toblix

GTA V

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Even though qua hype, LA Noire was the biggest letdown in years, I'm willing to bet on GTA V. Honestly, I had a blast with IV and don't expect this next one to be any less cool.

Obviously, I'm not buying into anything before I see more than the title. GTA IV had a really cool announcement trailer with Philip Glass's Pruit Igoe and cool time lapses on Liberty City. Looking forward to what they'll do with this one.

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Looking forward to what they'll do with this one.

I hope it has fully simulated garbage trucks. And

.

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Obviously, I'm not buying into anything before I see more than the title.

We can guess a little bit by the "V" logo. It looks like it's based on a banknote. Maybe this time we will play a criminal investment banker ripping off the world economy!

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To be more serious, I actually would hope that they come up with a story that is not about criminals fighting other criminals and causing havoc in cities, but since it's titled GTA, I suppose that's not going to happen. But at least they could maybe get someone else besides Dan Houser to do the story. I think he did better with Red Dead Redemption, but the GTA stories don't really have anywhere to go. They are made of the same components which can only be combined in different variations.

Secondly, I hope that they find some way to get out of their current game structure. The one hot-spot triggered mission at a time structure is getting boring, and so is the way to trigger a retry -- by the cellphone after waking up in a hospital -- that is so unnecessary, how many times do you actually go and do something else when you wake up there? They should give up on the pseudo-realistic explanations to gamey stuff and maybe embrace gaminess more (just give me a fucking retry prompt). In case you just die while outside of a mission, the hospital makes more sense of course (they have to respawn you somewhere, so why not there). But then this goes against my suggestion to get rid of the current mission structure -- if it were more loose where would the retry points be? Anyway, I hope they find a way to figure it out, but I'll probably buy the game out of inertia no matter what they end up doing.

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Oh, you're totally right, the structure has run its last course. I remember being really disappointed at Red Dead Redemption (an otherwise great game) having the same 'go to trigger point, start mission' GTA structure. I would've loved an Elder Scrolls type thing where you can talk to people or do some other interesting, interactive stuff with the world besides these super-insular, cocooned missions.

Arkham City is doing a far better job at this. It has trigger points as well, but for some reason it feels very different and more natural than GTA did. Maybe because the scale is relatively smaller, so that the density of 'stuff' in the world is much higher? An amusing thought: to progress GTA, they should roll back the size.

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What they need to do is make it fun to play. The shooting mechanics in GTA4 were rotten and driving impossible.

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What they need to do is make it fun to play. The shooting mechanics in GTA4 were rotten and driving impossible.

I was able to drive long distances in GTA IV. I don't remember if I got a trophy for it or not.

My biggest complaint about the series is the rigid structure as well. Never finished GTA IV because I just got bored. However, I just bought the everything pack on Steam and I think I'll at least check out the Episodes. Did they fix the stupid checkpoint system for the DLC or was that just a dream?

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I was able to drive long distances in GTA IV. I don't remember if I got a trophy for it or not.

My biggest complaint about the series is the rigid structure as well. Never finished GTA IV because I just got bored. However, I just bought the everything pack on Steam and I think I'll at least check out the Episodes. Did they fix the stupid checkpoint system for the DLC or was that just a dream?

If I remember right, yes. Also the I vastly prefer the episodes in general.

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Announcing GTA V now implicitly confirms that there will be an Xbox 360 version. That implicitly confirms that the game's performance requirements will be modest (at the low end, at least), and that it will be a city that can exist in only a teeny tiny amount of RAM at a time.

Hooray for aging hardware!

Rockstar could still get a fine game out of that, but it's difficult to see them adding things like persistent traffic, "living economies", and other features we all have on our GTA wishlists.

So prepare for more of the same!

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To be more serious, I actually would hope that they come up with a story that is not about criminals fighting other criminals and causing havoc in cities, but since it's titled GTA, I suppose that's not going to happen. But at least they could maybe get someone else besides Dan Houser to do the story.

