toblix

GTA V

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What exactly was creepy about it? I'd never considered that anyone would even find it creepy, so I'd like to know what it is I'm missing.

 

It just seems like something that could be in the first Robocop film as satire. I'm still not clear on whether they were taking the piss or if this was just a video they sent to marketers that was then put out to the public. 

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Somebody needs to make an idle thumbs crew (I would but I don't actually own the game)

http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/crews/create

Just out of curiosity, does friend stats pop up on screen whilst you are playing? And are they pulled from this rock star social club (multi platform) or just your friends list

Ah, looking at the website more it looks like you can't compare stats cross platform

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So I was tapping the right dpad to say hi to random pedestrians LIKE YOU DO NO I AM NOT WEIRD DONT JUDGE ME and one lady said "if you do that again, I'll call the cops." And I did. And she did. Then, without me harming anyone or even firing a shot, my one star status got upgraded to a two star status just because (I can only imagine the reason being? all I was doing was running away. on foot) the cops managed to take an innocent out in their attempt to get at me.

 

Pro tip if you die a lot like me: the amount of money that gets deducted when you de is a percentage of your cash on hand (think it's 5%) so if you have extra cash on hand that you don't intend to spend right away, consider sticking it in a stock. so long as the stock price doesn't tank, you basically still have access to that money any time but it doesn't count towards the death penalty calculation.

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It just seems like something that could be in the first Robocop film as satire. I'm still not clear on whether they were taking the piss or if this was just a video they sent to marketers that was then put out to the public. 

 

A bit of both, perhaps. Contrast it with the This Is Multiplayer trailer for Battlefield 4, released the day before GTA V, not too dissimilar style of script as video game trailers tend to go, but with a straight delivery.

 

http://www.youtu.be/1SRxs5xYWuo

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I think the GTA5 video was a slightly misguided attempt to be straightforward with gamers. The delivery was monotonous, the footage was right off a PS3 (unlike the screenshots they presumably took off a PC or next-gen console), and it just showed proper gameplay along with the facts.

 

Personally I'd prefer something a bit more exciting, but I guess when you have a game that speaks for itself you don't need to pull the usual trailer tricks.

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So I was tapping the right dpad to say hi to random pedestrians LIKE YOU DO NO I AM NOT WEIRD DONT JUDGE ME and one lady said "if you do that again, I'll call the cops." And I did. And she did. Then, without me harming anyone or even firing a shot, my one star status got upgraded to a two star status just because (I can only imagine the reason being? all I was doing was running away. on foot) the cops managed to take an innocent out in their attempt to get at me.

 

This sort of thing keeps happening to me; I'll be doing literally nothing but standing near a person, and then suddenly they freak out and I have a wanted level for some reason. I'm not sure if it's because I was playing as Trevor and he creeps people out or what, but it's pretty annoying.

 

I didn't know you could say hi to pedestrians though; that's great.

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It'd be hilarious if pedestrians are now persistent and remember you. Imagine what it'd be like after 50 hours of play and practically everyone has seen you being an asshole at some point or other.

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This sort of thing keeps happening to me; I'll be doing literally nothing but standing near a person, and then suddenly they freak out and I have a wanted level for some reason. I'm not sure if it's because I was playing as Trevor and he creeps people out or what, but it's pretty annoying.

I didn't know you could say hi to pedestrians though; that's great.

You are in the wrong neighborhood. If you are Franklin and you stand near Family, they'll be like "What's up Franklin."

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What exactly was creepy about it? I'd never considered that anyone would even find it creepy, so I'd like to know what it is I'm missing.

The combination of the script being written like a mock review and the delivery of it, which sound like a broker trying to sell you a house. I think it's that sly optimistic tone of her voice that automatically makes me suspicious.

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It's primarily the smooth robotic delivery paired with lines like 'beautiful, diverse, sprawling satirical world with tons to see and do.' It's a cacophony of ideas and mechanics filtered through a lexicon of marketing lingo that proposes it as something normal and to be expected. They mention greed, then follow it quickly with cars clothes stocks and houses. Even the fact that it's a woman's voice in a game dominated by male ones kind of rubs me the wrong way. It has, after all, long been an established sales tactic to use women to sell a product designed for men (car shows, axe body spray, booth models).

 

I wouldn't use the word creepy, but I was definitely unnerved by the pitch and tone (matched with the content) of that video after watching it.

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After stealing a car to get back to the apartment and immediately wrecking it, having a gun-fight and getting away again in another car, I cruised the rest of trip back listening to the radio and obeying traffic law. The drive took about ten minutes and I used the hood-cam for proper challenge. At the stop lights, I looked around, made judgements about the people pulled up to the light next to me.

When I parked the car under the apartment at Vespuci Beach (or whatever), I got out of the car and just kinda took a breath. In the quiet, I could hear the car's engine and frame pinging as it cooled down.

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Completing the third triathalon took me over half an hour. After I got to the finish line, I found out my bike had been impounded, so I hired a cab to take me to the car impound. It was a 15 minute cab ride, and I alternated between checking out the city as twighlight turned to evening and dicking about on my smartphone. It felt very meta.

