I would love to see Grand Theft Auto V be set outside the U.S. But I guess that's pretty much out of the question, what with all these L.A. rumors and U.S. money symbols.
I could dig a Tokyo-set GTA, especially after playing games like Yakuza. Even a London-set GTA, returning to roots, could be great.
You know I was thinking, they can't set it in the L.A. area because it's too soon, but guess what...if it hits the Spring 2013 date, it'll have been 9(ish) years since GTA: SA. 9 years. Mental.
If anything is certain at this point, it's that it's set in the USA. Best bets are on (% based on rumours and plausibility):
Los Angeles (50% - Good crime city, not been done in a while, L.A. Noire set there (i.e. a lot of work has already been done on it), Kotaku rumours, possible casting calls there according to Eurogamer)
Washington D.C. (35 % - Good crime city, lots of satirical content, US Mint connection to the font, never been done by them)
New York City (10% - Good crime city, they like to set games there, although GTA IV was there, so probably too soon)
Outside bets on:
Chicago (2.5% - Good crime city, never been done before)
San Francisco (2.4% - Interesting setting, done before in S.A., could link in with an L.A. game, possible Tech Valley/.com boom setting (this is just a random thought, no "sources" or any of that rubbish!))
South/North Carolina (0.1% - Some dude mentioned something about a website registered to the owners of the general GTA5 site that mentioned the Carolinas. This would be the weirdest setting choice for a game ever)
More job-based vehicles, too. Like they've already done with police cars, ambulances, and taxes. I want to serve frozen treats to the community and be the neighborhood's favorite ice cream man.
Semantically speaking yes, if it's going to be a generational leap above ps3/360 is yet to be seen. Maybe what I meant was rather me hoping this would be an early launch window game for Xbox LOOP/DERP or PS4.
I don't think so. Certainly, choosing "V" instead of a subtitle may suggest that. But I think this time Rockstar wants to maximize revenues, for a colossal investment they need a massive public, so... Ps3 and 360 offer all of this. I hope GTA V as a launch title for the new Xbox (But then you have to wait for PS4, how do you? Launch the game in 2013/2014?)
To be honest, I doubt they'll go for a "fun" route in the sense of Saints Row 3 is going to be fun/cooky. My money is on a "realistic/dark/gritty" story like Nico or w/e. But hey, here's hoping I'm wrong.
Take your mountain bike or BMX off of the "jump" from the top of Mount Chilliad and then pulling the chute and gliding into that unknown backwoods town for the first time, I was like "ohhh daaayamn."
Really looking forward to this. I still got TBOGT and TLAD to play, as well as RDR, LANoire DLC and MP3, but this is the grand daddy of them all from R*. Want to see how they took the criticism and what they are doing to improve it. Personally I expect you'll be able to play the game all in first person mode like that mod for PC for GTAIV.
That said I'm still pissed R* has only announced GTAIII and Max Payne HD for iphone. Though I am buying an iphone, I want to replay those two classics in HD on my big screen tv.
Listening to the updated Vladivostok FM, blasting some Eric Prydz driving through Times Square at night is something that never gets old to me from GTA 4.
I don't think that we should make a dichotomy between Saints Row 3 and GTAIV... People who want more "fun" don't necessarily want SR3 craziness, they want more of a return to San Andreas, which was packed with a giant interactive world, unique environments, and tons of things to do in the open world... Plus more varied missions. I don't think that anybody who is a fan of the GTA games is really advocating for a Saints Row style of craziness, if they were, they'd get Saints Row 3, but just, not actively removing fun elements from the game in the name of "realism." (which is just nonsense, nothing you do in the game is remotely realistic).
I also wouldn't mind a story that doesn't fall apart within 6 hours.
What were the reactions of the Houser's after GTA4 shipped and settled?
Were there any regrets with what they produced?
Did they ever hint at the possibilities for future titles?
It's obvious that 4 has split the community/fans into two camps..The I liked/I didn't like, so are they still willing to alienate one group at the expense of the other?
It's certainly a challenging scenario for Rockstar..
