Empire in Decline
Empire in Decline
Imagine spending years playing San Andreas. GTA IV hasn't been announced. Your mind races with the possibilities of a new game. You imagine they're going to do a whole country instead of a few cities. You think of all the mini games, all the weapons, and customization. It is the first "next gen" GTA after all.
Then you have been playing IV for years. GTA V hasn't been announced. Once again your mind races with possibilities. There is no end to the amount of detail it will have, there is nothing you can't do, there is no limit to the map.
Now you've been playing V for years. Here we go again. But there really isn't anything to imagine. You know it's going to be just a bigger map. At least until it gets close to release, where the devs admit the map is the same size as V. They claim it's okay because there's more things to do. But all that means is more things to collect, more so-so mini games.
You've played RDR2 so you know how much detail it could have. You know they'll simulate everything. So there can't be any real surprises. You'll see more wildlife. Your car windows will fog up. Your character will swat mosquitos.
You know the graphics can be just a little better, not like moving from PS2 to PS3. More reflections, slightly better lighting, a little more detail in the textures.
Now you realize you're on the plateau. There are no more great heights to surmount.There is only lateral movement from here on out. GTA VI can only be as good as V, with marginal gains in every category, but not exceptional gains in any. You'll drive from Point A to B. You'll shoot the gangs. You'll escort the cars. Everything you have already done.
There is a running theme in culture right now and it's that large, long-standing franchises are starting to eat shit. They can no longer push the needle. GTA will join them.
the funniest thing they could do is announce it's a top-down shooter
reject modernity, embrace traditionI actually loved top down view in the GTA IV and GTA V, and it's sad that I had to download mods to enable them.
GTA Chinatown Wars 2
GTAV's character models still very much look like spruced up late 7th gen models though so that's definitely something they could improve.
The thing that gets me about Rockstar games is that they're simultaneously hyper-detailed to a ludicrously lavish extent yet incredibly shallow and arcadey because they're the most popular games in the world and have to be accessible to everyone. They also have a reputation as consequence-free silly sandbox games where you can go on therapeutic murder sprees with miniguns and tanks
I'd just like an open world immersive criminal sim
I just want to be nice to people, and they be nice back to me.
Remember in GTA SA, you could go up to someone and say "Sup, homey?" and he'd fist bump you? I need that in my life again.Every slight transgression in GTA V escalates beyond wild belief
In RDR1 you actually had a button dedicated to tipping your hat and greeting people, which was funny in Mexico because John Marston barely spoke Spanish.
I didn't like how over the top GTAV was after GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption which were both more toned down compared to the previous generation of GTA games. I remember there being a backlash against GTA trying to be more grounded in IV and people bemoaning the lack of over-the-top wacky violence so I guess V was an attempt to return to tradition.
That whole style of crass humour feels so thoroughly dated and turn of the millenium now, I wouldn't mind if they completely ditched it in 6. I still haven't played it but it seems like RDR2 mostly already did- RDR1 still had slight remnants of that heightened satire
I don't think there is anything wrong with a plateau in graphics. I'm not looking for 100% realism from any game.
I've been bored of extremely high fidelity rusty fences and rural ruins for decades now. I want games to show things that are interesting to me, not "realistic."
We still haven’t had a game combine Red Faction Guerrilla and Tears of the Kingdom.
But then again, giant leaps are really only a video game thing.
Movies in a lot of key technical ways haven’t changed in generations.
Music as well.
Not having a huge leap forward means the game has be Great and interesting.
Like books.
The advent of relatively cheap and easy digital effects have been a pretty big game changer for movies within the last two decades. Same goes for audio quality with digital storage compared to tape/vinyl.
Books I got nothing, you win.
If anything, the move to digital books and self-publishing has lowered the quality of books.
Movies and music are “easier” as you could do great effects, it was just much harder and expensive.
Same with music recording.
Games may be getting close to movies of the 1960s where anything is possible if you have the budget And effort.
You likely can’t do EVERYTHING in game, but can do good proximities.
There is a running theme in culture right now and it’s that large, long-standing franchises are starting to eat shit. They can no longer push the needle. GTA will join them.
Can you define what you mean by this? Still seems to me like culture is dominated by large franchises that have been stagnant for a long time. Especially when it comes to gaming, I can't really think of many examples of them 'eating shit'. Some are critical failures but they're still making an ungodly amount of money. Even Mass Effect Andromeda was supposedly a financial success.
I don't really see a future where GTA 6 flops in any meaningful way. GTA 5 is still wildly profitable and has a massive player base and viewership. People were depressingly desperate for this announcement. It's target audience seems perfect for just shoveling more slop.
Like I wont be into it, and I assume most people here wont be either, but that's been the case for the vast majority of best sellers for like a decade at least.
