Leader and Diplomacy Art Style

Barathor

Emperor
Joined
May 7, 2011
Messages
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I hope the fun caricatures of leaders return again. By the look of the game so far, with everything very vibrant and expressive, it's probably a safe bet that they will.

I'd also like to see the fullscreen environments ditched, and simply have leader models appear right over the blurred map when contacted. Just the upper half of their bodies so that they appear up close and take up more of the screen.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they pull these off. Also, the descriptions of the UI and its Age of Exploration theme, along with the map effects, sound so very lovely.
 
I really liked the realistic leader screen of Civ 5, and I loved the fullscreen leader images. I hope to see both further elaborated on.
 
I remember reading that the leader screen is now with all kinds of info, kind of like combined leader and global politics menu.
 
I remember reading that the leader screen is now with all kinds of info, kind of like combined leader and global politics menu.

Beyond Earth: Rising Tide did this in a decent capacity. It was nice with the exception of the lack of direct diplomacy and the UI design (I liked BE's UI, but I know a lot of people don't.) But having 90% of the info regarding other civs in 1 place was pretty nice. Its just missing a relationship web.

Spoiler :
 
I'd also like to see the fullscreen environments ditched,

Why though? I thought those were nice and added another layer of immersion. The only thing I felt they could've added were some guards or advisors standing off to the side a bit.
 
Why though? I thought those were nice and added another layer of immersion. The only thing I felt they could've added were some guards or advisors standing off to the side a bit.

I like them, too. Added a lot to the personality of the leaders, too.

Fun Fact: the designers wanted to have background characters, too, but it was too resource-intensive to animate all that.
 
I hope the fun caricatures of leaders return again. By the look of the game so far, with everything very vibrant and expressive, it's probably a safe bet that they will.

I'd also like to see the fullscreen environments ditched, and simply have leader models appear right over the blurred map when contacted. Just the upper half of their bodies so that they appear up close and take up more of the screen.

I'd be shocked to see the fullscreen environments go. They added the backdrop for the leader and their civilization and personality, providing an atmospheric insight to the leader's own world. It would feel very bland to not have a background, I believe CivBE dropped them out just because the leaders didn't have real history to get them from, and also for a futuristic look.

I'm not so fond of caricatures, though it'd be okay as long as the leaders won't be too goofy - I want to see threatening and glorious rivals! :lol:
 
Leaders should look like this. That would be a proper artstyle direction. Just give it some color and here we go:

Spoiler :

 
@darko82 You may want to put that image in a spoiler, its pretty big. But I think that could work. They're already made mention that the mid-fog is going to be more like an "age of exploration" map style. So, going for that realistic hand-drawn but animated aesthetic for leaders might work .
 
I hope there are not much leader graphics at all. To be honest, I could do away with personal leaders completely as it always brings much discussion and not much net benefit...

The diplomacy screen and its graphic in any case should orient themselves to the gameplay needs. Separate Screens would be a no-go for me ("Where was Boston again?") and I hope that it goes from bilateral to multilateral as well (at least in depiction). It needs information ("Btw., if we do that deal with Egypt, China will hate us"), but not too much ("Here's an excel sheet of all the trade routes we have in the world and where they go through").

I'm curious what they come up with.
 
I hope the fun caricatures of leaders return again.

To be quite honest, this is my nightmare scenario. Civ V felt like it provided legitimacy to nations in their leaderscreens as opposed to goofy caricatures. I want to see a justified representation of world leaders, be they Native American or Europeans, not cartoonish versions of themselves that de-legitimises then.

Luckily however, what we know from interviews is that they apparently have not not overhauled how leaders look as there was no need for a graphical revolution in that department. The only thing changed is the UI which is much more complex and apparently is beautiful despite it's apparent complexity (which if we're comparing complexities to Civ V; a feat that is not too hard to achieve).

One thing I can imagine changing is the fact that they may be putting leaders inside their in-game environments.

It's already confirmed that Wonder animations are shown on the map and upon completion, the camera goes down to a proper angle and shows what they look like. Additionally, the skybox changes from day to night in some to show how the wonders light up. I could see this working somewhat to suit each leader. The camera would show the leaders in an environment that looks the same as their in-game environment (perhaps a view from within the palace of a city with the landscape in the background beneath the balcony). Think Theodora and her Hagia Sophia, but with a dynamically changing cityscape/landscape with an emphasis on highlighting Wonders.
 
To be quite honest, this is my nightmare scenario. Civ V felt like it provided legitimacy to nations in their leaderscreens as opposed to goofy caricatures. I want to see a justified representation of world leaders, be they Native American or Europeans, not cartoonish versions of themselves that de-legitimises then.

If we get the goofy leaders again I will mod in the Civ5 Leaders in as soon as I can, it is my nightmare scenario as well.
They argument for the art change is that they wanted to make everything feel distinct, that argument doesn't work for leader screens.
 