YES! He's good with dialogue, and he's not bad at characterisation at all, but his stories are so bland and predictable that he ends up shooting himself in the foot. By gods get some professional writers in!

I think he did better with Red Dead Redemption

I wouldn't even go that far. I saw every single twist before it happened (apart from THAT one, which sucked anyway) his writing is so two-dimensional and obvious. If people here can hear the writer's voice in a Wire episode, I'm sure I'm not alone in being able to see a Dan Houser "twist" coming a mile off. There's always something horribly samey about the situations he creates and how the characters react... and it's never particularly satisfying.

Take some of that $x million budget and give it to some decent Hollywood writers, already. The game structure is so simplistic that even someone used to writing for TV should be able to make the transition easily. Dan can write the dialogue for the bits when the characters are driving to the missions. Or better yet: Hang up his ego, and let someone else breathe new life into the universe he's helped create.

And no more goddamn Lazlo, either. He and Houser try to write satirical stuff, but they never seem able to sustain a consistent point of view long enough for it be actually any good. They regularly fall into the trap of becoming the very thing they try to parody: Baseless, soulless "shock" factor for the sake of shock factor.

(*rant ends*)

They should give up on the pseudo-realistic explanations to gamey stuff and maybe embrace gaminess more (just give me a fucking retry prompt).

Again I agree. When I first played GTAIV I was shocked that it expected me to drive to every mission... it seemed so pointless. Of course, by the end of the game I'd become really adept at driving and knew the city so well that I could just about navigate without a map. Just about.

In LA Noir they just totally lost the plot (I know it was a Team Bondi game, but still)... There was ZERO reason to have a city, and even less to have one so accurately modelled (although the game was ultimately so flawed that I ended up enjoying sight-seeing more than playing the actual storyline).

(In side news: We never discussed it here, but Team Bondi has been shut down, right? All those horror stories of what a complete dick the guy who was running it was, and how awfully he treated his staff... Even to the point where RockStar hated his guts and refused to work with him ever again. Well it sounded like he finally got him comeuppance?)

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What they need to do is make it fun to play. The shooting mechanics in GTA4 were rotten and driving impossible.

That's also very true. It took hours of practice before you developed enough skill for the driving in GTAIV become close to "fun"... and even then you could never "drift" around a corner. It was too busy trying to be realistic. That said, I did enjoy the shooting mechanics.

Also, I hope they don't include a "Liberty City Minute" style achievement this time... It just meant that new players burned through the main missions as quickly as possible and never did the side-missions until much later... Making it less enjoyable in the long run.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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I swore in GTA 4 during some specific chase missions they scewed the driving mechanics, especially earlier. I know those crappy cars at the start handle like shit, but during a couple missions where you are chasing after someone, they felt like they handled way worse.

Hooray for aging hardware!

Did you see the difference between GTA 3 and San Andreas? Aging hardware aside, we're starting to see some of the best games of this generation because everyone is pushing the damn things to the limit and they pulled off a huge jump between those 2 games on the ps2, I'd expect seeing something similar.

Problem is they've put all their money so far in the animation and rendering systems for other games. The facial animation has continually been tweaked since GTA4(lost and the damned, gay tony, red dead, and while LA noire didnt use the engine, they used the same production methods for theirs) so the engine has visually been getting better, just in a subtle way.

I'm sure GTA 5 will be an excuse to add all the bells and whistles along with a leap in scope/game play mechanics.

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I loved the driving model in GTA4, everything had an awesome sense of weight to it. At times it could really feel like one of those excellent old-school car chase movies. I mean, and I never really had trouble drifting around corners while driving or anything, i really don't know what you guys are talking about. How many of you played on the PC? Is it a gamepad vs keyboard thing?

For the action, the cover system was kind of useless and the shooting was really clunky, but i still think it was leagues improved over how atrociously awful the shooting action was in the PS2-era games.

YES! He's good with dialogue, and he's not bad at characterisation at all, but his stories are so bland and predictable that he ends up shooting himself in the foot. By gods get some professional writers in!

