The story lines have been getting more and more shallow. Simple cooperative heists, killings, theft, etc, with very predictable gang assertion themes.
They are investing far more time and effort into "online" - the leaks confirmed this. "Open worlds" lend themselves to shallow micro-stories.
Maybe I'm being a grumpy old man, but in video game history, the best games were those that had complex character development, and novel worlds that supported a deep and thoughtful plot - something that would make the player have some emotional investment in.
I don't see any evidence of that in recent GTA games.
Rockstar has a jaw-droppingly great track record, and I can understand giving them the benefit of the doubt and having super high expectations. They're one of the few entities that has earned that respect.
However with some of the trends in the gaming industry, as well as the heavier focus on multiplayer and transactions that nickel-and-dime customers, I'd personally temper my expectations about any future titles to avoid disappointment.
In general, pre-ordering isn’t a great idea. Money is worth more now than in the future, and the quality and price of the game does not change significantly between the last day to preorder and the first day reviews drop.
You’re absolutely right, I’m done preordering games. I didn’t do it much anyway, but nowadays it’s just not worth it. The most recent and egregious example that comes to my mind was the latest Battlefield. My goodness was that a turd, and lots of people felt rightfully burned after preordering that game and essentially getting a totally unfinished product.
This is what happens when game companies basically set their revenue targets based on preorders, and games as a product are non-refundable.
It's very easy to imagine a bean counter saying "we hit our preorder target, let's cut back our development budget now, release it, and we've already basically maximized our profits on this.
The state of the game industry at large is pretty gross as a result of a lot of the money incentives not lining up around building great games.
The problem is TakeTwo is a shit house on fire just like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision so it feels like the entrenched leadership at Rockstar has been beating back the TakeTwo culture but it's always a losing battle so when does it finally break. (See Blizzard and Bioware)
The basic decision to make the heists a focal point of the game - drawing on the reaction to "Three Leaf Clover" from GTA IV - was a good one, yet it did make the overall experience feel shorter. A series of three short stories as opposed to one long arc.
Whereas in GTA IV, by the time you confront Dimitri on the island, I felt as if something was really accomplished and it was about revenge for what had taken place, over many years, not the just the handful of slights by a person whom the main characters got screwed by.
It's all about financial incentives and this far down the pipeline it ain't happening. GTA Online is a multibillion dollar business, GTA V Singleplayer not so much.
Games that followed these incentives to the end of the line joined the hegemonial blob though, becoming indistinct and uninteresting in the long run.
Jack of all Trades, Master of None, but people will buy masters only in the longrun.
And take for example minecraft, which proofed that the whole market is willing to dissappear for years on end to into a simulation were the player can tell its own singleplayer story, uninterested in any content any company has to sell.
One more longterm succesfull open-source sim of that kind without online shop and half the industry is forever gone.
I think you're overestimating what's necessary for online to be successful. GTA V is almost 10 years old and still raking in cash from online. The focus does not need to be on online play for it to be successful, they have billions of dollars in evidence that confirms that.
I would say that GTAV is focused on online play. A lot of the content is only accessible that way, ESPECIALLY the content added after launch. If you look through the list of new missions/locations/vehicles added to the game[1], they're almost exclusively only in GTAO
I have to admit that I got GTA V for free. But still even if I had paid the full price I would have been entirely happy with the single player story line.
I will likely buy next GTA on launch if it launches at same time on PC as consoles.
I wonder if they will be able to maintain a bad boy story line in a world where you are supposed to not offend anyone. I think they will be successful if they do, but I fear they won't and gta6 will be insipid.
You're very free to offend anyone in the real world. "The world" is bigger than the environment curated by big tech from SV and US-media.
Treat yourself to some GTA V radio shows (you'll find them on youtube), Rockstar plays the cultural meta game better than other company, they do legit art playing with the dominant political stereotypes. Rockstar are not in the market of appealing to cowards, their entire brand identity revolves around the exact opposite.
I can only assume you would be surprised by the contents of the aforementioned radio shows (and lots of the scripted conversations in game), because they dealt with this exact topic in 2013 - in depth and par excellence.
GTAs audience explicitly wants an over the top explicit, non-politically correct product.
In the last game, a main character (Trevor) was introduced by stomping an npcs brain into the ground before finding rests of it on his shoe. There is nothing pc about GTA, it takes place in a cynic take on reality that doesn’t respect the common sentimental denominator of marketing departments in the real world.
>Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many of the things people get in trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.
In the context of GTA, I think themes like drugs, violence, and sex is probably safe, but culture war topics like reproductive rights, race (eg. CRT or affirmative action), LGBT rights, or immigration are not.
> culture war topics like reproductive rights, race (eg. CRT or affirmative action), LGBT rights, or immigration are not.
those are exactly the topics GTA has previously touched on/which I recommended to check out the radio shows for, the anecdote wrt Trevor was probably misleading.
I'm fairly certain the person you're replying to is prognosticating about the potential sanitization of the next game. I don't think the content of the older games really impacts that.
I think the person you are replying to is pointing out that the content of the older games, for the most part, aged very well and is more relevant than ever. And this wasn't a coincidence, because if you were paying attention 20+ years ago, you saw the future we were building. Rockstar's writers were paying attention. I expect the content of gta6 to be more prescient than ever.
I think that’s more of a right wing meme than reality. Plenty of TV shows and movies revel in “bad boy” storylines. I think what’s changed is that people expect some actual depth in explaining the motivations of “bad” characters, but I don’t think Rockstar has ever really struggled with that, their last few offerings have had relatively well rounded narratives.
If you actually want to know the answer to your question, go play rdr2.