If we get the goofy leaders again I will mod in the Civ5 Leaders in as soon as I can, it is my nightmare scenario as well.
They argument for the art change is that they wanted to make everything feel distinct, that argument doesn't work for leader screens.

I think that making it distinct does not have to mean making it cartoony etc.
 
Agreed, the change is not mutually exclusive. Regardless, the info so far tells us they haven't diverted in style from leaderheads (the composition however, is something different). Will they have diversions in era? Perhaps.

Maybe they'll even go so far as to have some culturally grouped clothing items (hats, suits etc.) that change as time goes on (or ideology specific ala BE) that are mutually accessible for Asian/Euro civs.
 
"Cartoony" sounds so harsh; like something is foolish and not to be taken seriously. Stylized is a much better way to describe the game's artistic direction.

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Westwall, the environments were indeed beautiful and I don't dislike them. My choice of words to "ditch" them was a little harsh too. It's just that, if given the choice between having them or not, I'd lean a little more towards not having them, personally. (And my love of BE has nothing to do with that, haha... I wanted this before then and was very happy when we got it in BE. But BE is a different beast all together, and environments to display a civ's culture wouldn't work as well and would be less iconic.)

I felt sometimes that the environments sometimes overpowered the actual leader. I also didn't like the leader scenes with a very small leader in it (like Darius's) as much as the others. My favorites were the ones were the leader is taking up the screen and not distanced from you. Also, frequently contacting different leaders at times, and returning to all these different environments over and over again with the full screen frequently changing was (for me) a bit too much. It's just smoother to have the leader pop right up over the map and disappear without disrupting the rest of the screen too much, and it's also nice to have the main interface still visible if you want to jump somewhere immediately.

Actually, I think a cool thing to do would be to show a cinematic-style introduction to each leader when you first meet them, within their environment and oozing with their culture and personality -- it could have a much more dramatic effect. But, you don't need to keep seeing the same thing; after that, contacting the leader would just pop them up over the map ready to chat.

- - - - - -

TPangolin, I certainly don't want "goofy" caricatures either. Stylizing the leaders would just accentuate things a bit; one of the most important, most expressive part of each leader is their head/face, which contains all their expressions and reactions for the player to read. (Oh! I really hope they don't speak again too... I actually disliked that in BE as well and they get annoying quick.)

Personally, I think these examples would look nice with perhaps a little more enhancement:

Spoiler :

Yeah, I know, these are from Civ Rev... I'm honestly not trolling. :)






I think if they kept the same style as Civ5, it would certainly clash with the game from the looks of those few screenshots Firaxis released. Not just the lush coloring of things, but the forms of everything are pretty stylized. Even the view itself is stylized with everything popping off the map and in perspective (like it's on a small, little world) rather than a more realistic flat look to things from the sky. Trees/buildings on the right side of the map are very noticeably leaning towards the right, and on the left side these things are leaning the other way. I think it looks great, and I'm glad to see things go in a more expressive and artistic direction.
 
I think if they kept the same style as Civ5, it would certainly clash with the game from the looks of those few screenshots Firaxis released. Not just the lush coloring of things, but the forms of everything are pretty stylized.

If I have to choose between "everything is cartoonish" and "realistic leaders clashing with rest being cartoonish" I prefer the second option.

Also, please notice how announcement trailer of a game was not stylized or cartoony in any way, in fact it had very serious style.


Oh and I'd absolutely hate seeing leader of India look like the one from screenshot above.
I dislike Gandhi IRL and think he's vastly overrated - okay, that's my opinion.
I dislike the fact he is a leader in civ games and would change him gladly - okay, that's my opinion.
I think India is usually unfairly and badly depicted in civ series (gandhi, "fast worker" unit in civ4 and elephant units in each other case, mixing unrelated civilisations of Harappa, modern India, Mughals etc into one nonsense, civ5 unique skill of overpopulation, whole civilisation in all games overshadowed by personal quirks of Gandhi etc) and that here is something more than my opinion

But if on top of that I've seen this cartoon character in a "serious" game, I'd cry tears of mental pain :p
 
Civ V did a great job at humanising the leaders. The leaders had proportions that made them if anything - more human. Montezuma and Pacal both had spectacular accessories, but the accessories didn't outshine the leaders themselves and were not really too accentuated. They were a lot more historically accurate too (Sweden etc. notwithstanding). When accessories and body parts are exaggerated, they end product seems somewhat less human and more of a caricature. In Civ V it felt you were interacting with human depictions of leaders in terms of how they actually looked more than characters with accentuated head shapes and accessories to make them more obvious as to what there personality is going to be like.
 
I like the V leaders too, but the Shaka one in the CivRev photo above looks pretty cool to me.
 
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