AtlantisAuthor
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 12, 2016
- Messages
- 92
I mentioned this in a previous thread, but having had more time with Civ VI I have come to feel even more strongly that Firaxis' decision to change up the Leaders of so many Civs this time around has had a detrimental effect on the game's enjoyability. This problem has multiple layers, which I'll list below.
First, having familiar (and far more iconic and associated with the Civ franchise) faces like Alexander, Napoleon, Nobunaga, Isabella, Genghis Khan, and others (so far) missing has really dealt Civ VI a blow. I'm sorry, but their replacements simply lack the charisma and notoriety to be the "faces" of their respective Civilizations; they're like a B-List of less-famous names, many of which a lot of players may have never even heard of (and several, such as France's Italian-born Catherine de Medici or Sumeria's possibly mythical Gilgamesh, seem to have been forced in order to accommodate the game's "Leader Personality" theming)...and despite the educational value of being able to learn a bit about them from the game, they're just not the same.
One thing that definitely isn't helping these new characters is the new dialogue and Diplomacy screens. While the animations are fluid and extremely well-done, they vary widely between having semi-human proportions (Peter the Great, Hojo Tokimune) and looking like outright caricatures (Qin Shi Huang, Theodore Roosevelt, Gandhi). It's frankly distracting. And compared to the fully realized, beautiful environments of Civ V (Kamehameha's Hawaiian beach, Hiawatha's forest stream, Nebuchadnezzar's throne room, Pedro II's office, etc.), the static, black-dominated backdrops behind them feel lifeless and even a bit depressing to look at.
On many levels Civ VI's greatest enemy is its amazing predecessor, Civ V, which set the bar so high by the time all its expansions were released that any drastic changes were bound to be controversial at best...and be perceived as failures at worst. Even though Civ VI is a beautiful and carefully crafted game in its own right, from the map to the Leader screens Civ V simply blows Civ VI out of the water both aesthetically and functionally (I never realized the importance of those puffy white clouds until I played in the eternal "darkness" of Civ: BE and the uninterrupted brown of Civ VI. But I digress.). The new Leaders were a risky move by Firaxis with so many other changes being made this time around, and so far sadly I think they made a big mistake. Much like the generic Leaders of Civ: BE, I just can't care about them or maintain interest in the "just one more turn" way that kept me going for over 1,000 hours in Civ V. And from what I've been reading here on the forums, I'm not alone in feeling that way; despite some truly intriguing innovations (such as the Districts and the Culture tree) Civ VI is missing the "It" factor many of us have come to associate with the Civ franchise. Hopefully that will come with more content, refinement, and patches.
First, having familiar (and far more iconic and associated with the Civ franchise) faces like Alexander, Napoleon, Nobunaga, Isabella, Genghis Khan, and others (so far) missing has really dealt Civ VI a blow. I'm sorry, but their replacements simply lack the charisma and notoriety to be the "faces" of their respective Civilizations; they're like a B-List of less-famous names, many of which a lot of players may have never even heard of (and several, such as France's Italian-born Catherine de Medici or Sumeria's possibly mythical Gilgamesh, seem to have been forced in order to accommodate the game's "Leader Personality" theming)...and despite the educational value of being able to learn a bit about them from the game, they're just not the same.
One thing that definitely isn't helping these new characters is the new dialogue and Diplomacy screens. While the animations are fluid and extremely well-done, they vary widely between having semi-human proportions (Peter the Great, Hojo Tokimune) and looking like outright caricatures (Qin Shi Huang, Theodore Roosevelt, Gandhi). It's frankly distracting. And compared to the fully realized, beautiful environments of Civ V (Kamehameha's Hawaiian beach, Hiawatha's forest stream, Nebuchadnezzar's throne room, Pedro II's office, etc.), the static, black-dominated backdrops behind them feel lifeless and even a bit depressing to look at.
On many levels Civ VI's greatest enemy is its amazing predecessor, Civ V, which set the bar so high by the time all its expansions were released that any drastic changes were bound to be controversial at best...and be perceived as failures at worst. Even though Civ VI is a beautiful and carefully crafted game in its own right, from the map to the Leader screens Civ V simply blows Civ VI out of the water both aesthetically and functionally (I never realized the importance of those puffy white clouds until I played in the eternal "darkness" of Civ: BE and the uninterrupted brown of Civ VI. But I digress.). The new Leaders were a risky move by Firaxis with so many other changes being made this time around, and so far sadly I think they made a big mistake. Much like the generic Leaders of Civ: BE, I just can't care about them or maintain interest in the "just one more turn" way that kept me going for over 1,000 hours in Civ V. And from what I've been reading here on the forums, I'm not alone in feeling that way; despite some truly intriguing innovations (such as the Districts and the Culture tree) Civ VI is missing the "It" factor many of us have come to associate with the Civ franchise. Hopefully that will come with more content, refinement, and patches.