If/when they do have separate characters I really hope their stories tie into each other. The one thing I hate about multiple characters like this is I will like one more than the other.
I think R* will launch GTAV on PS3/XBOX360 in late 2012 then Wii U in early 2013 and then a remastered version for PS4/NEXTBOX. GTAV... GTAV everywhere.
Regardless you're going to piss off some people. I think Saint's Row is shit, I think GTA4 is incredible, I'd be irritated if GTA5 was SR4, not GTA4-2.
I don't think that we should make a dichotomy between Saints Row 3 and GTAIV... People who want more "fun" don't necessarily want SR3 craziness, they want more of a return to San Andreas, which was packed with a giant interactive world, unique environments, and tons of things to do in the open world... Plus more varied missions. I don't think that anybody who is a fan of the GTA games is really advocating for a Saints Row style of craziness, if they were, they'd get Saints Row 3, but just, not actively removing fun elements from the game in the name of "realism." (which is just nonsense, nothing you do in the game is remotely realistic).
I also wouldn't mind a story that doesn't fall apart within 6 hours.
The fun you speak of in San Andreas just didn't fit it to the city they chose for GTA IV. You couldn't drive tractors, have wide open spaces for dirt bike rides, etc. I mean, you could have used a jetpack and such but they just didn't do it. Was it a bad choice on Rockstar's part? I don't think so but some do; so be it.
As for the story, I disagree that it fell apart; in fact, the last quarter of it was extremely well done and kept me playing until it was over.
Part of me wants to say Chicago/N.Y./D.C might be locations because of just how fucking good the snow looked on RDR. I mean, they only used it in the Tall Trees area which makes up like 1% of the game! Surely they wouldn't invest that much time on making snow for thier engine if they were only going to use it for that tiny area of the map? Again, just bouncing around ideas.
What were the reactions of the Houser's after GTA4 shipped and settled?
Were there any regrets with what they produced?
Did they ever hint at the possibilities for future titles?
It's obvious that 4 has split the community/fans into two camps..The I liked/I didn't like, so are they still willing to alienate one group at the expense of the other?
It's certainly a challenging scenario for Rockstar..
The Housers hardly ever give interviews so I don't think anyone really asked them about the exclusion of certain elements from San Andreas. If so, I would love to read it. Honestly, they did so well critically and commercially that I don't think there is a split anywhere else but here.
Very exited for this. GTAIV was the first in the series that I played through without cheats (previous games felt so clumsy I never even bothered playing them "properly", though I'm not a huge fan of Euphoria it still felt better). Never bought the episodes though, I should go do that.
What were the reactions of the Houser's after GTA4 shipped and settled?
Were there any regrets with what they produced?
Did they ever hint at the possibilities for future titles?
It's obvious that 4 has split the community/fans into two camps..The I liked/I didn't like, so are they still willing to alienate one group at the expense of the other?
It's certainly a challenging scenario for Rockstar..
If its set in Los Angeles it would be fucking awesome if there would be some kind of theme park/s parodying Disneyland and/or Universal.
Now that would be fucking nuts.
If its set in Los Angeles it would be fucking awesome if there would be some kind of theme park/s parodying Disneyland and/or Universal.
Now that would be fucking nuts.
If its set in Los Angeles it would be fucking awesome if there would be some kind of theme park/s parodying Disneyland and/or Universal.
Now that would be fucking nuts.
Multiple characters would be disappointing. LA would be disappointing as well, we just got that in LA Noire (albeit different time period but still), it's a very weird choice if true.
Wasnt that only a fucking fair.
I suppose (if they wanted to) they would actually build a whole theme park.
Although that seems a fucking ton of work and I dont really know if they could make rideable rides where you could go nuts and create havok.
More job-based vehicles, too. Like they've already done with police cars, ambulances, and taxes. I want to serve frozen treats to the community and be the neighborhood's favorite ice cream man.
I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike.
