when you unlock Mongolia? from say, Persia.
Mexico from Aztecs and Mexico from Spain could probably have a bit of different flavour.
But I guess that's the kind of extra work that would payoff better once we have more civs with better fleshed out paths.
I think I am not the target player for this feature but will try and come at it with an open mind (and very happy to get another dev diary!). Based on similar games it is very difficult to make the choices interesting though and usually it is not a real decision. My biggest concern would be that it ends up encourages metagaming where players do certain actions in order to meet trigger conditions for narrative events. Hopefully the number of events is fairly consistent no matter what you do, otherwise that kills the immersion the feature is trying to create in the first place.
On the comments about they using the term emergent, I believe the point is that they think the prerequisites makes their activation emergent, based on how you played and how the world shaped up on your playthrough, even if the events themselves are scripted (and depending on the quantity, coupled with how they are activated they can feel really emergent too). Whether it will work that way after many hours playing the game, we will only know later.
At least, seems a system which is very easy to add on more and more.
I think I am not the target player for this feature but will try and come at it with an open mind (and very happy to get another dev diary!). Based on similar games it is very difficult to make the choices interesting though and usually it is not a real decision. My biggest concern would be that it ends up encourages metagaming where players do certain actions in order to meet trigger conditions for narrative events. Hopefully the number of events is fairly consistent no matter what you do, otherwise that kills the immersion the feature is trying to create in the first place.
During one of the livestreams, they said that the game creation process selects events at random at the beginning and then you trigger them through gameplay. So, it's entirely possible that even if you learn the trigger for a particular event, it won't trigger because the game didn't choose it when you started.
The funny thing then becomes players restarting games because they didn't get the events they wanted, and they are back to the drawing board for trying to get players to complete games.
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