I'm Calling It, GTA VI is Going to Be a Dissappointment
GTA VI is set to be one of the most anticipated games of all time and will no doubt break sales records. With that being said, I can't help but feel like it's going to be a massive let down. I don't mean from a technical standpoint, I think it's going to be one of the most graphically and technically impressive game of our age. I'm talking about it being disappointing as a game.
When Red Dead Redemption 2 was first announced, I was stoked. I loved the first RDR game. I bought RDR2 and played through it. The opening sequence was a bit of a slog, but the game looked absolutely stunning. I had high hopes so I trudged along. I kept playing up until the midpoint of Act II, and just... stopped. The game didn't grip me anymore. I didn't really care to keep playing. I didn't quite understand why. I've beaten RDR1 more times than I've attempted to beat RDR2, so what the hell went wrong?
I think the problem inlays with a critique I saw of GTA V. Another game that is technically and graphically impressive, but just doesn't hit the same as the previous installment. I've probably put more hours into GTA V (by proxy of playing GTA Online a ton), but if you asked me what I thought the best GTA game was, it wouldn't even be top 3 for me. Again, why?
The critique of GTA V is that as a game, it's more like a movie than a game. This is a criticism of games I see like the newest iteration of God of War, or The Last of Us, or an even older example Metal Gear Solid 4. They become less like games and more like just playable movies. They feel almost entirely on-rails.
If you asked me what makes GTA IV better than V, besides the story, it's the openness of GTA IV that makes it better than V. GTA IV has no scripted sequences. When you get into a car chase, your run depends on your driving/shooting skill. You can crash into them, blow out their tires, shoot a rocket launcher at the car as soon as the mission starts.
In GTA V, this sort of multi-approach to the game. I think of 2 missions where this glimpse into the new rockstar formula is at it's most egregious. The mission where you're trying to rescue Michael's son and the one where you're chasing down Lazlow. Both sequences hit precise beats, no fluctuation, no changes in routes, you go from point A to point B exactly as the game scripts. The mission starts and ends at the exact same point. You can't get the machine done faster with superior driving, or by shooting out the tires. You do what the game lets you do. It's sad that you can actually get more variety with GTA Online missions than you do in the main story.
I'll give you an example. On one heist setup mission, you are tasked with going and picking up this bag basically. There's several ways you can do it. You can drive your car to the location and try to one-man-army it. You can pull up in an armored Karuma and mow people down. You can fly the oppressor and shoot rockets down at everyone. The game gives you a sandbox and lets you figure out how you wanna approach it.
Modern rockstar games almost now entirely fill a formula of: go to place, go to another place while exposition dumping with another character, shoot people at place, go back. Rinse and repeat.
I was playing GTA III the other day, and I was playing the mission "Turismo". Mission was hard as dick due to the very dated car controls and my inability to find a decent car that could outrun them. So what did I do? Before the race started, I nudged the opponent cars to all face a wall. I then blocked off the road with a bus to where only I was able to easily pass. Started the race, and won in a landslide in a mission that is notorious for being a bitch to complete. Is it cheating? Yeah. But there arrives my point that these missions were SO much more open to strategy.
RDR 2 and GTA V both spend most of their missions in this formula loop. Despite the story of both being great, there isn't much by way of replayability. It doesn't matter if you wanna do something different. The game won't let you.
It kinda speaks to most games made by AAA studios. They're more interested in making impressive graphics and good stories, but completely flop in making the gameplay itself actually engaging. We're playing games instead of watching movies for a reason.
I recently heard the term "ball and gun gamers". I initially thought this was some sort of "cock and ball torture" joke that I wasn't aware of, but no. A "ball and gun" gamer is the gamer who almost exclusively plays sports games, or shooter games. These types of gamers are considered the target demographic for games like GTA, and with that in mind, it makes sense the lack of openness.
Casual gamers are also considered a target demographic, but it annoys me because these studios think that "casual" means you need to make your games into Fischer-Price toys. My wife is a casual gamer, and it's fun watching her play because she does things so much more different than I do because she's not quite fluent in the "language" of games.
Also, $80 fucking dollars?? $80 fucking dollars for this game. I have no doubt it might be worth that price tag, but the problem is that you have this special addition that locks gameplay content behind a fucking $20 paywall. What?? Hell for $80 alone I could buy every mainline GTA starting at III. GTA III and Vice City are like $10 each, San Andreas is like $12, and IV + Episodes from Liberty City is $30. Shit, you could buy an XBOX 360 and GTA IV for the price of JUST GTA VI.
And of course you've got the consoomer-pilled chuds trying to justify this with shit like "you've had X years to save $100". As if that was even remotely the fucking point.
This is gonna set a bad precedent because other game studios are gonna follow suit, regardless of quality. This was already the case when Nintendong raised the price of Tears of the Kingdom to $70, pinky promised this wouldn't be the norm, and then lied to us. And you know what? We bent over and let Miyamoto stick it Miyameat right up our rear ends. Now look where we're at.
And that's not even going into the fact that THERE IS NO PHYSICAL COPY OF THE GAME. We all got sold the lie that with digital games, it'd be cheaper to produce and thus prices would reduce... oh how naive we are. Sony even stated that moving forward, physical copies will no longer be produced. FUCK. THAT.
All this to say, I'm not gonna be buying GTA VI on launch. Not that I particularly could anyway, I just bought a Switch 2 for my wife and a PC port isn't coming until next year probably. I'm not about to spend $800 for a system and an additional $80 just to play ONE game.
I really just don't have much interest in most of the big games being released today. It's why I find more joy in the old stuff.
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as of writing this...
I've been sitting on this post since yesterday, so all I needed to do was just finish it up. I'm going out to lunch later today with Mrs. Pirate and Mini Pirate. They're gonna be near my work, so we were all planning on going out and getting lunch. I'm probably gonna take a little break from blogging to work on my neocities website. I've added a couple of new things, but I wanna finish up my classic Halo shrine.