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What can they even do with Grand Theft Auto now?

canedaddy

Member
Fan ideas for GTA are always the worst.

Back to the 80s, and back to Miami.

Get the mobile phone out of there.

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Except for this.

From where I stand they haven't topped the settings of VC and SA, which captured a special time/place in cultural history ("Miami Vice"/"Scarface" '80s Miami and "Boyz 'N the Hood"/"Colors" '90s LA). Both have music, language, fashion, etc., that set them apart. Modern LA and NY are bland in comparison.
 

Tigress

Member
a woman protagonist, and maybe, maybe, stop being so juvenile with the humor. Trevor was really off putting that I couldn't even finish the game.

I don't need serious story, but it almost feels like the main characters assume I'm a 15 year old teenage kid with their humor and stuff. I'm just over that type of humor. Shame to, as the gameplay was really fun, but I couldn't get through those annoying characters, mainly Trevor. I might be too much in the minority for a change though, so honestly, I'm not really all that interested in the next gta.


And alternatively I thought Trevor was the only interesting character honestly. Yeah, he was a psychopath, but he fit how a lot of people play the game so it was much more fun playing as him when you wanted to just mess around cause it fit his personality perfectly. Michael and Franklin were frankly just boring (I can't even decide who was more boring).

But it was a good mix. Michael and Franklin were boring characters but the story arcs were better for them. But Trevor was a much more interesting character for more free roaming stuff and the side missions like the assasssinations.

And as for integrating online with the SP... please please please no. Personally I play online mainly cause the mechanics for buying stuff is better (you can actually keep cars reasonably) but I don't want to play with most of the people who play GTA (I usually try to play on my own or only with a very small set of friends I've found who play GTA who are the rare not assholes... and most of them I found through the GAF GTA crew). Not unless it is very optional to have the online on and not a major function of playing the SP. I mean it's SP because it's supposed to be single player... ANd personally I'd prefer playing the SP GTA except R* pretty much gave it a shitty way of keeping cars that is very limited to what you can get, online has most the toys these days. Basically R* has kinda pushed it that if you want to mess around in GTA and not just do the story, online is more set up for that (the car thing is the most egregious thing that they did since day 1. It's very obvious they want you to play online if you want to collect the cars in the game and have access to set cars at any one time. If it was cause they couldn't figure out a better garage system then they wouldn't have a better one on online).
 
Play as two characters: a criminal and a cop. Their stories intersect like Niko and Michelle in IV and you can flip between them on the fly like in V.
 
Fully mapped buildings would be such a waste of time and manpower, that could be put into actual content to deepen the game instead. For what, exactly? To walk inside of a guys home and get the cops called on you. So that weird people can post videos of them sneaking into womens houses to peep on them showering, and murdering them afterwards? You're talking about potentially doubling the effort, for such little gain. I don't expect them to actually do it, but it would be such a waste if it happened.
 
A small but meaningful issue with 80's Miami again is the music. Licensing classic music is going to be prohibitively expensive for Rockstar, unless they want to blow the entire budget on music or if they could get some distribution deal with Spotify or some music provider but that's a big risk.

GTA:VC and San Andreas debuted at the sweet spot for Rockstar, as few people outside of the videogame industry really knew how profitable and how huge the market for these games was. And then you saw labels and bands pull the music out in subsequent releases of the same game.

The sound tracks of GTAIV and GTAV were both great modern sound tracks but they didn't have as many of the classic era-defining tracks that were in Vice City and San Andreas, even on the classic stations, most of the tracks were B-sides or the 3rd or 4th single release for an album (other than maybe the Seger tracks), and then the modern music they could focus on independent or lesser known bands. Rockstar still did a great job defining the essence of the game with music and the sound tracks are both great, but San Andrea and Vice City had Michael Jackson, Madonna, Guns n Roses, 2 Pac, Dre, Tom Petty, Rage Against the Machine, Ozzy, etc., and they were some of their most iconic, top of the charts tracks. A$AP Rocky and Chaingang are fine and their tracks are great, but they don't really compare... Modern pop stations aren't playing Hall & Oates (as much as I like Hall and Oates)

I'd love to see a return to the retro 1980s because it's such a better time for Miami and telling a videogame story. I think the limits of the world (e.g., no handheld cell phones) make for challenges that would make the game more interesting and force them to handle interactions throughout the world in a more creative way than just relying on the cell phone as your hub to do everything.