I'm not sure that would even fix it, writing for a game is very different than writing for a movie or a book, but i'll definitely agree that their stories aren't living up to their lofty ambitions. The story in Red Dead Redemption also drove me crazy, it's so bad. (Marston is likable and everything, but he's also a complete tool with no agency.)

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I loved the driving model in GTA4, everything had an awesome sense of weight to it. At times it could really feel like one of those excellent old-school car chase movies. I mean, and I never really had trouble drifting around corners while driving or anything, i really don't know what you guys are talking about. How many of you played on the PC? Is it a gamepad vs keyboard thing?

The weight thing is true. It was very satisfying once you mastered it, and understood that you could never go round a corner without braking... but I thought it took hours before it came fun, especially compared to equally "weighty" driving games like Driver (and apparently earlier GTA games -- from what people have told me).

I played it almost exclusively with a controller on the 360.

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I think the driving in GTA IV was terrific. I remember thinking it was really uncomfortable the first time I played it, but I got used to it really quickly and still think it's the best-feeling arcade driving thing I've played. In games like Driver you sort of want other cars to bounce off you and not slow you down as much. I like that in GTA IV the driving feels like it's working fully inside the premise of the larger physical simulation, which gives it, as others have mentioned, more weight – more realness. You can still speed down highway, dodging oncoming traffic, but it feels really dangerous. One thing I would maybe like to see in GTA V is even more realistic accident dynamics – being hurt by impact and maybe thrown out. It could quickly become annoying, but it would also add a lot more danger to reckless driving.

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The weight thing is true. It was very satisfying once you mastered it, and understood that you could never go round a corner without breaking... but it took hours before it came fun, especially compared to equally "weighty" driving games like Driver (and apparently earlier GTA games -- from what people have told me).

Well i really don't believe that requiring some skill and time to master the driving model can be considered a negative. (I also much prefer the driving model in GTAIV to the driving model of the PS2-era games, but i recognize that i seem to be alone in that.)

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Why is Braking a bad thing. The GTA IV driving model was the best of the GTA games, it complimented the less cartoon-like nature of IV to the previous titles.

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That's also very true. It took hours of practice before you developed enough skill for the driving in GTAIV become close to "fun"... and even then you could never "drift" around a corner.
Actually I found that taking corners was a lot easier when using the hood-cam view. But it was inconvenient to use that view most of the time, so I rarely did.

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Yep, it was more fun once you mastered it. I've certainly spent many hours racing with you guys... I'm just in the "more fun, less realism" camp. Thinking about it, my problem wasn't with the car handling, but the city itself... Too many sharp corners that didn't lend itself to fun driving. The car handling was pretty awesome (apart from the camera angles that it sometimes tried to force on you).

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Yep, it was more fun once you mastered it. I've certainly spent many hours racing with you guys... I'm just in the "more fun, less realism" camp. Why is being forced to spend hours mastering the car handling a good thing? :erm:

By making the act of controlling that vehicle more involved, i think it makes all the vehicle action that is so central to that series a hell of a lot more exciting and interesting.

Simply put - More can go wrong, so risk and excitement results.

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You can still speed down highway, dodging oncoming traffic, but it feels really dangerous. One thing I would maybe like to see in GTA V is even more realistic accident dynamics – being hurt by impact and maybe thrown out. It could quickly become annoying, but it would also add a lot more danger to reckless driving.

Hmm... that would be kind of cool, but on the other hand they'd have to compensate somehow, probably... and they already mostly leave a whole car width between two lanes so you can go through that narrow gap while only brushing the sides of other cars.

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By making the act of controlling that vehicle more involved, i think it makes all the vehicle action that is so central to that series a hell of a lot more exciting and interesting.

Simply put - More can go wrong, so risk and excitement results.

I've revised my opinions, I think I got it wrong.

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I don't think the driving model in GTAIV is perfect, certainly there are some legitimate problems. Terrifying crashes can happen seemingly without reason because the physics model hitched up somewhere along the way, and bikes never felt particularly great in that game, even with the tweaks made in the add-ons.

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