GTA V

[TheFeniX]

I don't understand what you're referencing with the comment "It does for me." You'd rather there be a poorly characterized female protagonist?

I didn't think my comment was difficult to understand: I'd rather there be an adequately characterised female protagonist.

But if the protagonists already in the game are terrible people, what chance would a female character have to be any different?

Don't get me wrong, I played a female character first in SR3 and 4 because I love Laura Bailey's voice work. So, if that's your point, I have to agree: I'd rather have shitty dialog spat out by someone with charisma. Then again, a lot of the dialog in SR was good... except anything by Viola/Grey.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

"Terrible person" and "poor characterisation" are not even close to the same things. I'm not exactly sure where your argument's coming from?

[TheFeniX]

"Terrible person" and "poor characterisation" are not even close to the same things. I'm not exactly sure where your argument's coming from?

Gruman responded to a post I made where people are mad that women are underrepresented in GTAV and I said that it's basically to be expected. However, my original post was referencing that all the protagonists were disgusting as part of the Escapist review also pegs them as not all that strong. So weak = poor. While many reviewers are masturbating to the technical prowess of the GTAV team, GTA stories and their protagonists have always been pretty weak and/or just retreading old stereotypes.

I found it strange that people would think a game with "boring and poorly characterized male leads" would have been better with a woman lead, but not just that: they think the female characterization would somehow be better when writing strong women is harder than men and writer's constantly fuck that up.

Basically, if Gruman wants "Adequately characterized" anything WRT a GTA game, he's barking up the wrong tree. If he expected Rockstar to dump more time into fleshing out a female lead (when they're well known for just taking storyline and character portrayals whole-sale from other IP/stereotypes): same thing. If he expected the female lead to also not be a scumbag: WTF? This is GTA.

[Grumman]

I found it strange that people would think a game with "boring and poorly characterized male leads" would have been better with a woman lead, but not just that: they think the female characterization would somehow be better when writing strong women is harder than men and writer's constantly fuck that up.

Bullshit. Bigots think writing strong women is harder than writing strong men, because they try too hard to emphasise that the character is a woman. It is no coincidence that build-your-own-character games like Saints Row 2 and Mass Effect can achieve adequate results with little more than a new voice actor and a new character model.

Basically, if Gruman wants "Adequately characterized" anything WRT a GTA game, he's barking up the wrong tree. If he expected Rockstar to dump more time into fleshing out a female lead (when they're well known for just taking storyline and character portrayals whole-sale from other IP/stereotypes): same thing. If he expected the female lead to also not be a scumbag: WTF? This is GTA.

"Adequately" means "good enough for its purpose". We're not talking about high literature here.

[Agent Fisher]

Just finished the story. And there is still so much left to do.


Oh and just to go off again on level of detail and such, south of the vinewood sign, in what would be a national park, I found a ranger station. With a sheriff deputy wearing a hat and different patches than regular LSSD deputies. Oh, and a Park Ranger marked Granger. Seriously, you never go there for a mission, it was only pure chance I found it, but Rockstar put enough effort into the game and world to make a ranger station and a Park Ranger SUV and department. Wow.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That's what I love. Although I'm still way behind on the main story, the amount of detail in the world makes just pottering about fascinating itself.

[Starglider]

I had a lot of fun with this (completed it to 100% this weekend), it was a big improvement on GTA 4 in that respect. The characters and story are the quite compelling, the best for the franchise so far. The character switch dynamic works well (really it's overdue for the series). Technically the individual elements (modelling, rendering, physics, animations etc) aren't best in class, but they're all competent and the integration of all the detail into a coherent virtual world is on a larger scale than anything we've seen before. It's still annoying not having destructible scenary, but I suspect current gen consoles just don't have the memory to do that plus everything else they have going on.

That said, I'd only rate it second best game in the franchise; I still had more fun with the original San Andreas. The reason is that GTA:SA packs every inch of the world with fun gameplay features, and wrings maximum variety and playability out of all its content. GTA:SA seemed like the pinnacle of the era where GTA was designed for gameplay first, yet still had reasonably amusing and well written dialog. The thematic progression of Los Angeles->woods->San Fran->desert->las vegas->LA riots worked very well, and even though GTA5 has better narrative progression I still miss that. GTA 5 has quite a few underutilised areas and outright missing features which look like they're reserved for future DLC - the episodes significantly improved GTA 4, so I'm looking forward to that.

[Thanas]

How would you rate the switch to three protagonists? Is it something worthwhile or does it take away from the focus of the player character?

[NeoGoomba]

How would you rate the switch to three protagonists? Is it something worthwhile or does it take away from the focus of the player character?

So far I find it a very effective device, especially if it is done mid-mission. With the near flawless transitions from one character to the other, it barely disrupts the flow of an action scene. And when you are out of mission and switching to someone else it acts as a sort of window into the lives of the protagonists, with you finding them just exiting random situations.

