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What was the more influential game in 2001? Halo: Combat Evolved or Grand Theft Auto III?

xShaun

Member
Easily GTA III.
Everyone can get into and like aspects of GTA.

Halo was good for a niche amount of gamers and didn't influence much. There were multiple stellar FPS games before it and now there are much more popular FPS games than the Halo franchise.
 

nkarafo

Member
There were multiple stellar FPS games before it and now there are much more popular FPS games than the Halo franchise.
Yeah. I feel like anyone saying "Halo made FPS viable for consoles" have no experience with how the N64 did just that years earlier. When i played Halo for the first time i was already familiar with it's control scheme after playing tons of N64 fps games. It was nothing new to me, at least control wise.
 

Markio128

Member
I loved them both, but GTAIII has been the most influential Within the industry I believe. To be honest, I’d have put Mario 64 in the mix. That game was the Wizard of Oz of platform games and incredibly influential.
 

xShaun

Member
Yeah. I feel like anyone saying "Halo made FPS viable for consoles" have no experience with how the N64 did just that years earlier. When i played Halo for the first time i was already familiar with it's control scheme after playing tons of N64 fps games. It was nothing new to me, at least control wise.
People will hate to hear my hot take:

Fortnite has done more for FPS than Halo ever has.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Fortnite has done more for FPS than Halo ever has.

And what did exactly Fortnite do? Other than being LTTP to a genre that's already existed before it? Mind you, initially Fortnite was Minecraft's counterpart, with all the building mechanisms (still present to this day) and kind of a horde/survival mode during the night, at which the game failed miserably, needless to say the game was basically already dead at launch, it was Epic's last ditch effort to save the game and turn it into F2P BR game instead, which made it become one of the most popular, most recognizable IP of the past decade. But did it do anything new, anything other games followed suit? Absolutely not. If anything, CoD4 is the game that changed the FPS landscape.
 
GTA3, no contest. It influenced open-world games for generations to come.

Halo was only influential for console players, because there already existed better (and more influential) FPSes on PC like the Unreal Tournament series, Quake, etc. etc.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
I'd say GTA3.

Halo clearly is a big deal but Goldeneye on the N64 kind of did for multiplayer what Halo would then expand on and improve for console gaming.

I can't think of anything in a 3D world like GTA3, prior to GTA3.
 

BlackTron

Member
Really, both of these titles affected the industry HUGELY. The far-reaching effects of both are so deeply felt even today that it may be impossible to conjure a sure answer.

While I think GTA3 was more impactful as a showcase of game design (in the way everyone might have wanted to pay attention and take notes from Mario or Zelda 64), a case can be made that Microsoft's place in the business falls squarely on the shoulders of the first Xbox's launch title which helped catapult their position of success.

Microsoft went on to leverage that success for the hugely hyped launch of Halo 2, a game which no doubt accelerated their plans for online gaming, and of charging for it.

Basically, MS used their weight and clout to make a lot of changes and create a lot of competition in the console business, which has far reaching effects even today, and a case can be made that they could not have gotten there without Halo.

Where would MS be today without contracting Bungie for Halo? How did it affect the trajectory and plans of Sony and Nintendo? There is a very real chance that without Halo, there would never have been an Xbox 360.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
That happened with the Genesis and PS1 (outside Japan) but ok. (outside manufacturing of course)
I don’t understand what you mean.

What I’m saying is, Japan was still huge in the software department in the early 2000s and arguably still on top of the world for game design (you just have to look at that “Fall 2001” lineup again to see how much of it was Japanese). Come the next generation of consoles, the scales tipped completely, and nothing will convince me that the PS2 GTA trilogy isn’t one of the top 3 reasons why that happened. Almost every western AAA production of the last decade that isn’t a linear cinematic game owes something to GTA in its fundamental design.
 

wipeout364

Member
GTA III , not even a competition. GTA created the template that is still essentially followed today in all open world games, look at Sony first party and Ubisoft.

Halo refined the FPS genre good console controls, a shield/regeneration system but these things would have occurred organically anyway as the template was already there.

Halo however it could be argued made Xbox relevant and may be the reason it still exists today.
 

dwish

Member
As a long time fps fan (pre Halo) I never got what made it so special tbh. What was new about it for me was the vehicles pretty much.
 
GTA III - How many games still aspire to be something similar to a certain degree?

Halo showed how to do first person shooters on console properly, GTA will always be bigger

Goldeneye and Perfect Dark already did that though. Not to take away from Halo, amazing game and has had a huge impact on gaming.
 
Turok

Goldeneye

Perfect Dark

:pie_crying::pie_crying:


Issue with those is they were all copying computer games and they all felt off played with controllers. They were copying gamedesign for mouse and keyboard and tried to force them on gamepads. Halo was putting assists over assists for everything in that game. The reason games are playable today on controllers is because they have a gazillion assists for everything, besides their design focusing on pad control
 

nkarafo

Member
Issue with those is they were all copying computer games and they all felt off played with controllers. They were copying gamedesign for mouse and keyboard and tried to force them on gamepads. Halo was putting assists over assists for everything in that game. The reason games are playable today on controllers is because they have a gazillion assists for everything, besides their design focusing on pad control
Dunno what you mean with "assists" but Goldeneye also has different levels of aim assists and if you used the control options to change to 1.2 (which is the only logical choice), you would even find a real dual analog control scheme where you can hold one controller on each hand (kinda like Wiimore+nunchuck). The sensitivity/responsiveness/etc of the analog controls are the exact same as any modern game. But 1.2 scheme was good enough, you just used the dpad + analog for the same scheme.

