They listened to us!

[ZTZaorish]

https://twitter.com/willrmiller/status/637362675052220416

Immersion here we come:
+UI art
+New Victory movies

- Still no new wonder paintings :/

 

[Doviello]

Cmon don't get my hopes up with a thread title like that. We've been talking about that tweet for a week

 

[Westwall]

And every time, I'm still going to ask how they plan to make the Domination video work without showing any combat units involved.

They obviously can't make a video for every single affinity and hybrid affinity.

This isn't a complaint by the way, I'm just genuinely curious.

 

[GenEngineer]

@Westwall - don't show the combat, show what comes after. Given the tone of the victory quote, just showing a tide of destruction and and ruination of cities from each of the affinities will likely represent the victory well, unless you are literally the only person in the game going you're affinity.

 

[Westwall]

Still sounds rather bleak to be honest.

I mean I get it, war is bad. But if it's a victory we chose to pursue, it should still feel like a victory once achieved.

Destruction and ruination everywhere sounds more like something that should go in a defeat video.

 

[GenEngineer]

"In the annals of history, the Great Mistake will forever be seen as a terrible and glorious war which damaged our homeworld beyond repair. In this, history is wrong. The mistake was not the war - It was our belief that we could start over. That when faced with mutual destruction, there could be peace between nations. It is only now, many years later, and halfway across the universe that we see the truth. There is only one path to peace and it must be walked alone."

That's the quote for Domination. Bleak seems to be what the developers were going for. Some destruction of old earth, some destruction of the new world, and then maybe a scene showing that you survived is what I think they will do. Not all that uplifting, but then, all of the victories have some sinister undertones - Purity might repeat the great mistake, Supremacy has moved beyond humanity and essentially declared war of extermination against baseline humans, Harmony has sacrificed individuality to the groupthink, and Contact does not promise that te aliens contacted are friendly.

 

[Westwall]

Supremacy is arguably the most negative of them all though.

That's why I support whoever it was that said an alternative victory for Supremacy should be the option to leave the planet for other worlds out there - but make it much more exciting than the Science victory of Civ 5.

One of the tenets of Supremacy is supposed to be the ability to exist anywhere by shedding the vulnerable biological in favor of the mechanical, so why not run with that? Have one of the victories be the option to go forth and spread further out into all corners of the galaxy.

Not tied to the planet like Harmony, and not held back by notions of staying true to our original forms and home planet like Purity.

 

[Red Menace]

and Contact does not promise that the aliens contacted are friendly.

does it promise that the aliens contacted are ANCIENT?

Spoiler :

 

[winddysphere]

And every time, I'm still going to ask how they plan to make the Domination video work without showing any combat units involved.

They obviously can't make a video for every single affinity and hybrid affinity.

This isn't a complaint by the way, I'm just genuinely curious.

What if they just make it one movie but swapping characters (like some soldiers kick some flags: Replace those soldier with each affinity and adjust minor details like Supremacy for drones Harmony has miasma feeling+some small aliens and Purity for...just human. ) . That would save some times in productions a lot and does not feel like why this affinity has much better movie than that affinity etc.) .
I wish they will make for all of affinities but yeah, I don't think they will do it.

 

[Westwall]

What if they just make it one movie but swapping characters (like some soldiers kick some flags: Replace those soldier with each affinity and adjust minor details like Supremacy for drones Harmony has miasma feeling+some small aliens and Purity for...just human. ) .

That could work, but I doubt they'll do that either.

And in all honesty, I never really minded those cards they slapped on at the end of every game. Like people keep saying, movies aren't that important, I'd rather they try to flesh out the rest of the gameplay.

Hell, just using a painting worked fine for Civ 5.

My problem was that they didn't tag any other information along with it, and so you actually had to go to the Hall of Fame to even get an idea of how the game went, and even then it was missing a lot of graphs and things that I was kind of hoping would be there.

I think SMAC still did it best with all its interludes and list of works that would be written in your memory and so on - and oh my god it was a lot.

Now that's how you reward a player at the end of hours and hours of forging an empire.

 

[ZTZaorish]

Cmon don't get my hopes up with a thread title like that. We've been talking about that tweet for a week

Apologies, I honestly hadn't see this tweet yet, and i check this site on the daily.

I imagine that either, as you guys said, they will have to replace some of the models in the movie, or literally show no soldiers. I guess they could just replace the flags too and make many versions of the video with the various flags.

I guess we'll see.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

You guys do realize that a still picture with a camera panning over it (Civ 5 and BE "wonder movies") can still be called a movie, right ?

 

[Galgus]

You guys do realize that a still picture with a camera panning over it (Civ 5 and BE "wonder movies") can still be called a movie, right ?

To be fair, I enjoyed the artwork, audio quotes, and music that accompanied those wonders greatly.

It gave it a sense of accomplishment - Stonehenge in particular stands out.

 

[Lord Tirian]

You guys do realize that a still picture with a camera panning over it (Civ 5 and BE "wonder movies") can still be called a movie, right ?