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It's primarily the smooth robotic delivery paired with lines like 'beautiful, diverse, sprawling satirical world with tons to see and do.' It's a cacophony of ideas and mechanics filtered through a lexicon of marketing lingo that proposes it as something normal and to be expected. They mention greed, then follow it quickly with cars clothes stocks and houses. Even the fact that it's a woman's voice in a game dominated by male ones kind of rubs me the wrong way. It has, after all, long been an established sales tactic to use women to sell a product designed for men (car shows, axe body spray, booth models).

 

I wouldn't use the word creepy, but I was definitely unnerved by the pitch and tone (matched with the content) of that video after watching it.

 

I still don't get it. All I see is, frankly, people determined to be creeped out by a commercial, something you see and hear every day of your life a thousand times over. Maybe I'll never get it. :wacko:

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I still don't get it. All I see is, frankly, people determined to be creeped out by a commercial, something you see and hear every day of your life a thousand times over. Maybe I'll never get it. :wacko:

 

To be fair, it's a fairly decent explanation of the reaction. I think it's a little unfair to say people are "determined to be creeped out by a commercial."

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It wasn't ever enough of a sticking point to be brought up of its own accord. I merely mentioned it to explain why I found Leigh's audio "review" (which adopts the same super-smooth tone) to be so on point.

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I have voraciously consumed the content of this video game. Here are some thoughts. I'm trying to spoiler-proof the right stuff, but I probably missed a lot. Read with caution, and please message me if there's an egregious spoiler that needs blocking.

 

I really enjoyed the multi narrative aspect. It was my favorite part of L.A. Noire, Im glad it's here in GTA V too. There were certain missions early on where the characters intersect with each others lives in such a way that was compelling and fun. Near the end of the story,

the narrative is stretched a little thin, the plot begins to overstay its welcome, the character dynamic between Michael and Trevor becomes especially repetitive. This is sort of normal and expected from my experience in GTA games, at least GTA IV which I know best. Nikko's story becomes repetitive around the 3/5th's mark. So this is an improvement.

 

The multi-part Heist missions are great, and reminiscent of research for Assassins Creed 1 research missions, in a good way. They are not super interactive, each has 2-5 variables of plan of attack, and selection of support crew which allegedly changes the way missions pan out.

 

Most missions keep the tone of a 80's action movie, which supports using all sorts of vehicles and extreme setups, with early missions having a pretty front loaded variety of vehicles. The implicit violence could have had better efforts to walk the audience into the business of mass murdering the community, with two specific instances where I thought 'this is some gross violence':

The first was an early mission with Trevor and Lamar, Lamar's first shot on a guy at the drop of the hat was disconcerting. ...The following 3,000 murders I committed I was pretty desensitized to, but that first death is always weirdest. And all the cutscene deaths of supporting cast. They can't just spend 5K to repair their injuries like my three characters?

 

The racial nature of most gangs is really aggravating to me.

The Ortuga, Balla, Triad gangs are a small step away from being blanket Mexican, Black, and Chinese gangs. Redneck and Hipster class warfare hate crimes, no need to dress that up too much. These archetypal gangs are a historic part of the series, and I suppose it is representative of real life crime life, but it's still bothersome to me. more on this in the Rampage section below. The second is Trevor's torturing sequence, which I rushed through. There's some voice over humor to lighten the scene, but barely.

 

The way the game frames certain more 'arcadey' missions is interesting.

The first time you are introduced to a Rampage mission is a hallucination Michael has where aliens are attacking him en mass. Later on you have the first of 8ish rampages with Trevor. Michael's hallucination took the edge off the goofiness and horror of this Rampage activity. And it opens a small door to it all being in Trevor's head, which it is in a way since he rampages with next-to-no provocation, besides racial or caste bias or being called 'chicken' or some such. Trevor's rampages are basically all extensive hate crimes, and Michael's hallucination rampage helps take a huge edge off that.

 

Then there's the first mission with Dom.

Dom is an absurdist extreme athlete that has you parachuting onto bicycles and such insanity. The first mission with Dom has you following a dog who you psychically communicate with who leads you to Dom, after which the dog disappears. It sets a scene of unreality nicely.

 

There's a lot of collectables.

4 types, with 50 instances each. Normally I ignore these, but I am so enamored with helicoptering or flying around, I took the time to find at least the 50 'spaceship parts', and enjoyed doing it. It was a decent excuse to explore nooks of this neat huge world that the missions hadn't walked me through. Actually the amount of collectables leads me to believe they are still-born missions. The 'Social Club' website has a checklist specifically for certain of the more esoteric collectables. It was as if they didn't have time to even introduce the scrap paper collectables, at least I dont recall it being introduced. Actually what's fascinating about this checklist is how it can track what collectable you have in real time. They are paying attention to a lot of data in your game at that Social Club.

 

There are certain specific aspects of GTAIV that I missed.