What I missed in GTA IV was that you couldn't really escape the urban jungle. GTA: SA was refreshing in that it had different terrain (desert and woods) and packed with little easter eggs like the go-kart, jetpack, harrier jet, bmx bike, and so on. There was plenty to do and plenty of room for wacky rumors to appear like Big Foot roaming the countryside. It added another dimension to the game.
Wasnt that only a fucking fair.
I suppose (if they wanted to) they would actually build a whole theme park.
Although that seems a fucking ton of work and I dont really know if they could make rideable rides where you could go nuts and create havok.
I hope the PC version isn't an afterthought this time... like maybe it'll be released around the same time as consoles?!
More than anything I'm curious to see how it looks and what they're doing different to evolve the series. Rockstar's open world formula needs some heavy updating to feel fresh after all the games I've played by them.
The fun you speak of in San Andreas just didn't fit it to the city they chose for GTA IV. You couldn't drive tractors, have wide open spaces for dirt bike rides, etc. I mean, you could have used a jetpack and such but they just didn't do it. Was it a bad choice on Rockstar's part? I don't think so but some do; so be it.
I don't necessarily mean driving tractors, flying crop dusters, or commandeering jetpacks but, like the ability to interact with anything in the environment, or interact with the environment during missions. The playout of each mission in GTAIV was far more controlled than in San Andreas, which is both a good and bad thing -- although I'd say mostly bad. You did have fewer examples of NPC cars getting stuck and taking 60 seconds to get back on track (although that did happen in IV, but not as often), but at the cost of being able to complete missions in your own way. Aside from the two or three token "choose your own pre-defined adventure" missions, you could not play missions in any other way other than how the game designated for you -- which was a stark detachment from both San Andreas and Vice City.
Now, when I speak about "fun" and when a lot of people do, they don't mean jetpacks and dildo fights (maybe some do, but frankly, I think they should go the Saints Row route if so), but a lot more. When they said in interviews, "we removed bikes because we wouldn't think that a hardened criminal immigrant would ride a bike." Well, that's fair, he probably wouldn't. But, y'know what, a hardened criminal immigrant has never robbed a bank with his Irish lackey friend in downtown Manhattan either... Should they have removed one of the iconic missions from the game? Is blowing up a bunch of police helicopters from a raft with a crooked government official really that much more likely for an immigrant than, say, buying property?
In San Andreas (and Vice City especially, which I think was a much harder game), for the missions that I failed, you could plan out a strategy of how to successfully complete them by using the environment around you... For instance, getting to a specific building by moving cars around to make a siege point, or forming a small fortress of vehicles that you could make explode and remove most of your enemy element. THis was fundamentally removed from GTAIV. I forget when I first realized it, but I might have failed a mission early on, one of the first shooting missions, and so I arranged a vehicle in a certain spot so that I could interact with it, and lo and behold, when the criminal element arrives and I have to dispose of him, the vehicle that I placed is mysteriously gone. Now, this is obviously just one example, but I can't think of any time in GTAIV where you can play through a mission in any other way than how the game wants you to play through it, where as, in Vice City & San Andreas, while they obviously directed you in a certain way, you weren't set on their path for how you wanted to play every mission (some, of course, you were).
Rockstar seemed to hear the gripes of the fans and looked to rectify it with the Ballad of Gay Tony, but they missed the mark. They showed videos of hijacking trains off of train tracks, and making insane jumps with motorcycles outrunning trains, and murdering people on the empire state building just to jump to your safety and glide down with a parachute into Time Square, sort of if to say, "You all wanted zaniness, here is your zaniness!" But I think they missed the point: Many fans didn't want their scripted zaniness, they wanted the ability or the option to employ that zaniness as a means to enjoying the game their way.
As for the story, I disagree that it fell apart; in fact, the last quarter of it was extremely well done and kept me playing until it was over.
