toblix

GTA V

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I keep getting almost excited about the PC port, then I remember how bad Rockstar's writing is and how irritating most of the missions in GTA 4 were.

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Yeah, don't get excited about GTAV for anything but the incredible world they've created. The writing / missions / story is insipid, and remember, you're definitely going to have to torture someone halfway through! Damn though, does it look like a tiny LA.

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Man... I don't know if its because I kept hearing about it and was expecting it, or if games really have turned me into some heartless monster, but the torture scene did nothing to me. I finally got to that part a few days ago, and I had zero reaction to it, it was just another thing I had to do to finish a mission. Some button presses and stuff, so I can move forward.

Looking back on it I kind of feel bad because I didn't feel bad... in my mind at the time it wasn't really anything but an obstacle to get past.

 

:fart:

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I'm glad I didn't bother with GTA: Online now. When they get this and lots more content out it'll be pretty hot doing all that new-gen style.

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After reading all the GTA sex-worker talk in the feminism thread I'm stuck wondering: It is kinda strange that I can't buy hallucinagens in GTA 5 and then have them available for consumption in my inventory. Maybe I didn't get far enough in the game. Gosh, the more I think about this the more confused I am.

The aliens/clowns attacking you scene in obviously an authored event that would take some effort to make possible in other areas, but what about the sky-diving part? Maybe it is an authored event and those visual effects can't be applied everywhere. How long does the pot-high last? Does it stop once you get outdoors?

I would think that buying and ingesting hallucinagens in a place of the player's choosing would be a high (get it?) priority in the GTA games.

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The PC version is now unlocked (in theory, the game's not doing anything although R* allowed preinstalling).

 

I bought this game for 360 and finished, but want to experience the world on PC, with first person view, video creation and mods. I'm not too fussed about progressing the story, just soaking in the world. I don't want to do murders in first person... I saw video of a guy stabbing another guy and that was horrific... I'll be parachuting and doing sweet tricks :D

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This makes me feel bad. It's a PC Gamer article gleefully describing a video from GTA V of a guy stomping on a cat.

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That's a pretty weird video, mostly because of the insight it gives into who is probably quite a messed-up individual. But really, it's no worse than any number of other things you can do in that game, nor is it as bad as something that one of the protagonists does pretty much the moment he's introduced to a guy's head.

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I didn't watch the video, but I think it's an odd thing for PC Gamer to publish. While it's true that there are other equally bad, or worse, things that you can do (and I can think of at least two worse things that Trevor does as part of the story), posting a video saying "look what I can do" for any of those would be in poor taste too, as far as I'm concerned.

 

I spent an age trying to get it to work, but finally managed it by disabling my nvidia graphics card first, then launching the game and quickly enabling it again... good job R* :P!

 

The good news is that when I did finally get in, it looks magnificent :)! I just did the first mission, so I could get to a save point; going into first person mode makes a drastic difference!

 

I often find first person driving in games to be clunky and weird, but it feels really good with a controller; R* have made it so you can seamlessly go from mouse and keyboard on foot to controller in vehicles. Racing through the traffic is a total blast, and probably easier to judge than in 3rd person.

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My GTA5 experience so far

 

At 13:40:

oTGisb6.jpg

 

2 hours and 7DVDs later... the download of 5GB of additional content started.

 

15 minutes ago:

QcIAMQg.png

 

Right now:

FzMUQ6X.png

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Yowch!

Who would have thought that the fastest selling media product of all time would be popular? No need for extra servers around launch :P

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My spendthrift girlfriend treated me to this today. After I thanked/scolded her (yes, I really did, I'm a total ungrateful shit), I noticed that it's GIGANTIC and won't be downloaded for about a week.

 

But when it's finished, does anybody want to do any heists with an ungrateful shit?