And after Goldeneye there was Alien Resurrection on the PS1, which used dual analog controls by default.

Ι already mentioned this but when i played Halo for the first time, i felt right at home. I just had to do the same things i did in Turok, Goldeneye, PD, etc. My brain was already wired correctly. So it wasn't like a new experience, it was the exact same.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
None because N64 FPS games, Alien Resurrection, and Batman & Robin game.
Issue with those is they were all copying computer games and they all felt off played with controllers. They were copying gamedesign for mouse and keyboard and tried to force them on gamepads. Halo was putting assists over assists for everything in that game. The reason games are playable today on controllers is because they have a gazillion assists for everything, besides their design focusing on pad control
Tons of games have option to disable all assists and people play "fine". Aim assist is for casuals and baddies.
 
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Tons of games have option to disable all assists and people play "fine". Aim assist is for casuals and baddies.

No, nobody is disabling every assist. Thats baked into every console game. Its not about aim assists. Its everything, from magnetism, to the way the levels are designed, to enemies which give you a 5 second window when their shots dont connect, to the way your character moves and so on.

Look what the original makers of Halo had to say about the reasons the feel of the game felt so good on pads:

There’s a lot of code in Halo that interprets what you’re doing—how fast did you move there, what are you looking at? If it’s an enemy, we can assume that when you slow down, you’re trying to aim. So there are pages and pages that interpret the input that comes in, in a way that isn’t blatant and in your face. We tried to conceal how much help we’re giving the player.

It essentially buffers your movements, so that you get the movement you wanted, not necessarily the one you were making. Which gives you a really controlled, precise experience, beyond what your thumb could actually give you, unassisted.

Controllers are highly inefficient tools at pretty much anything. The reason games feel good on them its because of things like this. There is an enourmous amount of thinking and design that goes on behind the scenes in order for games to feel good
 

JLB

Banned
obviously GTA III.

FPS games already existed for a long time by then...and were popular already.

Open world Sandbox games weren't really a thing yet. there was maybe Shenmue and Daggerfall as far as what i played...that had that kinda freedom and things to do in the world

well, original gta was just that, an open world sandbox, just in 2d.
I think both were crazy influential, probably the most influential games of the decade. Hard to say which one get the number 1.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
No, nobody is disabling every assist. Thats baked into every console game. Its not about aim assists. Its everything, from magnetism, to the way the levels are designed, to enemies which give you a 5 second window when their shots dont connect, to the way your character moves and so on.

Look what the original makers of Halo had to say about the reasons the feel of the game felt so good on pads:





Controllers are highly inefficient tools at pretty much anything. The reason games feel good on them its because of things like this. There is an enourmous amount of thinking and design that goes on behind the scenes in order for games to feel good
Some CoDs, R6Siege allow you disable everything. No bullet magnetism and no soft lock. Its just Halo and Destiny that don´t allow we disable any assist on controllers and even don´t allow disable bullet magnetism with mouse+kb on PC. Pathetic because I could enjoy Halo and Destiny a lot if not because of the bullet magnetism.
 
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jaysius

Banned
GTA 3, the open world was mind blowing, and it showed developers years to come how to make an open world sandbox that was genuinely fun, and they took the risk. Also the game could play on a fairly meh PC at that time so that was a feat that was pretty incredible.
 
Some CoDs, R6Siege allow you disable everything. No bullet magnetism and no soft lock.


Like i said, there are assists baked into the gamedesign of the game. The way the movement works, the way the levels are designed, the way the gameplay is designed. Did you not read the quotes from the halo makers ? There were fps games on consoles before Halo, no ? Why did it take until Halo to have a console blueprint ? Because all the 90s games were copying PC games and consoles didnt have the tools computers had. You might not realize it at first, but you're moving maybe a bit too fast. You want to pick up an item from the floor and you're shooting your character too fast and cant center the item to pick it up. It just never felt "proper". Never felt right. Because they were talking another platforms games that were designed for another input scheme and forced it on consoles. Halo had all these "pages and pages", as they say, of code that assisted every action you ever made in that game. And all of a sudden, the game felt good, different than other console games
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Hmmm for me personally, Halo had a much bigger impact. But this is not about me is it?

Both games had their respective (and failed) "killers"...i.e. Killzone and Saints Row.

Both games were insanely influential in game development beyond their time with copy cats and the sort.

I think Halo CE was the more graphical and technical powerhouse for its time.

I believe GTA 3 appealed to a wider audience and has ultimately led to nothing but increased success.

Fuck this is hard. I honestly can't choose. I don't think either was more influential than the other. If they were in the same genre, then this would be an easier question.
 