But suffice it to say, there's a difference between being a rebel and being an asshole. No one likes an anti hero who's insecure and goes around kicking people while they're down, they like conflicted characters who know what it's like to be rejected by society and who stands up for others in the same boat.
It is yet to be seen how the writing will be affected. Let's just see whether or not civilians become a protected class and if prostitution is still a thing. We wont know until the game releases so my recommendation is to not preorder. Worst case, we will always have GTA5.
I actually feel like they've gotten better in terms of story and character development with each iteration. Niko Bellic was one of my all time favorites, and I thought they did a good job balancing 3 characters in GTA V. They're all certainly... over the top, but given what you do in GTA, it makes sense.
This was my only issue with Niko. He was a great character but then the mission ends and I drive away at 100 mph and run over 5 pedestrians and he shouts "I hope you have insurance!" Sure you can play the open-world sections true to the character... But pacifism isn't what you do in GTA :P
The GTA 5 characters were designed better in that regard. Niko had the deeper/more complex story overall, but he's at odds with the gameplay.
I don't disagree with you, a lot of the missions felt like more of the same. And the focus on online has been disappointing, but that just means I haven't played GTA in a few years. I also rarely play any games, so I'm not a very picky gamer, I just like the game mechanics in GTA and being able to roam a big world with interesting details and humor. Sometimes I played it for a few hours without even starting a mission.
I get what you're saying about character development, but at the same time some of my favorite games are Mario 64 and Mirror's Edge. Sometimes I just want to play a shallow game, not take part in a deep story. Most of the story in GTA happens as dialogue in the car when driving to the mission, and I'm usually too distracted to follow along anyway.
Some would say "games are about fun" first and foremost, not to be interactive stories you press x to advance. If anything, the "theatrical" aspect of gaming for this old man has been one the things that has ruined gaming in general (that and hand holding), but thankfully, there are many games out there that hold the "fun" and "challenging" torch, they just often happen to not be triple A titles.
The neat thing about games is that they cover such a broad spectrum of experiences, from what you hold as good to what you casually dismiss (visual novels, walking sims, etc). I agree with you though—even if the biggest triple A game of the month doesn't appeal, there are countless other games out there that fly under the radar and are startlingly good. Unfortunately there are also countless games out there that are startlingly bad. The hard part is figuring out which ones are which :-).
For me, the best games were always those with close to zero story, but great game mechanics. That is mostly true for competitive online games, but stuff like Anno 1602 worked, too.
If I want a story, I read a book or watch a movie. Games don’t need stories and if they have some, the story is usually not interesting to me.
I agree with this. One of my favourite old classics is Baldur's Gate 2 (and the whole "trilogy" series) – it's both very much on-rails and very open at the same time, providing a huge world that you can interact with characters within and do basically anything within some guide rails. Zelda BOTW is another highlight and a fantastic example of video game design. Similarly with The Witcher.
Anything else "AAA" largely seems to be a let-down of micro-transactions or designed to push you into online services. Dragon Age Inquisition, for example, is a pale imitation of those other two. I'm not surprised GTA is going the other way.
I've always been more emotionally invested in games where I make my own plot, which is the genre GTA is supposed to be. I haven't played since GTA 3 but maybe they're providing too much of a story which is unsatisfying? The really open plotless games are so much easier to lose yourself in than a well manicured plot. Like Sid Meier's Pirates back in the early 90's and Mount and Blade Warband
If anything the recent GTA games have had MORE of all that stuff. Earlier GTA games were very much about open world and did not really have a crazy amount of story. The top down ones I do not remember having any story at all (could be wrong)
Personally I’m more nostalgic about games like NHL 95 and PlayStation era Madden. That’s just what my friends and I were playing. Maybe it’s easier for me to enjoy GTA for what it is because that’s more my genre.
> the best games were those that had complex character development, and novel worlds that supported a deep and thoughtful plot - something that would make the player have some emotional investment in.
Highly disagree. I still replay No One Lives Forever (hilarious game) and the Max Payne 1 & 2 every few years. These games had great stories, game play, and characters; last time I replayed them was during the pandemic in 2020.
Then I agree to disagree, playing my childhood games feel like trying to drive a horse cart after having used a 4wd electric car made in 2022. The characters and stories are ok at best but they only feel nice because the rest is absolute dog shit by modern standards
What games are these tho? Gotta give specifics in a thread of specifics. I mean you still see people on twitch playing “classics” all the time. You also have cliques that still routinely play games like mother and chronotrigger on a religious level.
It really depends on the game. I agree with GP that those particular franchises are timeless. DOOM is also imminently replayable as-is. But there are plenty of games that aren't.
> the best games were those that had complex character development, and novel worlds that supported a deep and thoughtful plot - something that would make the player have some emotional investment in.
I think you're confusing games and movies. Most games have no plot and almost no character development beyond art direction.
I think you're confusing movies and books. Most movies have no plot past the Hero's Journey and no character development that can't be translated by a computer into every language on earth.
You should play Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2. RDR2 is basically a choose-your-own-adventure movie. But so much better. I read a lot but I was more emotionally invested in these fictional video game characters than I’ve ever been in characters from a book or a movie.
That's one game, not 'most'. Lots of games don't even have characters at all, let alone character development. It's bizarre for someone to say "most games don't have character development" and someone else says "here is one game that does". This person said "the best games have in depth character development" when it's very rare even in the biggest and most popular games.
They are investing far more time and effort into "online" - the leaks confirmed this. "Open worlds" lend themselves to shallow micro-stories.
Maybe I'm being a grumpy old man, but in video game history, the best games were those that had complex character development, and novel worlds that supported a deep and thoughtful plot - something that would make the player have some emotional investment in.
I don't see any evidence of that in recent GTA games.