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I'm pretty amazed at how bad the GTA Online experience is on PC, considering it's been out so long on consoles. There's a bunch of very obvious UI bugs, like preferences settings being ignored or not working as expected, the way the game transitions between single player and online mode, and the various online session is slow, error-prone and just a big pain. The absolute worst though, is, after the complete travesty that is the GTA IV multiplayer UI, they went and made something even worse for GTA V. The way you create/join sessions and invite people to jobs or heists or whatever – it's a mess! Nobody understands it completely, it suddenly works differently for no reason and if you make a mistake it punishes you by starting to try to attempt to begin initating the process of looking to see if there's an available session it can start to connect to that has a bunch of griefing trolls in it. Last night we figured out that creating playlists of jobs is a pretty good way of keeping things going, but even then it's brittle as fuck; people don't get invites, or they can't connect, or they connect and then get disconnected, or the game crashes and then tells you you're being a "bad sport" for having the game crash while you're on a job.

 

It's super fun, though.

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Yeah, GTA Online could be SO FUCKING AMAZING if only it weren't broken. I love what they've done with the actual game. It's like a complete other GTA game that also lets me do stupid shit with others. And then matchmaking, stability, and pretty much anything UI related makes me want to rip my hair out. WHY, Rockstar? Why do you do this?

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The terrible UI isn't incredible in and of itself, but it's the fact that they've made it so you can replace your guy with a chicken and everything works, and if you rev your engine at a red light some aggressive AIs will race you, and if you wear shades in first person there's a tint to the screen, but inviting a friend to a race is 20 minutes of fucking torture.

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Maybe we are doing this wrong? Maybe we are just supposed to go to the traffic lights and both rev our engines and it puts us in the right server?

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The terrible UI isn't incredible in and of itself, but it's the fact that they've made it so you can replace your guy with a chicken and everything works, and if you rev your engine at a red light some aggressive AIs will race you, and if you wear shades in first person there's a tint to the screen, but inviting a friend to a race is 20 minutes of fucking torture.

 

This is a perfect way to describe it.

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Hi guys. I spent some time thinking about why I enjoy GTA V so much, and I wanted to share that here. Please feel free to pick apart my thoughts and also my writing style! I welcome your feedback. (There is a tldr at the end)

 

The PC release of the fifth entry in the Grand Theft Auto series has received significant critical acclaim, and rightly so. GTA V on PC offers extremely impressive and well-optimized graphical fidelity, along with many other small (but important) improvements unique to the PC platform such as support for on-the-fly switching between controller types. 


However, the changes I’ve enjoyed the most are not those unique to the PC. Specifically, the modifications to how police pursue and interact with the player, and the introduction of multiple protagonists in a single storyline, are both outstanding improvements. Between them, these two features have solved many of the problems present at the very core of previous iterations in the Grand Theft Auto series. 

Most notably, the introduction of three protagonists has opened up some exciting new gameplay and storytelling opportunities. Not being shackled to a single character for the entire duration of the storyline has allowed for more consistent pacing, including the elimination of many uninteresting tasks inherently present in GTA-style games, and also greater narrative and mechanical variety. 

Novels and other long-form media are often written from the viewpoint of more than one character for a very good reason; stories centered on a single protagonist are, by default, restricted to a narrower narrative tract in order to remain true to the personality of that one character. The inclusion of multiple protagonists in GTA V solves this problem by allowing writers to move from one thematic style to another as the narrative switches between characters, such as moving from the TV soap-opera of Michael’s life to the meth-fueled thrill ride that defines Trevor’s character. Compare this to the one-note immigrant story of Niko Bellic, (GTA IV’s player-character) and the benefits of a multi-character approach speak for themselves. 

Further, the different themes and concepts woven through each unique story allow for a wider variety of gameplay experience. The types of activities Trevor (who is certainly insane) would engage in don’t necessarily fit with Franklin’s calmer, more rational persona, or vice-versa. Having a stable of different playable characters available broadens the mission types designers can choose from, as they no longer have to match an entire game’s worth of content to a single character’s personality. 

