I’ll never understand why they tried to make a game that would be instantly compared to GTA. Just set themselves up for failure when they could have tried something different and maybe made something good.
You’re completely right. It sounds from the article like they flailed around a lot trying to figure out what that could be before settling for “do what you know.”
A huge amount of time and energy wasted without a clear vision, and then they fell into the trap of trying to chase the success of other games.
“Leslie never decided what game he wanted to make,” says Jamie. “There was no coherent direction”.
And that’s the issue.
GTA games are successful because they have consistent direction. Each game is basically the same as the previous one, just with new characters and story, and a gameplay tweak or two. Starting from 3 as the base to compare against (I haven’t played anything earlier):
Vice City - added motorcycles and swords and shifted setting to something like Miami from something like NYC
San Andreas - added gang warfare, powered aircraft, and RPG elements (weight, speed, etc), and shifted setting to something like LA
GTA IV - changed vehicle physics to be more realistic and added a dating sim, setting returned to something like NYC
GTA V - added swapping between three playable characters, stock “investing”, and heists (missions only), setting returned to LA-like
GTA VI - no firm details yet, but it looks like two playable characters and a shift back to a Miami-like setting; the they’ll probably add some gameplay elements as well, but core gameplay will be samey
GTA knows what it is and what it’s trying to be, and they don’t change their formula very much between games.
The best games are ones that know what they’re trying to be and fill that niche really well. Look at Celeste, Hollow Knight, or Balatro, they do one thing really well and not much else. It sounds like this guy tried to stuff a bunch of ideas into one game, that didn’t go anywhere, so he changed gears to something different and didn’t give the team enough vision as to what that different direction was. The negative reviews show exactly what I expect from that, an unoptimized mess with derivative gameplay because they didn’t perfect what makes their game special. The description throws warning bells as well, since it says the game well evolve, which means they haven’t finished it yet.
This is fascinating because I think the core gameplay of the Grand Theft Auto games — what you have to complete to progress the narrative — has never been very good. Since the very beginning, the top-down games.
The hype is always out of this world, but once you sit down and play it’s always extremely simplistic. The core gameplay is made to slow you down, not be interesting. They even add unexplained superpowers (being able to slow down time in gunfights) in an attempt to make the gameplay more interesting.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy who produced GTA 3-5 didn’t actually know how to make core gameplay fun.
Eh, I think GTA games are fun. I haven’t played 1&2, but the rest are fun as a crime sim. Stealing cars, running from cops, and gun fights are fun, and GTA games offer that both in the narrative and in the sandbox.
I do agree that the hype is ridiculous though. GTA games are fun, but IMO not worth the asking price at launch, and certainly not something I play much beyond completing the story. Killing people and running from the cops gets old after a while. I get far more value from 4x games and city builders than GTA since there’s far more interesting choices due to variance for each play through. That doesn’t mean GTA is bad, it’s just a one-note game that scratches a particular itch.
GTA’s gameplay design is woefully outdated, their mission structure is way too linear. They tried to make it a little more interesting with V’s heists but it didn’t help much.
V was still fairly linear, the heists were just missions. If they had done what we expected and let us do heists independently then it would be different. Hoping GTAVI under performs but it likely wont.
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I’ll never understand why they tried to make a game that would be instantly compared to GTA. Just set themselves up for failure when they could have tried something different and maybe made something good.
You’re completely right. It sounds from the article like they flailed around a lot trying to figure out what that could be before settling for “do what you know.”
A huge amount of time and energy wasted without a clear vision, and then they fell into the trap of trying to chase the success of other games.
And that’s the issue.
GTA games are successful because they have consistent direction. Each game is basically the same as the previous one, just with new characters and story, and a gameplay tweak or two. Starting from 3 as the base to compare against (I haven’t played anything earlier):
GTA knows what it is and what it’s trying to be, and they don’t change their formula very much between games.
The best games are ones that know what they’re trying to be and fill that niche really well. Look at Celeste, Hollow Knight, or Balatro, they do one thing really well and not much else. It sounds like this guy tried to stuff a bunch of ideas into one game, that didn’t go anywhere, so he changed gears to something different and didn’t give the team enough vision as to what that different direction was. The negative reviews show exactly what I expect from that, an unoptimized mess with derivative gameplay because they didn’t perfect what makes their game special. The description throws warning bells as well, since it says the game well evolve, which means they haven’t finished it yet.
This is fascinating because I think the core gameplay of the Grand Theft Auto games — what you have to complete to progress the narrative — has never been very good. Since the very beginning, the top-down games.
The hype is always out of this world, but once you sit down and play it’s always extremely simplistic. The core gameplay is made to slow you down, not be interesting. They even add unexplained superpowers (being able to slow down time in gunfights) in an attempt to make the gameplay more interesting.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy who produced GTA 3-5 didn’t actually know how to make core gameplay fun.
Eh, I think GTA games are fun. I haven’t played 1&2, but the rest are fun as a crime sim. Stealing cars, running from cops, and gun fights are fun, and GTA games offer that both in the narrative and in the sandbox.
I do agree that the hype is ridiculous though. GTA games are fun, but IMO not worth the asking price at launch, and certainly not something I play much beyond completing the story. Killing people and running from the cops gets old after a while. I get far more value from 4x games and city builders than GTA since there’s far more interesting choices due to variance for each play through. That doesn’t mean GTA is bad, it’s just a one-note game that scratches a particular itch.
GTA’s gameplay design is woefully outdated, their mission structure is way too linear. They tried to make it a little more interesting with V’s heists but it didn’t help much.
V was still fairly linear, the heists were just missions. If they had done what we expected and let us do heists independently then it would be different. Hoping GTAVI under performs but it likely wont.