GTA 4 was a step backwards imo

i said as soon as GTA 5 was announced that it should have gone GTA:SA --> GTA 5, GTA 4 just didnt make any sense.

Yeah I loved that game and still have a sub. But for the time and money that was sunk into it, it was a let down.

Lol, on a map that's 60+% water and where it's so easy to find yourself in it, you'd think they'd have put it in? I probably drowned 100+ times on that game, especially at the marina or Diaz missions.

Anyway, I like the idea of underwater exploration, sub missions, harpoons, sharks etc. I mean, it would piss me off if they focused on that, but anything that adds more dimensions to an open world environment and allows the player to explore is a bonus imo.

True.

SR2 out-GTAed GTA4 in every aspect that mattered.

GTA4 was a good game, but it was a god-awful terrible GTA-game.

if i think of it that way, then i guess its not as bad as i first imagined. but if theres more than like ~3 missions where you have to go under water, i'll feel my initial reaction was justified.

BJ's post was very intelligent and thoughtful, you're completely off here

I don't get the hate on the GTA's story telling (Disclaimer: Nothing I say is in relation to GTA4, that game was a departure from the "typical GTA" gameplay).

No it's not subtle, and no, it's not even particularly believable, but are people really playing these games for the story?

During SA, there's a mission where (spoilers I guess) you break into a military instillation and fight your way down into the facility to steal a jetpack and rocket out via the roof.

If you played that mission and thought "Oh god, as if one man could ever break into a place like Area 51 and steal government technology. Pssh, you'd be shot on sight" I feel like you're missing the point of playing a game like GTA.

no it wasn't. it was condescending and ******ed.

this so much.

I'm trying to keep my hopes level but this looks like it will be the best gta yet


My personal fave was vice city.

I started VC, and the first thing I did was grab the hidden item map. I saw the #1 on the rocks in the water at the bottom, dove in and died. Thought that was weird, so I did it again. Checked another map and realized you needed a boat. Not cool, GTA... Not cool.

nittery: much easier to do with a helicopter.

my favourite was SA, just because of the whole gang culture/scale of the world map. if VC had more end-game/larger map i would of preferred it.

But that is literally the game people are complaining about.

Like every post you've made about this issue has made you seem like you're illiterate or reading an entirely different thread in an alternate universe or something.

Baltimore Jones and/or other people: "Rockstar's attempts at serious storytelling are terrible, like in GTA4, I hope they don't have that in GTA 5"

You: "LOL like GTAs are trying to be serious, Great Gatsby, etc."

Other people: "But GTA4 was trying to be serious and it failed"

You: "I don't get why people are hating on the storytelling. It's not trying to be serious! Well, except for GTA4, that was totally trying to be serious, but that was terrible."

Me: "????"

San Andreas came out 9 years ago. It was on the Playstation 2. Nobody has criticized its story for trying to be serious.

Obviously people are going to talk about the most recent, current gen GTA. It counts as a GTA. And those people are making complaints about GTA 4 that YOU APPARENTLY SHARE but you're disagreeing with them in a really patronizing manner. I don't get it.

Dial it back tiger.

GTA4 was a huge departure from all previous GTA games, so no, it doesn't really count. There was considerable backlash to the direction the game took. It's still GTA, so it still sold, but the "artistic" direction took a lot of heat.

Yeah, if they're magically trying to recreate 4 then it's probably going to suck, but that trailer didn't seem to give off that impression at all, at least to me. There was more humor and more "fun" (or rather, less Nico being so...dark). They even moved the location from Dark-and-Gritty LC to Sunny-and-Topless SA. Those seem like good signs to me.

Here's BJ's post:

Read the last paragraph again. Unless by "generally" he means "generally...in GTA4", he's talking about Rockstar's brand of storytelling. He mentioned RDR in a previous post as well.

You aren't the only person I'm replying too and there are plenty of people that had issues with even the earlier GTAs (too silly, not enough real story, etc. etc.).

My point was the the story in GTA has never been the key feature. It's basically one big macguffin to drive the huge open world/explore everything/kill hookers aspects of the game.

lol at saying GTA 4 is a true representation of GTA and we should use that as a sample of what GTA 5 will be like.

GTA 5 is like rockstars attempt at taking san andreas and adding in everything they missed and more. stop looking at GTA 4 for ideas about GTA 5.

--------

richard tanner gets it.

What? Again, like a totally different thread. Me and BJ are discussing the GTA games with people who are defending GTA 4, and inexplicably you're disagreeing with BJ? Even though you want exactly the same thing as him.

Well, yeah, Rockstar sucks at storytelling, and they think they don't. Their games work better when they don't try so hard. Vice City was the best GTA from the storytelling/world standpoint imo because they realized their wheelhouse was wacky dark humor and random pop culture references and nothing else.

Who?

OK and so why are you disagreeing with people who criticize it? Seriously, alternate dimension. In this dimension, GTA 4 was called the Citizen Kane of videogaming and got ENORMOUS amounts of critical acclaim for it's terrible terrible story. And GTA 5's trailer definitely has a ****ty Tony Soprano knockoff segment with the rich guy.

No, I disagreed with him from his first post about the storytelling being horrible when I said that if he's looking for an amazing literary work, he's expecting too much.

To make this more clear:
Them: GTA4 was awesome
BJ: GTA4 wasn't very good because the story telling was an awful wannabe Sopranos
Me: I think you may be caring too much about the story.

Hope that helps.

And again...meh.

None of the GTA games have had outstanding stories. That's never been a problem. GTA4 was especially bad for the reasons stated, but that's not the issue(s) I had with the game.

Because I disagree that the story was what made 4 suck or will make 5 suck?