I think what was frustrating for me with the story was that "the bad guy," kept changing, and your premise for doing anything is nebulous and also keeps changing. For instance, you start the game looking for some guy who did you wrong, that's fine, but then you get him midway through (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't played it in a year+). Then, it felt more aimless, like you're going after some.. other guy.. and now we have some criminal element from the suburbs.. and .. now you have to pick to kill someone.. Oh and
then some dude murders your girlfriend/cousin
and we're back to straight up revenge. Oh, and how could I forget
your mute half-mentally handicapped brother shows up for pretty much no reason and then he leaves the story as fast as he entered it
. Now, perhaps this is a realistic revenge story for an Eastern Bloc immigrant in the United States, that they're making a commentary on how there really aren't "good guys" and "bad guys" and how you can chase demons over and over again and not get anywhere.... But that sort of social commentary, on the aimlessness of revenge, or on the pointlessness of being vindictive, does not make a rewarding playthrough story for a game. If revenge and vindictiveness are supposed to be shown as pointless and mistakes in life, don't make them the central focus of something that we have to play through only to be delivered this frustrating life lesson. Further, there were few times in GTAIV where I felt like I connected with the plight of Niko and wanted to solve his problems for him; the CJ/Tenpenny adverserial relationship was never there for me for Niko/His-Enemies, and likewise, the romantic elements never truly clicked for me, so when something would happen to those romances or relationships, the motivation for revenge never felt anything but cheap for me.
I think once I had made the point about spending money in GTAIV (and in many games) and how money is completely irrelevant in the game. You, or someone else, made the astute point that they thought that Rockstar did this to emphasize a point about the American Dream -- that you can get $500,000 from a bank heist, but ultimately, money is not going to give you what you want. I'll be honest, I never thought of this perspective and it very well could be right, but if it is right, it feels like it was a cop out: explaining away game flaws and missing features from San Andreas by saying that it's a commentary on the American experience. San Andreas had scores of commentaries on the American experience, but didn't need to make frustrating game scenarios out of it (like playing X amount of missions to earn X amount of money only to reveal, oh, well, money is meaningless in the game and in America) to prove it to gamers.
I do have to say, I haven't played GTAIV in a couple of years. So, I'm definitely rusty on the details. I still liked the game when playing it, and it is still one of my top games from this generation. I also bought both of the addons, and enjoyed Lost & the Damned the most out of GTAIV -> LaTD -> BoGT. After the holiday games this season, I'm going to play through it again.
I know that this is an enormously long reply to a short post... so ... haha, that's my fault. We'll have to have a thread one day of point - counter-point on GTAIV & San Andreas. Maybe in the Spring if you're up for it, I'd like to play through both once more.
Lack of fun/weird vehicles, no crazy pedestrian cheats, no infinite health/invincible vehicle cheats, no parachute (until BoGT which was awesome and so much better than 4), lack of indoor environments, no ways to spend your money except on clothes/guns, no ambulance kind of missions, etc. and so on.
I realize the reason they kept a lot of this out might have been because it wouldn't coincide with the story/character they're trying to do, but I completely disagree with that design. Choosing story over fun gameplay is ridiculous in a GTA game. The story can still be meaningful and interesting if you're allowed to have fun in your own spare time, it has nothing to do with what the cutscenes tell you. It's like Rockstar is so scared of just giving people tools and letting them have fun. Red Dead Redemption suffers the same problem.
I loved GTA4 when it came out and thought it was the best thing ever but in retrospect it is pretty bad and bare bones. When you compare it to Assassins Creed 2/Brotherhood there's no comparison in terms of features and things to do. The mission design in Ballad of Gay Tony was so much more fun and interesting. I hate shooting galleries which is what GTA4 and RDR were. You go to a place some construction site, shoot 20 guys then go back home that shit is so boring to me. Ballad of Gay Tony at least let you take a multiple of vehicles to destinations in the same mission, use fun weapons to do crazy shit and so on.
And I'm still waiting for the day where you can go to an airport, go on a plane and actually sit on the plane with other passengers and shit on board. That would be so damn cool although it would garner controversy obviously since you'd have the freedom to hijack it as well. This is what I wanted in San Andreas but at least they let you drive the planes. I would agree that GTA4's world was too small for planes but I hope it's not the same in 5.
