The Making Of Napoleon In Civilization 7

Napoleon is back, baby. This time, in video game form, resurrected for a sixth time, he’s reappearing in Civilization 7 as an ambitious, confident leader who’s ready to conquer the world, even if he makes loads of enemies along the way. In a video trailer, Napoleon speaks in Corsican-accented French, translated by Inverse, “To do everything we’re capable of is to be a man. To accomplish everything we’d like to do, is to be a god.”

Since the first game in 1991, Napoleon has been sprinkled throughout the series, often appearing as the leader of France, or as a major general that’s more of a non-playable character. Still, developer Firaxis took care not to oversaturate its games with Napoleon, sometimes switching in Catherine de Medici or Joan of Arc instead. Even though Civ 7 largely keeps much of the game play the same as the previous renditions, there are a few key differences and even Napoleon himself is not exactly the same.

At San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference, Inverse recently got an inside look at how Napoleon was recreated this time around, with the help of eager historians, some clever motion-capture, and consulting his famous collection of letters. To create a world leader, Firaxis employees write a biography, track down images of the physical appearance and clothing, and go on the hunt for detailed historical cultural cues. French speakers will notice that Napoleon now speaks in a thicker, Corsican accent that is not exactly the same as modern day French. A subtle change to bring ever more realism to the game.

“He’s a very strange but fascinating man.”

“We needed to avoid caricature and look past the image that he himself deliberately crafted for the public,” says Dr. Finn Taylor, a historian with a doctorate in Old Norse literature and myth from UC Berkeley and a narrative designer at Firaxis. “Who was he as a person beyond the battlefield and behind the crown?”

The portrayal of Napoleon is particularly fun when contrasted with the depiction of some lesser known leaders like Trung Trac (14 to 43 CE), who had almost no documented literature and whose language has gone extinct. Here, the developer still followed a similar process to portray Trac through researching her, but had to give more thought to fill in the blanks.

“Our experience with Napoleon was almost the exact opposite. There’s almost too much material to manage,” Taylor says.

What does sifting through look like exactly? Taylor describes pulling out “weird quirks” and different tones of voice from Napoleon, depending on the subject matter of his letters. In one letter, he chides his secretary for misreporting the number of troops who moved from one town to the next in a manner that was “very terse but a little bit longer than it needed to be.” Something of an I’ve told you this before but please pay attention. In letters to his wife, Josephine, the flowery language came easily. When discussing supply chain logistics, the verbose man could all but disappear.

“He’s a very dynamic figure, reading his letters,” Taylor said. “He’s a very strange but fascinating man.”

Perhaps knowing how in demand and beloved Napoleon is for Civ players, the developer didn’t even include him in the base game. To unlock Napoleon, you’ll have to link your 2K account, by subscribing to the 2K Games site, which is part of Firaxis’ parent company. If you’ve also played Civilization 6 with the same account, you can unlock a second outfit for Napoleon and different attributes (soldiers can move faster).

As the Emperor of France, Napoleon’s unique in-game trait is that “the fewer friends he has, the richer he gets,” as the trailer puts it. It’s an attribute that supports an aggressive play style, where you actively create hostile relationships with other world leaders, accumulating bank while doing so.

Civ 7 adds more leaders, including people who weren’t officially in positions of power, but had outsized influence on humankind all the same, such as Harriet Tubman, Confucius, Benjamin Franklin, and Machiavelli. For the first time, any leader can lead any civilization, so players can create strange combinations, such as Ben Franklin leading Mongolia — which was my immediate idea. Napoleon leading America is also a possibility now. While in previous games, you could play leaders outside of their temporal context, now they can also be divorced from their cultural context.

“That’s where we really rely very heavily on the character themselves to bring the flavor, because we no longer can rely on the soup as a flavor,” Taylor says. “We really need that character, that’s why we dive so deep.”