Personally I’m shocked that they went with a full blown sequel after GTA IV (and its quasi-expansions, The Lost and The Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony - both still set in Liberty City). I was expecting something more like Vice City or San Andreas rendered in the GTA IV engine.
Speculation runs rampant. Will it continue the Liberty City - Vice City - San Andreas sequence GTA 1 originated and GTA III and its successors followed? Will it be based in Las Venturas, the GTA universe equivalent of Vegas? Some more hints.
Wait, isn’t this the first GTA game to be set in a real city? Or the second fake LA?
I hear that. I stopped playing GTA4 fast on account of the miserable setting and the the DIAS gameplay, but I remember driving all around San Andreas for hours. 'Course, you didnt get a chance in that game, either.
I’ve been tearing through articles today, read somewhere that Rockstar said that GTA IV was supposed to have a lot of surrounding countryside but they had to sacrifice the size for other improvements.
The theory is that even if V is only one city, it will be a sprawler with lots of outlying area.
I was so looking forward to IV and was quite let down. Not sure why though. I remember driving was a pain in the ass. Something about the handling was just difficult.
I hope it isn’t Los Angeles based, we’ve just had an open-world drivy-shooty thing set there in the form of L.A. Noire. I won’t be complaining too hard, but I’d still like to see somewhere completely new.
Handling took some getting used to for me, but I’m pretty good at it now. You just need to power slide around every corner. No doubt it could be tightened up a bit for GTAV, though you don’t want to lose the arcade-y feel too much. You want cars to be flipping over each other when they hit the curb at high speeds. Its a fine line to walk.
Given that the stylized, engraved “V/five” seems to reference currency of some sort, that might indicate the locale - maybe Las Venturas/Vegas? Or maybe it’s a hint of the potential storyline, given the current economic troubles? I’d love to participate virtually in taking down an eeeevil global bank, a la the film The International, but with more explode-y bits and less talking.
Or it could possibly be a red herring - the whole game is about crime and money, regardless of locale.
Personally, I would love to see a re-rendered San Andreas, maybe with even bigger cities. Or possibly something overseas, maybe a mini-Europe or something. But above all else, I want my damn planes/jetpacks/flamethrowers/tanks back.
I liked San Andreas but it was actually too huge. I remember one mission where it took five minutes of driving just to get to your target. Fail it and repeat.
my complaint with 4 was the insanely bad main story line and your insanely bad mentally incompetent cousin with the constant calls on the phone of “COUSIN! IT IS YOUR COUSIN!”
loved the way the cars handled though, much more realism than in any of the previous gta’s
Oh, yeah, I forgot those Red County missions. If you flipped your car out in the sticks, you were screwed.
GTA IV got better at mission structure and waypoints, so hopefully this would carry over if the map does indeed get bigger.
One rumor I just heard from a guy I know at EA is that it will cover Las Venturas and surrounding areas, but that almost all the buildings will be fully rendered inside and out. As in all the casinos, all the hotel rooms, all the houses, etc. (yeah, I’m taking it with a grain of salt).
Vice City remains my favorite of the series. Replaying it now, in fact— bought the combo pack from Steam with GTA 1/2/3, Vice City, and San Andreas for around $10.
Yeah, they really need to fine-tune the “frinedship” mechanism - and by fine-tune, I mean eliminate altogether.
Cousin Roman was bad enough - from alcoholic Packie, to the depressive Dwayne, to closeted 'roid freak Brucie, I was left thinking that these hardened criminals were the most co-dependent people ever. You’d think the dialog would make it worth the effort, but not really, when it means your “friends” get pissy if you don’t pick up their phone call while you’re running from the cops with four stars.
Maybe a good compromise for those who do like the RPG-lite gameplay elements would be to make hanging out with friends voluntary - you can call them, they can even call you, but there’s no penalty for not hanging out with them.
+1 - the handling was so much better and less arcadey than in previous installments. Sure, it required a lot of finesse, but so does driving a real car at high speed. It even fairly accurately renders understeer in the FWD cars, which you don’t often see in a non-simulation game.
I just wish they’d kept some of the track-racing elements from Vice City and San Andreas. Then again, it wouldn’t have fit with the grittier storyline and more mature tone of GTA IV. Here’s hopeing GTA V gets juvenile again.