Also, I'd like to introduce more ownership into the world, which was improved upon with GTAV (from IV), but still a step back from GTA:SA. GTA Online's ownership model is pretty good, but GTA Online kinda sucks unless you're really into it and enjoy grinding or exploiting. Specifically, the car ownership model in GTA Online -- while it was rough for the first six months -- has really been improved and the insurance system as a soft-threat to not destroy your vehicles works.

If in Vice City, I'd like to recreate the Cocaine Cowboys, Tony Montana, take-over-the-city mentality with at least one of your characters (assuming there's multiple), turning him/her into a legitimate Vice kingpin and "owning" major portions of the city. GTAIV and V both went in the opposite direction, to sort of play a trick on the player setting them up that they're going to become these powerful players, but ultimately, that doesn't happen and it's all a "lol American dream is shit" parable over and over again. I get that's the moral that Rockstar wants to tell you, and they've done so over ~200 hours of the last two games (and another ~100 hours of RDR), so I'm hoping they challenge themselves to not tell the same story three games in a row, and consider letting the player do what they want to do in terms of city and world building like they did with Vice City and San Andreas (San Andreas especially). With multiple characters, I'd like to see one character representing the law, either as a semi-straight/somewhat-crooked cop, and another representing the criminal element, having their stories intertwine and work... Not purely antagonistic, but not purely accommodating either.
 
take it outside the US

oh but GTA has to be in the US because it's a satire of US culture blah blah blah...

FUCK OFF

take it outside the US, preferably to London but I'm biased on that score

Grand Theft Auto's narrative heavily apes movies, and outside of Sherlock and Guy Ritchie flicks Americans don't care for London high jinks.
 

paulogy

Member
For me it's simple:

1. Fully explorable interiors (for nearly every building) - and these could even be procedurally generated to an extent if needed. But I want to be able to drive cars / bikes / motorcycles through them :)
2. Destruction - I want you to be able to make meaningful damage to the world
3. Persistence - when you break something, it stays broken (until a crew comes to fix it). It doesn't just magically restore itself when you turn away.
4. Time - I want the city to evolve over time. I want some buildings, roads etc. to be under construction (often as a result of your actions), and incomplete until a crew finishes them. And this is something you can interfere with, if for instance a rival is trying to build a casino before you. A bit of a city sim element added. Or you're trying to block a shortcut ahead of time in a race.

I don't really care where it's set, or even what the characters are up to. I want the sandbox itself to be more robust. I feel like that aspect has certainly improved but honestly hasn't changed all much since GTA III and it's time.
 

m00h

Banned
As long as it's not a piece of junk like GTA IV was, I'm ok with everything they'll do with the next GTA. I also would love to see something similar to GTA VC, but the music could become a problem, since everything from the 80s was already covered in VC and VC: Stories. I've listened everything to death.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
- Female protag
- Mid to Late 80's
- Single protag, having more than one takes focus away and leaves them all somewhat under developed.
- Console versions with stable performance across the board.
 

goathouse774

Neo Member
Fully mapped buildings would be such a waste of time and manpower, that could be put into actual content to deepen the game instead. For what, exactly? To walk inside of a guys home and get the cops called on you. So that weird people can post videos of them sneaking into womens houses to peep on them showering, and murdering them afterwards? You're talking about potentially doubling the effort, for such little gain. I don't expect them to actually do it, but it would be such a waste if it happened.

I get what you're saying, but imagine how cool it would be to be driving through the busy streets and see all the NPCs acting out their crazy little plays through coffee shop windows, to see the office workers throw office parties on the third floor, to see a husband and wife coming to blows in their living room, etc, etc. etc. It would add SO MUCH to the FEEL of the game.
 

Toni

Member
Yeah, I don't really want the stamina but I'd love to be able to climb buildings.

They could just implement police gadgets like those Swat ropes to go down from buildings. Things that are imagnably feasible within GTA's standards.

There's a mission where michael uses that.

