Imagine spending years playing San Andreas. GTA IV hasn’t been announced. Your mind races with the possibilities of a new game. You imagine they’re going to do a whole country instead of a few cities. You think of all the mini games, all the weapons, and customization. It is the first “next gen” GTA after all.
Then you have been playing IV for years. GTA V hasn’t been announced. Once again your mind races with possibilities. There is no end to the amount of detail it will have, there is nothing you can’t do, there is no limit to the map.
Now you’ve been playing V for years. Here we go again. But there really isn’t anything to imagine. You know it’s going to be just a bigger map. At least until it gets close to release, where the devs admit the map is the same size as V. They claim it’s okay because there’s more things to do. But all that means is more things to collect, more so-so mini games.
You’ve played RDR2 so you know how much detail it could have. You know they’ll simulate everything. So there can’t be any real surprises. You’ll see more wildlife. Your car windows will fog up. Your character will swat mosquitos.
You know the graphics can be just a little better, not like moving from PS2 to PS3. More reflections, slightly better lighting, a little more detail in the textures.
Now you realize you’re on the plateau. There are no more great heights to surmount.There is only lateral movement from here on out. GTA VI can only be as good as V, with marginal gains in every category, but not exceptional gains in any. You’ll drive from Point A to B. You’ll shoot the gangs. You’ll escort the cars. Everything you have already done.
There is a running theme in culture right now and it’s that large, long-standing franchises are starting to eat shit. They can no longer push the needle. GTA will join them.
GTAV’s character models still very much look like spruced up late 7th gen models though so that’s definitely something they could improve.
The thing that gets me about Rockstar games is that they’re simultaneously hyper-detailed to a ludicrously lavish extent yet incredibly shallow and arcadey because they’re the most popular games in the world and have to be accessible to everyone. They also have a reputation as consequence-free silly sandbox games where you can go on therapeutic murder sprees with miniguns and tanks
I’d just like an open world immersive criminal sim
I just want to be nice to people, and they be nice back to me.
Remember in GTA SA, you could go up to someone and say “Sup, homey?” and he’d fist bump you? I need that in my life again.
Every slight transgression in GTA V escalates beyond wild belief
In RDR1 you actually had a button dedicated to tipping your hat and greeting people, which was funny in Mexico because John Marston barely spoke Spanish.
I didn’t like how over the top GTAV was after GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption which were both more toned down compared to the previous generation of GTA games. I remember there being a backlash against GTA trying to be more grounded in IV and people bemoaning the lack of over-the-top wacky violence so I guess V was an attempt to return to tradition.
That whole style of crass humour feels so thoroughly dated and turn of the millenium now, I wouldn’t mind if they completely ditched it in 6. I still haven’t played it but it seems like RDR2 mostly already did- RDR1 still had slight remnants of that heightened satire