I said this elsewhere today but GTA 5 sucked.
I'm hoping the best that can come out of this is that GTA 6 ties with Vice City in quality. I'm hoping for the plateau because 5 was the decline, in my opinion, and I've been playing GTA since literally GTA 1 on a shitty PC in the 90's but 5 was the worst. GTA 4 was still cool as it followed GTA 3 closely in quality but GTA 5 just didn't step it up the way it could and was arguably worse than its spiritual predecessor: San Andreas. And I truly think GTA 6 will be the last GTA to come out within my lifetime at least anyway, considering it took over 10 years between GTA 5 and 6, so if it ends with a newer iteration of Vice City then I will be happy.
And I truly think GTA 6 will be the last GTA to come out within my lifetime at least anyway, considering it took over 10 years between GTA 5 and 6
How old are you, 88?
between covid and everything else they could be 40 and still be right
Also just the fact your not a kid anymore 🤷 , youve already experinced all this stuff before
They better import the horse testicle shrinkage in cold weather, it's the only worthwhile feature from RDR2.
GTA has been the same game since 3, change my mind.
As a Pokemon fan, I am an expert on this
I'm not sure what the problem here is.
San Andreas was the last time anything "new" was put into a GTA. Everything in GTA5 existed in San Andreas, and arguably the gang territory war is a gameplay feature that sets it apart from all others.
I'm ok with it though? Like. I'm more interested in better animation, better characterisation, and what story they tell than any significant change in gameplay. Expansions to the sandbox reactions in the world will also make playing around in the sandbox more fun. I also didn't particularly enjoy the driving physics of 5, they were OK but I enjoyed 4's physics more compared to the arcadey feel of 5. I'd like more realism, but I suspect that's not what we'll get from a return to Vice City.
I feel like this pattern is kinda just how media goes. Who in the indie scene is looking for inspiration coming from Grand Theft Auto? And if they are, are they drooling over the next gen or are they looking to capture some nostalgia from the first couple in the series?
What got me about GTA 5 is that there's fuck all to do after you finish the game. For a game lauded for being an open world sandbox, all there is to do is drive around, shoot people and customise cars until you get bored. You can't pull off any interesting crimes or heists at all outside of the story
GTA V is boring af. The story is not even that great. They only fun part is to play with friends or with mods.
honestly i wish it were the norm for a good game to just be left to stand on its own. i understand the economics of game development demand constant releases, either sequels or expansions or microtransactions, for the rare original concept to get made, but i basically haven't been excited for a sequel since high school when i realized that it's almost always just "the same thing, but bigger."
When you can no longer breed faster horses, you invent the car. There's many ways in which GTA can still make a leap to a new quality level. Imagine if you could destroy buildings and then see it being repaired for weeks before coming back to a functioning state. Imagine npcs like those of cities skylines 2, each with their own stats and needs and living their life in the simulation. Imagine a custom made AI to give life to those Npcs so they react to your actions and the news in the papers in a realistic way. Maybe even let you talk to them with your mic.
Imagine you go to a random npc house and kill the adults living there, leaving the teenager son alone in the world. Now he starts selling drugs to survive and that causes a new side quest to appear related to that drug-selling. Not something that was baked into the game but generated automatically based on your own actions.
Traffic too. Imagine traffic laws changing to react to the accidents you cause. Speed bumps showing up in streets with frequent crashes. People avoiding certain roads after frequent police chases. New roads being developed dynamically in the city in reaction to problems in the old ones.
Imagine you hiding in some bushes for your wanted level to go down and a few npcs are walking by and you hear them talking about the crimes you just committed, mentioning the number of victims and where the police had been chasing you.
Most of those ideas are within the means of an AAA budget game now.
Permanently Deleted
I was seriously thinking that they'd just never release another. I still won't believe in GTA VI until I'm playing it. It just seems like safer money to keep releasing new content for GTA V instead of releasing GTA VI. Are they still doing that? My PS4's been in storage for a while.
They haven't actually released any content for GTA V :'( Only for GTA Online which I never play.
The one (unsubstantiated) rumor that has me excited is the prospect of a dynamically destructable open world. If they're able to pull something like that off in a GTA game it would really be something "next gen". But I admit that's mostly just wishful thinking on my part.
You can't even enter the vast, vast majority of buildings in 5. If 6 has destructible buildings, it would only be like that one Hulk game where they are all just big hit boxes that dissolve with enough damage dealt to them.
Just give me more Vinewood Boulevard Radio to drive around to while high, I'll pay to consume the product, so Rockstar execs can laugh all the way to the bank.
Just read that there's going to be more open drugs and sex references in the game and thought, hmm probably going to have to buy that!
But you guys enjoy your fully destructable environments or whatever