Swing sets of Death like things. A revolving door that sends you into orbit if you touch it in juuuuuuust the right spot. A toll booth arm that can flip a tank. Things like these can make for some interesting short lived adventures.
0
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited August 2012
Woops;
Edit: Tell you what, you get the mods to let me spoiler my post while in edit and not say "Are you an idiot just [Spoil] [/Spoil] then we'll all be happy what about that?
the jump from mass effect 1 to 2 was incredible in terms of gameplay, i wouldn't mind seeing GTA5 acknowledge that the shooty bang bang is not something that goes in a script as "insert firefight here".
if you can't avoid making your plot take precedence over the game, for whatever reason, you could at least make it as exhilarating as possible, uncharted 2 style. a good way to keep basic mechanic fresh: the train level in uncharted 2. a bad way to keep mechanics fresh: using rifles that all had almost identical handling in RDR. and then asking me to shoot comical amount of mexicans to death while i'm floating down a river. vanilla as hell and i was doing the same shit up to the end of the game.
There is far too mush hate for the gta iv driving physics. I much prefer it to games where your car tires have infinite gripo and you can turn on a dime at full speed. The lower end vehicles worse exaggeratedly worse to allow for the sportier vehicles to have comparatively better handling. With a few minutes to acclimate, you could get around nearly as fast and look all the flashier for it. The only thing that was really wrong with it is the ai vehicles didn't have to follow the same physics model.
I will champion this cause forever, the cars in GTA IV were wonderful to drive. Yes they're not immediately welcoming because that is boring as hell. Every car has a different weight and grip, they all feel unique, and learning how to manage that and drive at high speed was an absolute delight because they all feel so wonderfully tactile. It just helps you connect with the world even more.
yeah boo hoo they don't do perfect 90 degree handbrake turns anymore. what the cars do do is much, much more interesting now.
And the motorbikes in Lost and Damned were a tonne of fun to ride. I will admit that they were a gigantic step away from the realism I love in the cars, but that made them actual, viable modes of transport that allowed you to dart through traffic like a nimble rocket. Basically whatever else they do, keep the vehicles as they are with just the right amount of challenge required in their handling.
bikes were great. especially to go way out of your way driving a car to knock a dude off his bike. or having the same shit happen to you when an SUV cuts you up on the bridge.
I think their storytelling missteps aren't a chronic condition. The only game where it was a serious problem for me was GTA IV. I haven't played LA Noire or Max Payne 3, but I felt RDR and the GTA IV DLC got the storytelling right. Basically, the things the player cared about were the same things the character cared about.
In RDR, you meet the man you're hunting down in the first half an hour. John Marston's character is slowly but deliberately fleshed out through the initial set of missions. The story loses a bit of focus in Mexico, but the final third has you directly interacting with the the men responsible for your current situation, and the man responsible for shaping your past. The game doesn't just tell you that you have to kill this man because of some tragedy that occurred years before the story is set. It shows you why you're in this situation, and how desperate the protagonist is to get out of it. It even lets you have a glimpse of the happy ending you've been working so hard for. And the final line of missions goes beyond "show, don't tell" to "do, don't show". These missions have you performing the most basic set of tasks, and they're the best missions in the game. Contrast this with GTA IV. I found the story very compelling up until the point you have to escape to Algonquin. The life of your little family is in danger because of your actions against a fully-realized antagonist. After that, the narrative just goes off the rails. Characters keep coming and going, asking you to kill this or that person, and you keep doing it, for a pie in the sky goal of moving up in the world or finding that special someone. This is where the pathos of the story is supposed to come from. Niko's passionate search for vengeance and hopefully, redemption. Instead, it ends up being nothing more than a macguffin. You spend two-thirds of the game committing murders for random people in the hope that they'll give you the number of the guy who might know Mr. Macguffin's neighbour. I know they try to raise the question of whether he only kills because he has to or because he's a natural born killer. They even let you choose the outcome of your actions, of the toll it's taken on Niko's soul. But I never saw the point of those choices. For fuck's sake, if it were up to me, I wouldn't have killed half the people I was told to. They keep telling us that Niko doesn't want to be a killer, but he's never shown trying to be anything else, except at the very beginning. The problem isn't that the story contradicts the open-world elements of the game. It's that it contradicts itself!