Another benefit of allowing the player to switch between characters as they desire (or as the story demands) is the assurance that players are never stuck resolving the slow or uninteresting parts of a given story beat. As soon as one encounter is winding down, players can simply switch to another character. This removes many hum-drum tasks such as driving back to town after completing a mission on the far side of the gameworld, or feeling stuck because you totalled your car far away from major transportation routes, and now have to spend time walking back to a road to find another vehicle.

Other, similar, open-word games have also tried to solve this problem. Most notably, recent iterations in the Saints Row series have tried to do something similar by allowing players to summon transportation out of thin air by “calling a hommie” to have a vehicle delivered. However, this approach brings with it its own set of disadvantages. Namely, the very nature of such a system (having a friend able to deliver any car to you anywhere in the world in 5 seconds flat) has forced the Saints Row series down a particularly fanciful narrative path to accommodate the obvious impossibility of such a system. 

The real-world impossibility of Saints Row’s “call a hommie” feature forces players to accept that the game is, indeed, completely make-believe; suspension of disbelief becomes impossible. Because of this, that series is forced into a certain type of playful, light-hearted storytelling. While this is hardly a problem in and of itself, it does limit the options available to the design team from a narrative and thematic perspective. The way Saints Row has attempted to cut out unpleasant activities for players does solve some problems, but at the cost of limiting narrative options. 

By contrast, the multiple protagonist system in GTA does not invite the limitations incurred in recent Saints Row games; Rockstar North remains free to choose their own narrative style. Nearly any story can be told in a way that involves multiple characters, whereas storytelling options become more limited when clearly impossible and fantastical systems are introduced instead. Effectively, GTA and Saints Row have both tried to solve the same problem that is inherently present in open world games, (mitigating the amount of time the player is forced to spend on uninteresting tasks) but GTA V has done so in a way with few downsides, while the tact taken by the Saints Row team has pigeon-holed them in to a specific type of narrative arch. 

Another important and, I think, under-valued change introduced by GTA V is that of sight cones for police units that are pursuing the player. Previous titles simply had a radius placed around each pursuing cop, which would cause all police in the area to “agro” on the player if the player entered that area. Now, in GTA V, police have actual sight cones which respect line-of-sight.

While older titles had players effectively playing tag with police, GTA V lets you play hide-and-seek. This is a much more engaging mechanic that feels very appropriate when attempting to evade pursuit. More importantly, breaking line-of-site and then ditching your car to hide is *really fun* compared to just flooring the gas and trying to put distance between you and the cops. Suddenly, one of the features which is most commonly interacted with by players of a GTA games has had a whole extra layer of enjoyable and appropriate depth and complexity added; it’s made being pursued by police an enjoyable activity in and of itself, instead of a boring inevitability. 

This may seem like a small change, but given the prevalence of run-ins with the police in GTA, *any* change to this system is likely to have a significant impact on how players interact with the game. The addition of sightlines for cops has changed a system that resides at the heart of the GTA franchise and, in my eyes, greatly improved the entirety of the game.

Between the increased variety afforded by the inclusion of multiple characters, and the improvements to the critically important police pursuit system, Rockstar North has delivered some really intelligent improvements in GTA V. The bevy of PS4, Xbox One, and PC features offer further refinement to an already great entry in a long-standing series. Whether you’re new to the GTA series or a long-standing fan, there has never been a better time to jump back in.

 

tldr: I think that GTA V is really good and the most important changes are 3 protagonists (which helps with pacing and variety) and the changes to how cops pursue players. (Which make a core GTA mechanic far more enjoyable to interact with)

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It's complete wank how you can't play it at all unless you have an active internet connection. This shit is not acceptable, ever, and if I could get a refund on this game I would do so.

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Actually it seems to be a slightly weirder system that only requires you to be online once a day or once a computer restart, I'm not sure which. This comes from me having no internet last month and playing the game by connecting to my phone's internet once in the morning.

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However, I should say thank you for that information. I'm not sure if my contract allows tethering, but it's worth a try

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