I want this game to let you interact with everything the way you can in a Fallout game. If you see a building you should be able to go inside and see people. If you go into a casino you can use every slot machine, you can bet and play games, you can rob the vault ANY time you want (and from banks too) and not just have it be part of a mission. They should let you choose how much of a criminal (or good guy) you want to be. How awesome would it be if you could rob a bank like the mission in 4 but you can do that ANY time you want? And it's not relegated to a scripted mission. I don't know if that's possible but that's the kind of shit I'm always hoping for in new GTA games.
The mention of Fallout reinforces one idea that I really wish Rockstar would implement -- giving names to all of the random NPCs that you run into. I loved RDR, but I felt like this simple change would have made a big addition to the game.
I feel that R* do incorporate open world to there games. But the places are repeated a lot. Causing loss of the feeling that it is open world.
The closest R* got to the open world feel was SA. You weren't limitless to what you could do. Like you could go off road, and follow the trail, which wouldn't suddenly end. There were other routes, you could also take which would lead you off to another adventure.
I think IV was a good game. But it was all the same; Side street, long road, motorway, bridge, water. There wasn't much of a variety. Yes, of course the look of the buildings and the whole city was better, graphically wise.
I hope they don't just make a city again. If they do, then we will just have to wait for what R* make next in-line for GTA. Or if they bring DLC, that would bring something new and improved (Or never see before in a GTA game).
I don't necessarily mean driving tractors, flying crop dusters, or commandeering jetpacks but, like the ability to interact with anything in the environment, or interact with the environment during missions. The playout of each mission in GTAIV was far more controlled than in San Andreas, which is both a good and bad thing -- although I'd say mostly bad. You did have fewer examples of NPC cars getting stuck and taking 60 seconds to get back on track (although that did happen in IV, but not as often), but at the cost of being able to complete missions in your own way. Aside from the two or three token "choose your own pre-defined adventure" missions, you could not play missions in any other way other than how the game designated for you -- which was a stark detachment from both San Andreas and Vice City.
I can think of plenty of missions during my two playthroughs that I played differently. Yeah, there were the chase guy to here and kill him missions, but there was variety and different ways to go about getting to the end of the missions; at least enough for me.
The Albatross said:
Now, when I speak about "fun" and when a lot of people do, they don't mean jetpacks and dildo fights (maybe some do, but frankly, I think they should go the Saints Row route if so), but a lot more.
When they said in interviews, "we removed bikes because we wouldn't think that a hardened criminal immigrant would ride a bike." Well, that's fair, he probably wouldn't. But, y'know what, a hardened criminal immigrant has never robbed a bank with his Irish lackey friend in downtown Manhattan either... Should they have removed one of the iconic missions from the game? Is blowing up a bunch of police helicopters from a raft with a crooked government official really that much more likely for an immigrant than, say, buying property?
It is, actually. Niko was basically what we stay away from at the local Serb Club(He is Serbian, as am I). The fresh off the boat immigrant that will do whatever it takes to make it. Niko had other motivations such as finding the traitors in his military group in Serbia, but the crimes he committed were mainly not just random; he had a goal in mind and did what it took to get to that goal.
The Albatross said:
Rockstar seemed to hear the gripes of the fans and looked to rectify it with the Ballad of Gay Tony, but they missed the mark. They showed videos of hijacking trains off of train tracks, and making insane jumps with motorcycles outrunning trains, and murdering people on the empire state building just to jump to your safety and glide down with a parachute into Time Square, sort of if to say, "You all wanted zaniness, here is your zaniness!" But I think they missed the point: Many fans didn't want their scripted zaniness, they wanted the ability or the option to employ that zaniness as a means to enjoying the game their way.