Both RDR and GTA IV had the same basic story, of a man with a dark past trying to settle down, but being forced to repeat his sins to have a chance to redeem himself. The difference was that everything in RDR was geared towards that theme, even the setting. With GTA IV, they wanted to tell a particular story, but weren't willing to let go of their old GTA tropes. And I'm not talking about the mission design. I'm talking about the how and why you get those missions. They tried to fit a square peg in a round hole.
The DLC didn't have these problems, I felt. They didn't change their formula to better suit that kind of story. Instead, they gave us stories that better fit that established formula. They found a happy medium between the wackiness of Area 69s and jetpacks and the heavy-handedness of IV. That, and the fantastic work they did in RDR, has me incredibly excited for GTA V.
well people aren't really critiquing the story, it's just the lack of interactivity in an interactive medium. you admit as much yourself- RDR, only at the end, lets you take part in the story, rather than watch it happen. rockstar is following "show don't tell" when that's an idiom meant for movies- games are interactive. do, don't show. but rockstar have a very clear vision of what they want done, and they don't want to risk you not doing that, so they'd rather you didn't do. or at least, what you do shouldn't impact the story in a significant way.
this shit is egregious in games like call of duty, where certain enemies are invincible because they haven't fired their plot related rockets at you yet (for a quick example) but in a sandbox game it's all the more noticeable. every time you're in a car chase, (wasting hundreds of rounds of ammo because it's not clear that they can't be harmed, because this is a plot chase and they want you to see the set-piece they made) , and the game tells you that you lost because they got away when, in reality, they only got 200 meters ahead of you on a straight motorway, this is rockstar selling the interactive nature of the medium down the river for the sake of trying to make the gameplay cinematic.
wouldn't it be just as cool if they trusted the player to find their own solution? a detour that leads to a later intercept because they learned the layout of the city so well? an unlucky driver happens to cut the guy off in traffic leading to a multi-car pile up? noticing a nearby ramp, you land your car on top of the guy and kill him instantly? a sneakily placed explosive? a liberal application of bullets to the tyres, and then you get out and finish off the concussed driver by shooting him through the windshield and then walk off?
all of these are off the top of my head, but are emergent solutions that sandbox games are perfect for presenting. not rigid, slow, storytelling. why not trust the player to think of a smarter, more interesting solution given the mechanics?
Action hijacking
Some sort of free running/climbing
press button to warp to shore
A feeling of ownership for certain vehicles
checkpoints in missions
Ability to instantly restart a mission if I fail (not having to drive back to the mission start if I die/time out)
No missions where you have to follow a car at a distance and then it takes an improbably convoluted route to its destination just to pad the mission length
jets
jetpacks
parachutes
I think their storytelling missteps aren't a chronic condition. The only game where it was a serious problem for me was GTA IV. I haven't played LA Noire or Max Payne 3, but I felt RDR and the GTA IV DLC got the storytelling right. Basically, the things the player cared about were the same things the character cared about.
In RDR, you meet the man you're hunting down in the first half an hour. John Marston's character is slowly but deliberately fleshed out through the initial set of missions. The story loses a bit of focus in Mexico, but the final third has you directly interacting with the the men responsible for your current situation, and the man responsible for shaping your past. The game doesn't just tell you that you have to kill this man because of some tragedy that occurred years before the story is set. It shows you why you're in this situation, and how desperate the protagonist is to get out of it. It even lets you have a glimpse of the happy ending you've been working so hard for. And the final line of missions goes beyond "show, don't tell" to "do, don't show". These missions have you performing the most basic set of tasks, and they're the best missions in the game. Contrast this with GTA IV. I found the story very compelling up until the point you have to escape to Algonquin. The life of your little family is in danger because of your actions against a fully-realized antagonist. After that, the narrative just goes off the rails. Characters keep coming and going, asking you to kill this or that person, and you keep doing it, for a pie in the sky goal of moving up in the world or finding that special someone. This is where the pathos of the story is supposed to come from. Niko's passionate search for vengeance and hopefully, redemption. Instead, it ends up being nothing more than a macguffin. You spend two-thirds of the game committing murders for random people in the hope that they'll give you the number of the guy who might know Mr. Macguffin's neighbour. I know they try to raise the question of whether he only kills because he has to or because he's a natural born killer. They even let you choose the outcome of your actions, of the toll it's taken on Niko's soul. But I never saw the point of those choices. For fuck's sake, if it were up to me, I wouldn't have killed half the people I was told to. They keep telling us that Niko doesn't want to be a killer, but he's never shown trying to be anything else, except at the very beginning. The problem isn't that the story contradicts the open-world elements of the game. It's that it contradicts itself!