If that's what you took from it, cool. I thought it looked miles ahead of GTA4. Maybe it'll just be filled with the same angst-y nonsense 4 was, but here's hoping.

flywf,

1) rockstar does not suck at storytelling.
2) how do you know what they think of their ability to storytell? oh i see you're making an assumption.

if you don't like GTA, why even post here? if you want a movie like storyline, go see a movie.

the storyline in a GTA game doesn't need to be great, it just needs to be that, a storyline, it only needs to be adequate.

gta is a video game, it's suppoed to entertain the player, if you play it and think "omg what a cringe-worthy script -- you're doing it wrong".

edit: it's pretty lol how you say but yet GTA VC was you're favourite and that had by far the most unoriginal storyline -- basically carlito's way meets scarface.

Whether or not there was backlash to the direction they went with IV depends very much on where you look.

IV has 98% (xbox/ps3) and 90% (pc) on metacritic and the reviewers couldn't stop hailing it as the GOAT-game that once and for all proved that games could tell stories way better than movies because it had the (evidently never before seen) touchy-feely story about people who did/experienced bad stuff in the war.

The user-score is way lower and (the huge majority of) true fans of the GTA-games thinks it sucks, but who are Rockstar going to listen to?

The main problem with IV wasn't that it was a terrible GTA-game - it was that it got such a huge reception from critics who couldn't manage to keep a level head with all the hype surrounding the game. They raved and swooned over it without having the time or objectivity to see it for what it was: A terrible GTA-game.

The reviews for GTA4 is the worst example of mass-hysteria the gaming industry has ever seen.

Nobody hopes more than me that Rockstar will find their way back to the true GTA-feel after IV, and I think what we've seen so far looks promising, but whether or not Rockstar considers that there was 'backlash' and 'a lot of heat' to the direction they went with IV depends entirely on where they decide to look.

dissenting/challenging viewpoints/criticism will always be welcomed, this isn't only a place for fanboys of any game/system/whatever to gush uncontrollably

If it's all the same to you, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and pretend that the world I live in: the one where people called GTA4 out on its ****, is the real one.

GTA4 was, for a time at least, the single highest grossing product launch in video game history.

It dominated reviews. It dominated GOTY. I don't think some random dudes(dudes who P.S. had already given Rockstar their $60!) whining about their nitty problems with the game was them "getting called out". It's the internet. Random dudes whine about their nitty problems with everything.

If you can find a preview about 5 that quotes a Rockstar guy saying that "they are learning from their mistakes" or whatever, that'd be great. But like MinusEV said, it is easy to remember now how disappointing GTA 4 was. What you may have forgotten was that GTA 4 came out to a tidal wave of INCREDIBLY POSITIVE RESPONSES (it took a few hours of gameplay to reveal the flaws, many reviewers may not have gotten far enough).

So right now, when you're reading these gushing previews about how revolutionary the three protagonist system is and all that ****, just remember, Rockstar snowed everybody about 4. Masterfully. They snowed everybody about L.A. Noire. Red Dead Redemption was a better a game, but still had many of the same tonal/storytelling problems and it was ALSO really overrated by 0-day reviews.

Rockstar has elite brand management/media relations people.

its so obvious from all the info released about GTA 5 so far what direction the game is going in and it's not the same one as GTA 4. it basically looks like a bigger better GTA SA

Oh my god this is confusing. Everybody is conflating people with different people (Fly may or may not believe that Richard Tanner is the same as You Faiil, and You Faiil even changed Fly's name to mine in a quote box!) and Tanner/Faiil is mischaracterizing the opposing side's arguments.

This is all exactly right.

For the record, GTA4's story wasn't very good because it took itself too seriously in its attempts to deconstruct the American Dream. The Sopranos thing is GTA5, not 4. I do not think that the story of GTA4 is the main reason why the game was mediocre compared to past GTAs. Red Dead Redemption has a similar lol pretentious story that doesn't affect my high opinion of that game.

I'd become quietly convinced this is what happened. I thought I'd dropped in on a conversation with Fly I didn't recall having.

We agree

We agree

We agree

I guess I'm just confused why people are (or seem to be) concerned with GTA5's story. I've never played a GTA game where the story stopped me from enjoying it.

Anyone recall GTA3's silent protagonist (Claude) and the "story" that filled that game? As a story, it was nothing short of awful, but the game was so engaging and incredible and what story there was had enough dark humor and funny side stuff to keep me interested. GTA3 is, to me, one of the best games ever made when you factor in its impact and quality at release and that has next to nothing to do with the overriding narrative of the game.

All of that said, my point is and has been that even if R* continues this whole "Try to tell a truly meaningful story" kick they're on, and I'm not convinced from that trailer that they are, I'm not worried about GTA5 at all so long as they fix the other issues that kept me from liking GTA4.

Richard, no, I know who you are. You and YouFaill do seem to agree about everything, and he's also part of the "GTA4 wasn't a real GTA" club thing that I had no idea existed before this thread, but this is the post of yours that tilted me the most:

You've been pretty consistent that BJ was "wrong" and or "messing with you" by, apparently, saying a bunch of **** you agreed with.

I mean, if you've scaled back your point to "I don't care about the stories", that's cool. Some people do, though, and I don't think you can call them "wrong".

Rockstar has steadily increased the narrative elements of their games. GTA 1/2 barely had a story, GTA 3 was a loosely connected bunch of subplots, all the way up to GTA 4's expansive meditations on revenge and the American dream and ****.

So,
Are you sincerely confused about that? Like, you can't even comprehend the possible existence of someone who cares about the story of a videogame that has hours and hours of cutscenes and dialogue?