In Ballad of Gay Tony and Lost and the Damned and maybe Nikko, I forget, you can call your friends and request they drop off a car for you. This keeps you from running errands to pick up cars and let's you do the more fun... errands. There was definitely enough support cast to allow this- Michael's son, Franklin's friend Lamar, Trevor's friend Wade. On top of that, the Car Company never works for Franklin after he becomes the owner of it.

 

There was a loop in the game mid-story where I was obsessed with buying the Cab Company

The game seemed designed to keep Franklin from earning tons of money, missions never pay out well for him. Maybe that's true across the board and I just wanted the Cab Company... a lot. And the existence of high priced properties to buy offered a mechanical motivation to turn to crime and perform the story mission heists, which was a neat feeling of ludo-narrative harmony. I did try running Cabs for the cab company, but the pay out was too little. After a while I stopped returning stolen purses, people never pay out big rewards. If I could just transfer money between characters, the way the characters can do in cutscenes, I'd have bought that Car Company a little earlier. Franklin's Los Santos property in the desert is better anyway, but I forget the price difference.

 

Tried to mess with the stock market, but no huge turn outs. This game has not helped my cynical view of stock markets.

 

Driving feels nice, not as wobbly and wild as GTAIV, more reminiscent of Sleeping Dogs, but not nearly as toy-car feeling. What Sleeping Dogs obviated to me was the need for not just good car driving, but a dense and varied map. Which this or any GTA is all about. 

 

The last weird thing is the undocumented tackle animation, where when running forward and hitting (X)jump then (B)punch, you cancel your jump animation and flail forward, face planting or tumbling away. It is fun slap stick, but seems like a un-polished thing they kept in from LA Noire or specific parts of GTA IV. I don't recall tackling being an all the time thing in those two?

 

For a game about driving cars around big cities like a jerk, this one is pretty neat.

ATV's and bicycles are very satisfying. The Mallard plane is super maneuverable. Haven't managed to steal anything off the military base outside of missions yet. So no jet fighter experience.

 

As for women characters and the way they're treated or portrayed,

Franklin's life seems to have the most interesting women. His aunt Denise and towing boss Tonya are pretty empowered and thought out characters and both say some funny stuff, and neither revert to the less interesting archetypes of 'slut' or 'mother'. Michael's wife and daughter are less interesting, but they're not totally annoying. I was most offended by the epilogue introduction of Trevor's mother. I guess the humor . Oh yeah and strip clubs. Skeevy.

 

Technically, I do notice pop-ins, especially at the peripheral vision when turning quickly. Only occasionally do I crash into an object as it pops-in right in front of me, but I'm off roading at those points anyway so it's of acceptable.

 

As for the dry sales pitch, I am creeped out by all advertising. All of it. It is creepy. I don't need to be determined for it to irk me, advertising is creepy by design.

 

Hopefully that wasn't too spoiler-y, or too verbose, or too repetitive of existing input. 

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I don't know what it says about me (other than I have maybe watched Reservoir Dogs too often), but my first impulse when clothing shops opened up is to go grab a black/dark grey suit for each character. As if you can't be a serious business criminal if you aren't wearing a suit. I even did it with Trevor despite his missions (right when you unlock him) being all way the hell far away from the nearest Poisonby's.

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For some reason I always end up putting a grey/white beard on any character I can in any game and making them as muscular as possible. I clearly have fantasies of being some old ass kicker.

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Tried to mess with the stock market, but no huge turn outs. This game has not helped my cynical view of stock markets.

As I understand it, the main way to leverage this is in a series of

assassination

missions (which I haven't got to yet) where it becomes clear that completing the mission will hurt one stock, so you go and load up on its direct competitor for mad profitz. Thematically I think it makes sense that playing the stocks "fairly" is for chumps and the only way to really make money out of it is by rigging the game.

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Lvl 99, that's very true...

The one time I almost pulled off one of Lester's trading schemes, I could have made 2,000ish dollars off the stocks I had, but I decided to risk it another day. Well the stock went straight to it's original price. So those are literally day trades. There's all the data about record highs and lows for each stock which I didn't account for.

 

And totally true about making money legally being discouraged through low profits.

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Wikipedia Brown came through as usual! I started the Bluray version, and it installed itself and resumed my last save. I wonder if I'll actually see a performance difference, and if I do, was it the rebuilding or the Bluray?

My reputation is intact! 

 

I'm glad it worked. Have you had a chance to play much since then? If so, any noticeable improvement?

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I haven't seen buildings pop in and out since, so that's a definite improvement. The framerate is still weirdly uneven, though, but I guess that's deliberate, to make me hungry for the proper, next-gen versions.

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Lvl 99, that's very true...

The one time I almost pulled off one of Lester's trading schemes, I could have made 2,000ish dollars off the stocks I had, but I decided to risk it another day. Well the stock went straight to it's original price. So those are literally day trades. There's all the data about record highs and lows for each stock which I didn't account for.

That happened with me three times in a row i waited a day and back down to normal if not decreased, even though the company i had taken out was still lossing share price. Doesnt make sense. Also ive finished the main story and not once was i required to fly that fighter jet, is that down to my decission making in heists?

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