Civilization 7 was a big departure from its predecessors in part because of its new emergent narratives, but the strategy game’s narrative director says it actually took a lot of inspiration from another genre juggernaut: Warhammer.
“There’s a long history of successful narrative systems in strategy games, particularly when they’re tied pretty closely to the game’s mechanics,” Civ 7’s narrative director Cat Manning explained in a panel at the Game Developer’s Conference. “So, games like FTL [Faster Than Light] have experimented with this. That was a huge touch point for us. There’s also games like Paradox games, Amplitude, Battletech, and Warhammer Chaos. Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate was a huge touch point as we were beginning to talk about what the system could look like.”
Manning explains that “the way all of Civ’s basic systems run is that the game sends signals to other parts of the game” and “it’s just kind of this constant back and forth.” “If you purchase, say, a unit with gold, you might immediately get a narrative event tied to that unit,” she continued. “And that’s because the system is just always in the background listening.”
But the decision to throw out Civ 6’s Gossip System in favor of something totally new was made because Gossip often cluttered players’ screens with redundant information and pop-ups you could just as easily figure out from the rest of the game.
As mixed Steam reviews pile up, Civilization 7 devs say updates are on the way as they hold themselves “to a high standard and always strive to create the best game possible”
