3. Columbia Is Oddly Static
I'm not attacking Columbia's overall design here, because it's an amazing accomplishment, one crammed with an unbelievable and impressive amount of detail. But as I played the game (and I haven't heard this mentioned anywhere else thus far), something odd struck me about it: the city felt kind of... static. Despite the fact that it's this amazing place that exists wholly in the sky and there are airships flying about and hundreds sky-rails and hot dog vendors and barbershop quartets singing "God Only Knows," it just came off as cold. At first, I thought that this tone was one being pushed onto me purposely... and then I realised, it was something else completely: none of game's NPCs were moving. I mean, yes, they're "moving" in the sense that they've been animated, but nobody is walking or navigating the city in the same way that you are. Every character is stuck in a single position. This is a somewhat bizarre design flaw, I think, because it means that Columbia rarely feels like it's "working" in the way it should be working - this huge machine, a sum of all its tiny moving parts. Why isn't anybody walking about, breathing a bit of life into the place? The enemies are the only characters who ever move properly, and that's because they're obviously required to. But Columbia can't truly feel like an amazing city in the sky when it's people remain entirely fixed to the ground.