GTA V

[clyde]

I mostly agree, though what that "non critical" path is can vary a lot so far as I care. I never did bother with the TV or stand up clubs or whatever in IV because they were boring. Other open world, or open worldish, games had much much more fun activities than that stuff from.

But the main thing I question is, why have a critical path at all in some games? What if you just got rid of it in an Elderscrolls game? You aren't the whatever, you're just a dude that can go about his business. I know a lot of people might say "but some people love that stuff and that's all they do!" But it's all they do because they lack the imagination to try other things. I can't count the number of people that thought Fable 1 was better than 2, but never bothered learning you could dress up like a pirate, or be a rich land baron, or get into a drunken threesome in 2. But I also suppose you can't force people to explore and have an imagination if they don't want to.

How would you feel about those non-critical activities being always available, but also being introduced by certain NPCs? So as you are wandering the world, depending on who you happen to speak to, they may be like "I'm going to be a rich land baron, ask me how!"

Does your enjoyment of the non-critical activities require that you discover it yourself? How is what you describe, different from a guild quest-line in Oblivion or Skyrim?

[youmeyou]

The guild/quest missions in the Elder Scrolls games were usually quite linear and dull. There was also 0 discoverability. That discoverability is what makes the stuff Frenetic Pony is talking about all the more fun. It's something you can talk about at work or with your friends later. No one cares that you did this or that story mission. But stories about finding necromancers sacrificing chickens in the woods or a quest NPC wandering randomly halfway across the continent from his town or a bandit with a weird diary are interesting (and precisely because it's about exploring and uncovering aspects of the world that aren't immediately visible).

 

I mean not all players are going to embrace this stuff. Most won't, most likely. But the games that are most memorable to me are those that reward looking deeper.

[clyde]

I don't entirely disagree with you, but land ownership and sex in Fable 2 seemed like they offered less to discover than a guild quest-line in Skyrim or Oblivion. Even though there it was a system rather than an authored, linear quest-line, I felt like there was (edit:) less depth. Sex and property in Fable 2 seemed to have the same consequences regardless of where it was experienced, offering little narrative depth.

Edit: I'm also unclear on what makes a Skyrim questline have less discoverability than those systems in Fable. Both are non-essential and scattered about.

[youmeyou]

Well I never had a threesome in Fable 2 so clearly I missed something! *dusts off Fable 2 disc*

[clyde]

I suppose there is some depth to the scale of your property ownership or marriages. Still, it would be nice if the marrying one person was different than marrying another. It's been a while since I've played it, maybe the systems do have that depth. I don't remember if I had to fight my wife's pimp in order to marry her or if I just imagined that happening.

[youmeyou]

In my girlfriend's game her character got married and had children right before getting imprisoned in the spire. Since that part of the game takes place over several decades, once she got out her wife had abandoned her and her children didn't recognize her. I though that was a pretty cool intersection between side missions and the main storyline.

[Thrik]

Haha that's awful. But yeah, Fable 2 had a lot of very cool uncelebrated but meaningful touches. It was actually pretty good at messing with emotions, for example that dog moment and there was one side-character who was exceedingly minor but still loveable, and as he inevitably meets his end as your character ages it happens with almost no fanfare whatsoever yet I felt properly sad for a moment. Really good game, I thought the same about its predecessor too. Shame Fable 3 seemed to be more of a fucked-up remix of Fable 2 than anything else.

[DoomMunky]

The main thing I'm worried about is the incredibly inflexible mission design they had in GTA4. I HATED riding that first damn motorcycle mission and seeing those crates fall out of that truck over and over and over and over. 

 

Mid mission checkpointing, non-egregious tutorializing, and, well, hell, just let me play the GAME, don't hold my hand for three hours. 

[toblix]

So apparently pets:

[TheLastBaron]

Is GTA V being bottlenecked by the 360 in the same way 4 was, in terms of the disk capacity being an issue?  As excited as I am for 5, at the same time I want it to be 10 years from now so I can see what GTA 6 is like given that It'd be developed solely for the next gen consoles.  If the jump in level of fidelity  is even half of the leap from 3 to 4 then I might not even have to leave my house (assuming the next game is set in San Jose California, because I plan on still living with my parents and going to college in 10 years).

[Erkki]

Hmm... in-game concerts. Now I expect to see David Bowie.

[Frenetic Pony]

Is GTA V being bottlenecked by the 360 in the same way 4 was, in terms of the disk capacity being an issue?  As excited as I am for 5, at the same time I want it to be 10 years from now so I can see what GTA 6 is like given that It'd be developed solely for the next gen consoles.  If the jump in level of fidelity  is even half of the leap from 3 to 4 then I might not even have to leave my house (assuming the next game is set in San Jose California, because I plan on still living with my parents and going to college in 10 years).