It kicked off FPS games on consoles.
N64 existed before that then. Being first means nothing when you got no reach.
Yeah, the thing with Halo is it brought FPS on consoles into the mainstream and made it what it is today.

That being said it isn't an easy question. I think Halo did for FPS what GTA III did for open world games. They both changed the genres into what they are today and are equally important IMO.
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
GTA3 (even tho I didn't like it and went back to GTA2 until Vice City came out)

Halo gets a lot of credit for making shooters mainstream on console but the N64 outsold the XBOX and we were playing 4 player shooters for years before Halo

When Halo dropped it was the next-gen n64 shooter

GTA was "heres something completely different" and the industry followed suit
 

Sybrix

Member
Grand Theft Auto 3.

It put games for adults in the mainstream, it was a game that parents knew of.

I'm 33 now and my parents are in their 70s, they have no idea what Halo is but they know what Grand Theft Auto is.
 
I don’t understand what you mean.

What I’m saying is, Japan was still huge in the software department in the early 2000s and arguably still on top of the world for game design (you just have to look at that “Fall 2001” lineup again to see how much of it was Japanese).
And half those games didn't even sell that well, or only received a boost because of early launch and then died off. Who the heck was buying Ico? And other 2001 games not on that list (GTA III and Jak etc) ended up being the more prominent games getting people to buy PS2's. Also top of game design is an opinion.


Also the rest of your post doesn't make sense, the trends of tipping to the west had been happening since the Genesis and then it increased with the PSX (also 3Do before it technically since many of those games moved to PS1), PS2 helped, but one factor your missing is the Xbox which connected the PC to the console market even to the benefit of the PS2. GTA III had nothing to do with it.
 
Also people keep forgetting PC had GTA style games going back to the non-pc computers like the Amiga and only recently before GTA III or around the same time with various adventure games and rpgs. It was really consoles that was impacted heavily by GTA, so when people dismiss Halo as primarily an influence for consoles that applies to GTAIII. Consoles were very weak, they had only started exploring open level design in linear games like Spyro and overhead open 3D action games, the Dreamcast port of Omikron was likely the closest a console got to being GTAIII before GTA III.
 
I don’t understand what you mean.

What I’m saying is, Japan was still huge in the software department in the early 2000s and arguably still on top of the world for game design (you just have to look at that “Fall 2001” lineup again to see how much of it was Japanese). Come the next generation of consoles, the scales tipped completely, and nothing will convince me that the PS2 GTA trilogy isn’t one of the top 3 reasons why that happened. Almost every western AAA production of the last decade that isn’t a linear cinematic game owes something to GTA in its fundamental design.

They never were on top of the world. It was western PC developers. You know, the guys who invented role playing games, adventure games, simulation games, flight games, strategy games, stealth games, MMOs, first person shooters.

Mario and Nintendo saved the video game industry nothing bigger than that

They saved the american console market. Thats it. That crash only happened in the console space and in north america. Home computers and europe and the rest of the planet never had any issues
 
goldeneye did in 95 actually, which is why i would vote gta 3 was more influential
GE didn't kick off nothing, you can see that by the other FPS games released on the N64, it was a standalone blockbuster based on a movie during games droughts on the N64 released early enough to make a difference. It didn't have the influencial reach of Halo nor commanded the media narrative outside being a well-reviewed game and one of the few reasons to own an N64. PD couldn't even sell half, and other FPS games didn't even touch PD.

N64 main FPS legacy was having better rated and performing games in that genre than the PSX and that's basically it (outside MOH). There's a reason why Halo took command of attention in a way GE didn't despite selling less than GE, and then did even better with a Sequel, that added even more innovations than Halo CE.
 
They saved the american console market. Thats it. That crash only happened in the console space and in north america. Home computers and europe and the rest of the planet never had any issues
Nintendo didn't even save the market, the market was gong crazy buying reduced price games, Atari sold 1 million 2600's in 1985 the supposed "death" of the industry with no marketing out their own mouth. it was the industry side that was losing money and that was what Nintendo saved, somewhat (and then almost crashed it again but then the Genesis kind of fixed that.)
 

Codes 208

Member
Probably halo. It redefined how shooters should feel and play on consoles and it single-handedly saved an entire platform.
 
GTA3 (even tho I didn't like it and went back to GTA2 until Vice City came out)

Halo gets a lot of credit for making shooters mainstream on console but the N64 outsold the XBOX and we were playing 4 player shooters for years before Halo

When Halo dropped it was the next-gen n64 shooter

GTA was "heres something completely different" and the industry followed suit
The thing that differentiates Halo from something like Goldeneye or Perfect Dark is the fact it set the standard for console shooters when it came to feel and controls. I know people love Goldeneye and Perfect Dark but they control like shit and they controlled like shit when they came out. Halo was really the first shooter on console to feel amazing, and it set a standard that we still mostly use today. Halo CE and more importantly Halo 2 (due to the online portion) created the modern FPS far more then any of the N64 games did. The "first" one to the party generally doesn't set the standard.
 
This isn't even debatable. It's gta 3. If halo was released on pc it would be a good game crushed by unreal tournament. But being a console exclusive that also nailed the twin stick controls propelled it to legendary status which it would never have gotten on pc.
 
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