I will never understand why Rockstar never allowed us to use that anytime during the game and made it mission-exclussive.
 

Blueingreen

Member
Physics that don't hamper the gameplay I know this is a personal pipe dream of mine that'll likely never become a reality.

But what I really want from Rockstar is a more dynamic mission structure, similar to Immersion Sim games like Deus Ex and System Shock 2, where the outcome of the gameworld is shaped by the player action and choices obviously with multiple endings.

GTA 5 was far too linear for my liking despite having 3 interchangeable protagonists, this is something I believe Rockstar with all their wealth and resources can easily achieve
 
It's not just because it's a satire of US culture, it's because US culture is so prevalent outside of the country. People know American musicians, movie stars, athletes etc. all over the world. The same can't necessarily be said about a British actor that hasn't moved over to doing shows or movies in the US.

Well, I'd counter that by saying that most of the cultural references are based on stereotypes, not actual people and to the extent that they are based on actual people, there are plenty of world famous Brits to go around.

Although that isn't necessarily true of a lot of countries, I still think you would have enough to work with in France, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Germany as well as the UK.

It's hardly an insurmountable problem. I think the world can cope with having another culture hamfistedly satirised without ti causing the game to bomb.

edit: I suspect the real answer is the game sells more copies in the US than any other nation and the developers think that American's only like American stuff. Personally I'd give the yanks a bit more credit.
 

groansey

Member
They could lose the story missions tbh. The writing in them is incredibly poor.

I'd rather they pushed the sandbox thing letting us create our own characters, buy property and organise heists etc and build a criminal empire - do all the crazy stuff you get to do in missions, but as emergent gameplay. Then let us take those characters online, or drop in and out of each others cities.
 

Arkam

Member
There are so many things left to do...

- Destructible environments

- Improved NPC AI (massively)

- Make ALL building accessible

- Persistent world (people stay dead, stay wanted, cars stay crashed, etc)

- Improve Bodily Damage (lacerations that bleed til mended, bones that break)

And that is off the top of my head with only thinking as fast as I type.
 

Ensirius

Member
I get what you're saying, but imagine how cool it would be to be driving through the busy streets and see all the NPCs acting out their crazy little plays through coffee shop windows, to see the office workers throw office parties on the third floor, to see a husband and wife coming to blows in their living room, etc, etc. etc. It would add SO MUCH to the FEEL of the game.

I remember in San Andreas it felt so cool to be able to get into the burger joints.
It added so much depth for me, just that little detail.
A sense of place.
 

Amory

Member
I've asked the same question after 3, Vice City, San Andreas, and IV

And they always come back with something that blew me away
 

mortal

Gold Member
The map needs more density, more unique ways to interact with things in the world. More access to inside of random buildings and houses outside of missions.

Make the environment more destructible.

Make cars and other motor vehicles require gasoline.

Simply making the map larger isn't really going to cut it for me, especially since so many other titles have hopped on the openworld wagon.

Also, relocation to somewhere outside the US would be cool.
 

groansey

Member
Have a proper seasonal cycle and if I fire a rocket launcher and blow out the side of a building, for the next few weeks in-game time, repair work should be carried out by workmen during the day.

Just take little details like that to there extremes so the city feels alive.

But I repeat: lose the character story missions.

And if you succeed at the game and become Kingpin you should be able to sculpt the city, rejuvenate areas, renovate buildings. I dunno. The interactivity of the city sandbox is the most appealing thing - besides refining and updating the driving and shooting interface. Lose the weapon wheel.
 

Dragnet

Member
I'd love to see a GTA where you play as a cop. I think it's a perfect place to have fun with a lot of those tropes as well as tackle some modern law enforcement issues, really show the dirty side of the law.
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
I just hope we see a better first person mode!!
 
I think VC, SA and 4 are all better than 5 in many ways. So I disagree with you on the front, what can they do because 5 is so amazing. But, there are some things the series needs to do.


They need to change the time period up. Go back to the 80's. Even the 60's ,70's, 90's. Just get rid of the modern day, it's boring.

New location. I would love another game set in NY but they really need new locations, go to Europe, do London. Something different.