 

For that specifically? No, because there's two DVDs with a mandatory 8 gig install for the 360 version.

 

In almost every other way imaginable? Certainly, but whatever it looks like a blast anyway.

[toblix]

Never mind, I guess:

[melmer]

booooo, it would be great if you could get a pet cat. i love the idea of "ever wonder where you cat goes" in a GTA game

 

So half the time it'll be in your house, but when its not there you can look at your cats GPS on your laptop/phone and the game will do the zoom out like when you are switching characters, and zoom in on your cat in the most bizarre places. just licking its ass at the top of a sky scraper of having a snooze on a tropical beach

[clyde]

booooo, it would be great if you could get a pet cat. i love the idea of "ever wonder where you cat goes" in a GTA game

 

So half the time it'll be in your house, but when its not there you can look at your cats GPS on your laptop/phone and the game will do the zoom out like when you are switching characters, and zoom in on your cat in the most bizarre places. just licking its ass at the top of a sky scraper of having a snooze on a tropical beach

I don't think mine would live long, based on my past experience with how I park my cars at my safe-houses in the previous games. I guess I could just keep the cat indoors though. Man, that would be great if sometimes when you open those loose-hinge GTA house doors, your cat would sometimes escape and you had to try to catch it running through the streets before it got run over.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I had a strong suspicion that the CVG thing was false - the grammar was fucked up in a lot of places and you'd expect such an august institution to have at least minimal standards.

[Thrik]

I don't think mine would live long, based on my past experience with how I park my cars at my safe-houses in the previous games. I guess I could just keep the cat indoors though. Man, that would be great if sometimes when you open those loose-hinge GTA house doors, your cat would sometimes escape and you had to try to catch it running through the streets before it got run over.

 

Yeah that's the kind of unpredictable shit I love in GTA games. One minute you're having a great time busting banks and playing darts, the next minute your cat has escaped and your stomach ties itself in a knot as you desperately chase the creature you've nurtured since it was a kitten, only to watch in horror as it freezes in the middle of the road as a truck driver nonchalantly thunders towards it. You can watch your beloved pet be mashed up, or you can pull out a gun and shoot the driver dead which may or may not save your cat — but the inevitable police attention will result in either your arrest or numerous deaths. A moral choice that asks as many questions as it answers.

 

Come to think of it, a similar thing happened to me in GTA4. I'd been dating some girl for a while and we were getting along great, even managed to get laid once. But one time after getting a bit tipsy in a bar with her I decided to grab some moped and take her home on that. While going across the bridge highway at immense speed some fucking traffic suddenly stopped dead in front of me; I desperately hit the brakes but still hit the back of the car in front with some force. I was fine, but my girlfriend was flung through the air at breathtaking velocity and went straight into an incoming vehicle. She was no longer available for dating after that.

[clyde]

Come to think of it, a similar thing happened to me in GTA4. I'd been dating some girl for a while and we were getting along great, even managed to get laid once. But one time after getting a bit tipsy in a bar with her I decided to grab some moped and take her home on that. While going across the bridge highway at immense speed some fucking traffic suddenly stopped dead in front of me; I desperately hit the brakes but still hit the back of the car in front with some force. I was fine, but my girlfriend was flung through the air at breathtaking velocity and went straight into an incoming vehicle. She was no longer available for dating after that.

Excellent.

She called from the hospital, but Niko didn't go visit her. When confronted, he was like "It was just one date!"

[Patrick R]

Was dating in IV essentially the same as San Andreas, where you just escort someone to a bar or restaurant?

[Dewar]

Whoops, I missed the "in GTA4" part of that story.

[toblix]

What what? PC version this fall? http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/13/4616858/gta-5-reportedly-coming-to-pc-this-fall-says-nvidia

[Irishjohn]

What what? PC version this fall? http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/13/4616858/gta-5-reportedly-coming-to-pc-this-fall-says-nvidia

 

I could never get IV to work on my (admittedly oldish) computer.

[clyde]

What what? PC version this fall? http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/13/4616858/gta-5-reportedly-coming-to-pc-this-fall-says-nvidia

This complicated things. I hope I know a release date by Sept 17, so that I can make a reasonable platform decision.

[toblix]

What I get from it is that they're at least planning for a PC release at some point. That they'd do it so soon after the console versions seems unrealistic based on previous games, doesn't it? On the other hand, maybe it's different now that it's so late in the console cycles?

[Justin Leego]

Max Payne 3 was announced for PC only two and a half months before it launched, so it's almost conceivable that 5IVE could follow the same pattern and still get a 2013 release.

But then there's the possible complications of next gen stuff, and the utter rudeness of releasing so close to ARMA III, Rome II, and Cabela's African Adventures.

In conclusion: "Before June 2014" would be a safe bet.