Both RDR and GTA IV had the same basic story, of a man with a dark past trying to settle down, but being forced to repeat his sins to have a chance to redeem himself. The difference was that everything in RDR was geared towards that theme, even the setting. With GTA IV, they wanted to tell a particular story, but weren't willing to let go of their old GTA tropes. And I'm not talking about the mission design. I'm talking about the how and why you get those missions. They tried to fit a square peg in a round hole.
The DLC didn't have these problems, I felt. They didn't change their formula to better suit that kind of story. Instead, they gave us stories that better fit that established formula. They found a happy medium between the wackiness of Area 69s and jetpacks and the heavy-handedness of IV. That, and the fantastic work they did in RDR, has me incredibly excited for GTA V.
well people aren't really critiquing the story, it's just the lack of interactivity in an interactive medium. you admit as much yourself- RDR, only at the end, lets you take part in the story, rather than watch it happen. rockstar is following "show don't tell" when that's an idiom meant for movies- games are interactive. do, don't show. but rockstar have a very clear vision of what they want done, and they don't want to risk you not doing that, so they'd rather you didn't do. or at least, what you do shouldn't impact the story in a significant way.
this shit is egregious in games like call of duty, where certain enemies are invincible because they haven't fired their plot related rockets at you yet (for a quick example) but in a sandbox game it's all the more noticeable. every time you're in a car chase, (wasting hundreds of rounds of ammo because it's not clear that they can't be harmed, because this is a plot chase and they want you to see the set-piece they made) , and the game tells you that you lost because they got away when, in reality, they only got 200 meters ahead of you on a straight motorway, this is rockstar selling the interactive nature of the medium down the river for the sake of trying to make the gameplay cinematic.
wouldn't it be just as cool if they trusted the player to find their own solution? a detour that leads to a later intercept because they learned the layout of the city so well? an unlucky driver happens to cut the guy off in traffic leading to a multi-car pile up? noticing a nearby ramp, you land your car on top of the guy and kill him instantly? a sneakily placed explosive? a liberal application of bullets to the tyres, and then you get out and finish off the concussed driver by shooting him through the windshield and then walk off?
all of these are off the top of my head, but are emergent solutions that sandbox games are perfect for presenting. not rigid, slow, storytelling. why not trust the player to think of a smarter, more interesting solution given the mechanics?
I think the game developing community, as a whole, is still trying to wrap its head around the "do, don't show" mentality. And as long as we're getting cutscene-driven storytelling, I don't think we're going to make any major breakthroughs in interactive narratives.
But, as far as gameplay goes, you're right. There are so many opportunities for them to do something cool, if they just showed a little imagination. How about a mission in which you have to kill the guy, but make it look like an accident. And that's it. They leave it to you to figure it out. You could trail him for a couple of minutes, observe his routine, study the environment, and plan accordingly.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with scripted missions either. It's just that they run the most boring script imaginable.
Action hijacking
Some sort of free running/climbing
press button to warp to shore A feeling of ownership for certain vehicles
checkpoints in missions
Ability to instantly restart a mission if I fail (not having to drive back to the mission start if I die/time out)
No missions where you have to follow a car at a distance and then it takes an improbably convoluted route to its destination just to pad the mission length
jets
jetpacks
parachutes
All of these but especially THAT. Man, for a series called Grand Theft AUTO, cars in IV were completely personality-free nothings just good for a bit until you've smashed its engine too bad to start (which was a really cool mechanic, actually). Not to mention the God damned "parking spaces" at your safehouses, where AI would smash into it, push it out the spot and lose you the vehicle. Why don't any of my apartments have underground parking or something? Where's my valet or doorman or whatever Ritz-y places have?
I don't expect them to go back to GTA 2 levels of car-stuff (funtimes with mines and oil), or even Saints Row level (spike-tires would be neat, though), but the very least they could do is San Andreas level. Let me toss in some hydraulics, a nice paint job (with loooooottsss of choice there) and tune-up my vehicle to my liking. I want a car that I've specifically set-up for racing, like a tuned-up sports car, then I'd get myself a more durable vehicle to take on missions, so and so on.
