I have been a long time fan of Rockstar and while GTA V does a lot right it is also in many ways their worst game.
There is a shockingly low number of interiors and even less than GTA IV. You can't even go into a fast food place or a bar or a nightclub.
It has a terrible story and one of the worst protagonists with Trevor. How am I supposed to enjoy playing as a cannibal who rapes other men? I can't believe these are the same people who wrote the RDR games.
That dock working mission might be the most tedious thing I have ever played in a game and one of the missions actually features you do doing yoga with your cheating wife's sidepiece. How is this supposed to be more fun than other games? You can also go to counseling with your annoying wife and kids. That Jewely store robbery though is a masterclass in mission design. I have to give them credit for that.
I just don't get how it became this thing that other open worlds must live up to.
I greatly disagree, I believe in the majority of the features by default it is their best open world game in regards to design.
The low number of Interiors also has to do with that you're working with completely different Hardware. When you look at something like Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City and San Andreas and you understand they're using something like DVD I want you to consider they went using that format for one generation only to then use the same format for another generation so clearly they were going to have limitations but the beauty of how they designed Grand Theft Auto V is that they worked around those limitations in simply created a playground Outdoors that could work with the hardware , they did not try to fucking force the funk.
So software design in regards to gaming it sometime similar to policy-making as you do not sit there and try to create what you want like some sort of weird dream , you have to create what you can, under the limitations that you're under, with the cards delt, based on what the problem is today, not what you want it to be.
I believe the story is completely irrelevant because people consider Grand Theft Auto V The Benchmark based on what it's able to do in regards to its features what's at the very minimum try to keep the conversation about objectively what it does not simply if we like one protagonist over the other or The Narrative of the story or anything like that because trust me I love the series with all my heart this is a series I bought every entry to and will always by day one, but let's save that conversation for another thread I don't believe when people are talking about benchmarks of open-world that they're trying to add in the story elements to this or something.
So Grand Theft Auto V does a good job with how the cars feel they do a good job with how the guns handle and how the player controls and they also do a good job with the artificial intelligence to the point where you don't even notice it, I would argue people's criticisms regarding Grand Theft Auto most times are about the story or about specific elements of the game that could be viewed as subjective like the narrative or specific subject matter in the game but ultimately you're only many times focus on that shit because you're not worrying about physically playing the game so I would argue the beauty of how this game was created was that these elements rarely got in the way of you going from A to B. I feel like only when you play a completely broken fucking game you really respect what they've been able to craft with Grand Theft Auto V.
So I think people criticized maybe too much they don't really understand just how well made that fucking game is for what it is, don't you think it's a weird not a single fucking Watch Dogs has been able to really match that series in regards to feel? Mafia? So as a person that loves open World Games especially crime games no one's able to really live up to something like Grand Theft Auto because these guys have been able to do something no other team has really been able to and that's Master lots of elements in the game that in other games are just complete afterthoughts.
So I'm not going to tell you that Grand Theft Auto feels like the BEST racing game or something but it feels good enough that you could go online and watch people literally treated as such because it works well enough to actually make that element something people can exclusively do that's an extremely difficult thing to do.
So I believe what people are really referring to are all the unique elements that combined make Grand Theft Auto that just work extremely well. You only sit back and give them more credit and respect when you play something like cyberpunk in these dumbasses can't even Implement a Chase sequence with cop cars.
no helicopters chasing you
No tanks coming after you or SWAT team
I feel sometimes we could get carried away thinking that what they do is just a simple thing because we're so fucking used to them releasing games but you have to sit back wonder if it was soooooooo easy, how come we've yet to have any developer really MATCH those features and beat them? I think really making those elements work is much more difficult then I think many really realize.