And I agree with Starglider, SA had way more fun stuff to do. In SA I liked exploring the open world because there would be random items/quests/vehicles to find. In GTAV there's the huge, beautiful open world that seems...just kind of empty. That could just be me, however, I only just hit 35%. It's slow going, since I take so much time to just drive around and explore the area around Shady Sands, or wherever Trevor came from.

[Starglider]

And I agree with Starglider, SA had way more fun stuff to do. In SA I liked exploring the open world because there would be random items/quests/vehicles to find. In GTAV there's the huge, beautiful open world that seems...just kind of empty. That could just be me, however, I only just hit 35%.

GTA 5 has fair sized wilderness areas (not Just Cause 2 sized but reasonably large) with no gameplay & little scenary. That's fine; it's padding to make the world feel bigger and give you some room to fly aircraft. In fact if you made the world as condensed as GTA:SA it would look silly with modern draw distances. The problem is more in presentation. If you look at the game mechanics used, GTA 5 has at least two thirds of the raw mechanics found in GTA:SA, expressed in some 'strangers & freaks' side quest or property maintenance mission. However everything is wrapped in a veneer of pseudo-plausibility. You can't jump on a pizza bike and have 8 'levels' of making deliveries, you wait for days and then get random calls from the bar you own to drop something off. There is picking people up and dropping them off in the taxi missions, with guest characters and dialog and little twists, which in the eyes of the writer make it a big improvement on the old 'ambulance missions'. But you can't do them at any time and they have negligible game impact (a trivial amount of cash, instead of the old very useful 'increase max health'). It's frankly strange that GTA is moving away from explicit game mechanics when 'gamification' is a growing trend in the real world; people are more willing to do random things for arbitrary Internet points than ever before.

Which reminds me, one mechanic they really did screw up is the races. GTA:SA had a large number of highly varied races which were fun to complete (street, off-road, sea, air plus the arena events). GTA 5 has a dozen short & samey races which are rendered completely un-fun by a ridiculous amount of rubber-banding; all that really matters is whether you crash in the last 30 seconds (the triathlons also seem to have this problem).

[Executor32]

So, Grand Theft Auto Online is out now. I'm not much of an Xbox gamer, so my only friends on Live are Ando and my best friend from high school, and neither of them are online right now. Therefore, I'm just sitting here at a "Waiting for other players" screen after creating my character, instead of doing this race or whatever I'm supposed to be doing right off the bat. Are we going to have an SDNet crew on Social Club or anything?

[Thanas]

Played a bit for a while at a friends house. They took a lot of design elements from the latest Max Payne. Bullet time, Michael's character model, the weapons wheel and the cover system are pretty much carbon copys of the latest Max Payne.

[RogueIce]

Since they're both from Rockstar Games, that's not too surprising.

[Thanas]

Why the hell did Rockstar think it a good idea for there to only be 6 car save slots per character in a game that has over 60 vehicles in it?

[Executor32]

Given that in GTA Online there are a metric fuckton of 2-, 4-, and even 6-car garages you can buy, I can only guess they assumed that people who wanted to collect cars would focus their efforts on the online mode so they can show off their cars to their friends or something.

What I really don't get is that while they made it so that aircraft and boats are always available from your helipad/hangar/dock slip even if you destroy them, and you can select which purchased aircraft/boat you'd like to have spawn there from a menu, they didn't do the same for garages. Why not, if the functionality is already there? As it is, the only cars I feel safe using as daily drivers are the protagonists' default vehicles, since they always respawn no matter what happens to them, and with any and all modifications intact. Everything else just sits in my garages so cops and Ballas and the Lost and random thieves* can't come ruin my shit.

*I've had random motherfuckers steal my car when I go into shops, in singleplayer no less. Hell, I stole an FBI Granger from the radio telescope array, and it got stolen from me TWICE. First when I was in the barber shop, then when I was in Poisonby's in the nice part of town. I only knew it happened because I had left the lights on when I got out, so as soon as they got in the siren started back up. I managed to catch up and kill the thief the first time, but the second time I attracted police attention and ended up losing it. This is actually the main reason I don't drive any of my saved cars.

[Thanas]

Given that in GTA Online there are a metric fuckton of 2-, 4-, and even 6-car garages you can buy, I can only guess they assumed that people who wanted to collect cars would focus their efforts on the online mode so they can show off their cars to their friends or something.

But I don't get it - it is a feature strip for no reason in SP. I mean, clearly the engine can handle multiple garages in GTA online, so why not do the same for SP?

What I really don't get is that while they made it so that aircraft and boats are always available from your helipad/hangar/dock slip even if you destroy them, and you can select which purchased aircraft/boat you'd like to have spawn there from a menu, they didn't do the same for garages. Why not, if the functionality is already there?

True.

As it is, the only cars I feel safe using as daily drivers are the protagonists' default vehicles, since they always respawn no matter what happens to them, and with any and all modifications intact. Everything else just sits in my garages so cops and Ballas and the Lost and random thieves* can't come ruin my shit.

My experience as well. You had the same problem in GTA IV as well. You were not going to use your Special Infernus because it would get wrecked and you would not have it anymore if autosave or so happened.

I don't get why Mafia II could do a better job here than GTA.