Well, I hope so. I'd rather not get a cheesy rendered video, that feels so 90s. Endless Space/Legends animated collages feel a lot more vibrant and suffer much less from the "uncanny valley" than Civ's videos (including the Civ5 and CivBE intro). Not to mention the inconsistency.

Thankfully, the added art pieces we've seen so far (for pop-ups and the loading screen) indicates that they are sticking to concept art-styled pieces.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

To be fair, I enjoyed the artwork, audio quotes, and music that accompanied those wonders greatly.

It gave it a sense of accomplishment - Stonehenge in particular stands out.

So did I. Too bad one of the concrete pieces of information we have is that there won't be any in BERT.

Well, I hope so. I'd rather not get a cheesy rendered video, that feels so 90s. Endless Space/Legends animated collages feel a lot more vibrant and suffer much less from the "uncanny valley" than Civ's videos (including the Civ5 and CivBE intro). Not to mention the inconsistency.

But I like cheesy rendered videos. They don't need to be long, and they aren't that cheesy when they're consistent with the art style.

Link to video.

 

[Westwall]

Well, I hope so. I'd rather not get a cheesy rendered video, that feels so 90s. Endless Space/Legends animated collages feel a lot more vibrant and suffer much less from the "uncanny valley" than Civ's videos (including the Civ5 and CivBE intro).

Uncanny indeed. Does this look like someone who's upset she'll definitely never see her own father or home planet again for the rest of her life?

If I didn't know better, I'd think the relationship was abusive and she was actually happy to get away from him. Maybe even sabotaged his barcode records so there would be no chance of him getting on board a ship.

Also, what was the rush here? Why were they doing on the spot lotteries for who would get to be on these ships? Shouldn't there be a proper vetting process possibly spanning years leading up to the launch date? They don't even know for sure what their new home will be like or if they'll even get there, so why are crowds huddling around trying to board the shuttle like it's the last chopper out of Saigon?

Don't get me wrong, it's a very beautifully done cinematic.

But again... what was the rush? Was an asteroid about to hit the earth?

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Re: videos for wonders and victories....I'm actually not too fussed about the "classic" wonder videos, I mean, I know what the pyramids look like, I don't need a 30 second movie to show me. The wonder videos in SMAC on the other hand, they were different. They were by turns artsy, scary, thought provoking or just sometimes funny. Those are the kind of wonder videos I want to see.

I always want to see victory clips though. If I've put 20 or 30 hours (or more) into winning a game of Civ, is it too much to ask to give me a short clip to congratulate me for sticking with it through the last 10 hours of gameplay when victory was already assured? Zero sense of achievement with BE - I've literally just won a contact victory, and all I get is a picture showing me the beacon that's just been sitting in my territory the last 30 turns (and the picture doesn't even look as nice as it did in-game).

 

[Westwall]

The wonder videos in SMAC on the other hand, they were different. They were by turns artsy, scary, thought provoking or just sometimes funny.

I think that can be said about a lot of things in SMAC. So many memorable quotes, so much wit and brilliance, all coming together to bring that game to life in a way that I never, ever expected to see in a 4x, and I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again.

From Richard Baxton who piloted his recon rover into a fungal vortex to Yang's musings on why some consider the human genetic code to be "sacred or taboo" to Lal's wish to preserve human rights but also to see his wife again through cloning to Miriam's constant doomsaying about every new innovation to Santiago's martial-survivalist approach to Deirdre's unique connection to Planet... and so much more.

It was such an awe-inspiring collision of old and new ideas, and the most astounding thing about it all was that the "made up" quotes sounded no less profound than the ones drawn from a historical context, such as Einstein's "God does not play dice" and Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

By comparison, "We choose progress!" and "Let them dream of infrastructure!" - while not terrible - just aren't as memorable and quotable, not unless you're trying to be ironic.

 

[Halbbruder]

For a domination video, I think they will keep it as vague as possible like the civ IV domination vid: maybe have some sort of victory speech and the footage of happy people cheering but do not show the military units involved. In turn, you end up with something that captures the mood and is not gory, violent or cynical, and is appropriate for any affinity.

We're assuming Firaxis is not going to spend more money in its budget just diversifying each domination video.

 

[LORD ORION]

Uncanny indeed. Does this look like someone who's upset she'll definitely never see her own father or home planet again for the rest of her life?

If I didn't know better, I'd think the relationship was abusive and she was actually happy to get away from him. Maybe even sabotaged his barcode records so there would be no chance of him getting on board a ship.

Also, what was the rush here? Why were they doing on the spot lotteries for who would get to be on these ships? Shouldn't there be a proper vetting process possibly spanning years leading up to the launch date? They don't even know for sure what their new home will be like or if they'll even get there, so why are crowds huddling around trying to board the shuttle like it's the last chopper out of Saigon?

Don't get me wrong, it's a very beautifully done cinematic.

But again... what was the rush? Was an asteroid about to hit the earth?

This is what happens when you take refugee colonists instead of artists.