Get rid of tap x to run. It's dated as fuck and I hope RDR2 doesn't have it anymore, just make it L3.

Make online better, it's garbage. It would be cool if I could just jump into a game of TDM instead of waiting for 20 minutes only to be tossed into some stupid ass fan made garbage parkour lobby.

That's just off the top of my head, but really there is a lot that they NEED to do, forget can do. Because while the series is great, it needs a lot of changes and improvement and there is a lot of room for that improvement.
 
I'd really like a female protagonist. I imagine the series will just become bigger, denser and more detailed than before. They've got a formula that works, that people are hungry for and is pretty much a blind purchase for a lot of the audience at this point.
 

wvnative

Member
Add parkour elements.

Knock it down to 2 main characters as balancing 3 was obviously a challenge for rockstar.

Be less restrictive with physics, let me cargobob a car onto a plane and just ride like that, or let me stand on moving vehicles.

Ideally, campaign CO-OP that remains every bit as polished and scripted as GTA V's single player, I feel like every game that attempts this feels compromised in some way, but rockstar as the money to make the first uncompromised CO-OP campaign.
 

hbkdx12

Member
Can you elaborate?
Two simple things that drastically turned me off to gta V

1) the running/turning and overall movement feels very swimmy and imprecise. Also why are we still on mash A to sprint.

2) the cop ai in this game is the worst in the series in my opinion. I don't know how more people don't complain about it. I'm a series that's predicated on causing mayhem, it's incredibly difficult to get rid of cops without doing obtuse stuff like driving into the mountains or running away on foot in an open field. And the last time I checked, the ai cops in gta online are even more overbearing making the game a complete chore.

Both of these things make the simple task of just getting around the world feel incredibly laborious.
 
Make online better, it's garbage. It would be cool if I could just jump into a game of TDM instead of waiting for 20 minutes only to be tossed into some stupid ass fan made garbage parkour lobby.

Strongly agreed here.

GTA Online ruined the ability to just play a game of TDM or "mission" modes with friends. It's basically always been impossible to play any modes. If you have 2 hours to play GTA, you might get into 2 or 3 organized games that last for 5 minutes and end up being a 2v1 within a couple of minutes as someone quits or disconnects. And then you spend the next 2minutes trying to get back into a game world with your friends.

WHile GTA Online had some fresh ideas, so much of it was just garbage bad multiplayer that never worked.
 

mooncakes

Member
I always wanted a GTA game to take place in the 1920/30's during the depression era. Make it like your a guy trying to become a gangster in Chicago/NY. You can own nightclubs, bootleg factories, gambling places and maybe the story can be about drama and tensions between all the rivals in the territory.
 

Griss

Member
I just think that the California setting is so perfect for GTA that it can't be topped. The city, the beaches, the desert, the forests, the mountains - there's a natural diversity of environments that is absolutely ideal for a sandbox game like GTA.

Secondly, the "three player characters" idea was so perfectly executed that it will also be difficult to surpass. I fully believe that they intended the metaphorical nature of each of Michael, Franklin and Trevor (each echoes the different way you play a GTA) and that trick just won't have the same magic the second time. It also allowed them to tell very different types of stories in the same game which is refreshing in a game that lasts as long as a GTA.

Some people think that Trevor was just to make 13 year olds chuckle, but I thought he was a brilliant character - "This is you playing the game, this is you deciding that running over 20 pedestrians in a row would be funny" and so on.

Add in the heist missions and the fact that it appeared early in the PS4's lifetime with absolutely incredible graphics for an open world game and honestly, it'll be almost impossible to top.
 

groansey

Member
They could also make it so cars don't disappear when you walk 2 metres away from them. On GTA on the PC 20 years ago you could block streets with cars you'd stolen.

If you abandon a car it should stay there until it's towed away. And if you block a street with cars or commit a major crime in an area the police should shut down that street for a time.
 
Woman Protag.

...I'm sure they will come up with something. They make the big bucks for a reason.


But why? Other than the fact it's not been done before (apart from the first GTA). If there's good enough reason to make a compelling story around a woman I'd be all for it. And let's be honest, I'm sure Rockstar could make a bad ass female lead. Just don't do it to tick a box.
 
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