The only car I remotely cared about was that Infernus you got as a gift in IV. Except, I didn't really care much, once I realized it wasn't the only one in the game. Glad it was an Infernus, though, that car has been my favourite GTA vehicle since III. I also think III's vehicles had the nicest looks to 'em, but I have no idea how they'd translate into realistic-appearance.
Edit: Oh! Very important lesson from Saints Row: MAKE SURE MY CARS ARE PERMANENTLY IN MY GARAGE. If my car goes boom, I'll just pay an exorbitant fee to have it fixed. If I have to leave my awesome vehicle during a mission, just have it back in my garage. Just use the SR system of garages, dang nab it!
Even The Saboteur and Mafia II used a similar system. This is an important thing to have if your series has a car reference for a name.
Thinking about the 'cars in cutscenes and scripted sequences don't behave according to the physics of the world', I remember downloading a max payne mod for gta3, which gave you a bunch of different weapons, and made everything all covered in snow. This also made the roads extremely slippery. There's one mission where you take someone to a nightclub, and then the cops show up, and you have to flee the area. Only this time, because of the slippery roads, during the cutscene where the cops show up, they just slided all over the place. First of all, they just didn't show up for a bit, when they were supposed to round a corner right at the beginning, then, they slowly slink into view, speed up, and then massively overshoot the turn-off to get to the nightclub, and basically just disappear. It took a couple more minutes for them to show up again, then they kept on crashing into one another while trying to get through a gate, and then finally make it to the front of the building, so that they can trigger the bouncer going 'oh shit it's the cops', and then the getaway bit started.
Man, that mod ruined pretty much all the cutscenes that involved driving. Also completely ruined the weapon balance, including making the shotgun knock you over from about 50 metres away, and making it automatic.
Oh! Different seasons. Either have the story jump around periods of time, like, say the first act takes place in spring and after you do some set mission, the story jumps to winter. Or set the weather according to your system's date. It doesn't snow in Southern California, does it?
Developed by series creator Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto V takes place in a re-imagined, present-day Southern California in the largest and most thriving game-world we have ever created set in the sprawling city of Los Santos and for miles beyond – from the tops of the mountains to the depths of the ocean.
How about a PC version thats superior or atleast equal in performance to the console version?
I think they might be too much.
how about a PC version that don't have crappy/lag coding...
Come on, that is the main issue of rockstar, i have seem games with the same graphics/complexit that don't use the same power... And i call this a code problem...
Also, i want collector edition for pc, why just the console editions have this?
Yes... English is not my first language... I learned it not from a English class but from RPG games.
So apparently you can pre-load this now on PS3 and something about it also giving you access to the PS4 version when it's released. Anyone know about this?
Posts
OR
Swing sets of Death like things. A revolving door that sends you into orbit if you touch it in juuuuuuust the right spot. A toll booth arm that can flip a tank. Things like these can make for some interesting short lived adventures.
Edit: Tell you what, you get the mods to let me spoiler my post while in edit and not say "Are you an idiot just [Spoil] [/Spoil] then we'll all be happy what about that?
The game is 2 years old guys.
the jump from mass effect 1 to 2 was incredible in terms of gameplay, i wouldn't mind seeing GTA5 acknowledge that the shooty bang bang is not something that goes in a script as "insert firefight here".
if you can't avoid making your plot take precedence over the game, for whatever reason, you could at least make it as exhilarating as possible, uncharted 2 style. a good way to keep basic mechanic fresh: the train level in uncharted 2. a bad way to keep mechanics fresh: using rifles that all had almost identical handling in RDR. and then asking me to shoot comical amount of mexicans to death while i'm floating down a river. vanilla as hell and i was doing the same shit up to the end of the game.
bikes were great. especially to go way out of your way driving a car to knock a dude off his bike. or having the same shit happen to you when an SUV cuts you up on the bridge.
well people aren't really critiquing the story, it's just the lack of interactivity in an interactive medium. you admit as much yourself- RDR, only at the end, lets you take part in the story, rather than watch it happen. rockstar is following "show don't tell" when that's an idiom meant for movies- games are interactive. do, don't show. but rockstar have a very clear vision of what they want done, and they don't want to risk you not doing that, so they'd rather you didn't do. or at least, what you do shouldn't impact the story in a significant way.