I have had issues at times, from what I remember, doing what you saying but that wasn't for every mission. I feel that Rockstar reached for that zany level of play because of the outcry on the forums and such. They didn't necessarily need to do what they did with TBOGT but I enjoyed that episode because of the themes explored, different side activities(running a night club, fighting, base jumping, etc)
The Albatross said:
I think what was frustrating for me with the story was that "the bad guy," kept changing, and your premise for doing anything is nebulous and also keeps changing. For instance, you start the game looking for some guy who did you wrong, that's fine, but then you get him midway through (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't played it in a year+). Then, it felt more aimless, like you're going after some.. other guy.. and now we have some criminal element from the suburbs.. and .. now you have to pick to kill someone.. Oh and
then some dude murders your girlfriend/cousin
and we're back to straight up revenge. Oh, and how could I forget
your mute half-mentally handicapped brother shows up for pretty much no reason and then he leaves the story as fast as he entered it
. Now, perhaps this is a realistic revenge story for an Eastern Bloc immigrant in the United States, that they're making a commentary on how there really aren't "good guys" and "bad guys" and how you can chase demons over and over again and not get anywhere.... But that sort of social commentary, on the aimlessness of revenge, or on the pointlessness of being vindictive, does not make a rewarding playthrough story for a game. If revenge and vindictiveness are supposed to be shown as pointless and mistakes in life, don't make them the central focus of something that we have to play through only to be delivered this frustrating life lesson.
The reason for Niko doing what he did was fairly clear, to me at least, and was done in a way that tied it all together for me in the end.
The Albratross said:
I think once I had made the point about spending money in GTAIV (and in many games) and how money is completely irrelevant in the game. You, or someone else, made the astute point that they thought that Rockstar did this to emphasize a point about the American Dream -- that you can get $500,000 from a bank heist, but ultimately, money is not going to give you what you want. I'll be honest, I never thought of this perspective and it very well could be right, but if it is right, it feels like it was a cop out: explaining away game flaws and missing features from San Andreas by saying that it's a commentary on the American experience. San Andreas had scores of commentaries on the American experience, but didn't need to make frustrating game scenarios out of it (like playing X amount of missions to earn X amount of money only to reveal, oh, well, money is meaningless in the game and in America) to prove it to gamers.
I did make that point before and I want to add a bit to it. How realistic is it, in the framework of the story itself, to have Niko buying up property? It makes no sense considering why he was there and what transpired. Money wasn't important to him; revenge was and if doing jobs for money was a means to that end he did it.
The Albratross said:
I do have to say, I haven't played GTAIV in a couple of years. So, I'm definitely rusty on the details. I still liked the game when playing it, and it is still one of my top games from this generation. I also bought both of the addons, and enjoyed Lost & the Damned the most out of GTAIV -> LaTD -> BoGT. After the holiday games this season, I'm going to play through it again.
I think running through it again without doing a bunch of the side stuff would be worth it. You might change your opinion on things if you look at it from a new perspective.
The Albatross said:
I know that this is an enormously long reply to a short post... so ... haha, that's my fault. We'll have to have a thread one day of point - counter-point on GTAIV & San Andreas. Maybe in the Spring if you're up for it, I'd like to play through both once more.
I am more than happy to participate in one of those. I just want to say that I enjoyed each GTA, as it is probably my favorite series of the past 10 years in gaming.
Fun feature of San Andreas #320: Riding a bike up the dirt mountain, getting to the top, taking in the sight, then driving off the cliff at full speed.
I was never a fan of the dildo, or gimp suit. I don't mean stupid crap like that. Especially the one in SR3, not a fan. GT4 even had one and I rolled my eyes at it.
What I was a fan of was GTA3s freedom to do stuff. Playing GTA4 over with mods and I'm still limited. If you're able to kill your target before he get's to his next precious academy winning cutscene you should just skip to the cutscene where he's dying/pleading for his life/or the mission accomplished sound followed by a phone call.
If they wanted to make sure you didn't kill the star of the cutscenes they shouldn't let you get within kill range with them. They should have let you set up whatever trap you want, heck it worked for the other GTA games. They could still have scripted cars and trucks swerving in front of you, that one truck that empties it's cargo all the time, and so on. It was unnecessary.
One thing people seem to have forgotten about was the shooting aspect in GTA: SA. It kinda sucked, you just locked on and pressed O, whereas in GTA 4 it was a lot more tactical and, IMO, enjoyable. I did prefer GTA: SA though.