this shit is egregious in games like call of duty, where certain enemies are invincible because they haven't fired their plot related rockets at you yet (for a quick example) but in a sandbox game it's all the more noticeable. every time you're in a car chase, (wasting hundreds of rounds of ammo because it's not clear that they can't be harmed, because this is a plot chase and they want you to see the set-piece they made) , and the game tells you that you lost because they got away when, in reality, they only got 200 meters ahead of you on a straight motorway, this is rockstar selling the interactive nature of the medium down the river for the sake of trying to make the gameplay cinematic.
wouldn't it be just as cool if they trusted the player to find their own solution? a detour that leads to a later intercept because they learned the layout of the city so well? an unlucky driver happens to cut the guy off in traffic leading to a multi-car pile up? noticing a nearby ramp, you land your car on top of the guy and kill him instantly? a sneakily placed explosive? a liberal application of bullets to the tyres, and then you get out and finish off the concussed driver by shooting him through the windshield and then walk off?
all of these are off the top of my head, but are emergent solutions that sandbox games are perfect for presenting. not rigid, slow, storytelling. why not trust the player to think of a smarter, more interesting solution given the mechanics?
Action hijacking
Some sort of free running/climbing
press button to warp to shore
A feeling of ownership for certain vehicles
checkpoints in missions
Ability to instantly restart a mission if I fail (not having to drive back to the mission start if I die/time out)
No missions where you have to follow a car at a distance and then it takes an improbably convoluted route to its destination just to pad the mission length
jets
jetpacks
parachutes
I think the game developing community, as a whole, is still trying to wrap its head around the "do, don't show" mentality. And as long as we're getting cutscene-driven storytelling, I don't think we're going to make any major breakthroughs in interactive narratives.
But, as far as gameplay goes, you're right. There are so many opportunities for them to do something cool, if they just showed a little imagination. How about a mission in which you have to kill the guy, but make it look like an accident. And that's it. They leave it to you to figure it out. You could trail him for a couple of minutes, observe his routine, study the environment, and plan accordingly.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with scripted missions either. It's just that they run the most boring script imaginable.
All of these but especially THAT. Man, for a series called Grand Theft AUTO, cars in IV were completely personality-free nothings just good for a bit until you've smashed its engine too bad to start (which was a really cool mechanic, actually). Not to mention the God damned "parking spaces" at your safehouses, where AI would smash into it, push it out the spot and lose you the vehicle. Why don't any of my apartments have underground parking or something? Where's my valet or doorman or whatever Ritz-y places have?
I don't expect them to go back to GTA 2 levels of car-stuff (funtimes with mines and oil), or even Saints Row level (spike-tires would be neat, though), but the very least they could do is San Andreas level. Let me toss in some hydraulics, a nice paint job (with loooooottsss of choice there) and tune-up my vehicle to my liking. I want a car that I've specifically set-up for racing, like a tuned-up sports car, then I'd get myself a more durable vehicle to take on missions, so and so on.
The only car I remotely cared about was that Infernus you got as a gift in IV. Except, I didn't really care much, once I realized it wasn't the only one in the game. Glad it was an Infernus, though, that car has been my favourite GTA vehicle since III. I also think III's vehicles had the nicest looks to 'em, but I have no idea how they'd translate into realistic-appearance.
Edit: Oh! Very important lesson from Saints Row: MAKE SURE MY CARS ARE PERMANENTLY IN MY GARAGE. If my car goes boom, I'll just pay an exorbitant fee to have it fixed. If I have to leave my awesome vehicle during a mission, just have it back in my garage. Just use the SR system of garages, dang nab it!
Even The Saboteur and Mafia II used a similar system. This is an important thing to have if your series has a car reference for a name.
Man, that mod ruined pretty much all the cutscenes that involved driving. Also completely ruined the weapon balance, including making the shotgun knock you over from about 50 metres away, and making it automatic.
Steam // Secret Satan
Los Santos was such a lovely place before the bears invaded...
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/45951/grand-theft-auto-v-is-coming-spring-2013.html
Also, hinting at submarines perhaps?
how about a PC version that don't have crappy/lag coding...
Come on, that is the main issue of rockstar, i have seem games with the same graphics/complexit that don't use the same power... And i call this a code problem...
Also, i want collector edition for pc, why just the console editions have this?
As such, it shall be renamed and used as a general discussion thread for GTA V. If there already is one, well, I was here first so nyah.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
And I totally will.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
In other words, "yeah, we're totally hoping to cash in twice".