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When did GTA V become the benchmark for open world games?

Woggleman

Member
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.
 

Kuranghi

Member
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.

How did get on with RDR 2?
 
When Kojima crowned Rockstar North. That's it.

That's when.
OP actually had the balls to say Trevor sucked as a character, when in reality, he became an iconic character in video game history whether you like it or not.

GTA V's story was the best because it MADE SENSE in the world of GTA.

The 3-character system was innovative and fresh, and no one was able to do it as well as Rockstar since.

The Map could have done less with the mountains, but it gives the map a much needed visual character to depict how versatile California really is.

I love all of the GTA games and GTA V, including online, is a bonafide masterpiece.

There is a reason why it already sold more than 135 million copies ;)
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Good game Im sure and alot of it felt great.
But I couldnt stand chasing a race car with a pick up truck or some shit for the millioneth time in a GTA game.... so I didnt finish it or get very far.

The driving controls felt horrible to me compared to GTA 4 and Sleeping dogs, so I just coulndt play it much.

GTA 4, RDR and RDR2 are my jams though

GTA 4 had more details in some aspects and of course GTA 5 made some amazing benchmarks for open world games.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Probably when it sold 50 million copies and became the best selling game of the generation as a port.
OP actually had the balls to say Trevor sucked as a character, when in reality, he became an iconic character in video game history whether you like it or not.

GTA V's story was the best because it MADE SENSE in the world of GTA.

The 3-character system was innovative and fresh, and no one was able to do it as well as Rockstar since.

The Map could have done less with the mountains, but it gives the map a much needed visual character to depict how versatile California really is.

I love all of the GTA games and GTA V, including online, is a bonafide masterpiece.

There is a reason why it already sold more than 135 million copies ;)

I always thought of Trevor as basically being the personalization of the crazy guy we all played when we first got GTA3 on PS2.
 

Woggleman

Member
Trevor is actually one of the worst protagonists in gaming in general. The whole Floyd situation just put me off. Other GTA protagonists were hardened gangsters and killers but Trevor gets off on abusing people weaker than him and actually rapes Floyd. He also killed the protagonist of one of R's best DLCs for no good reason at all.
 

bxrz

Member
Every open world game gets compared to GTA V now and its kinda hilarious.

"*insert game here* isn't even better or bigger than GTA V and that came out 7 years ago!!!!"
 
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.

Uh, idk, maybe because they literally invented the Open World Genre? :|
 
Uh, idk, maybe because they literally invented the Open World Genre? :|

nope, there were plenty of roguelikes and RPGs with quite big open maps way before it, including Zelda 1

what it did create was the pointless urban sandbox with tons of repetitive side missions scattered in the map
 

Woggleman

Member
Michael had a lot of potential as a character. A retired criminal getting pulled back into the game would make for an interesting game but they did it wrong. The game was actually quite good until Trevor came in. That Jewelry Store job was actually Rockstar at it's finest and it could have worked with just him and Franklin. A black gangster from the hood and a retired old white criminal could have been an interesting concept.
 

Gtafans93

Member
The world itself is still better and more alive than anything else though besides like Red Dead 2. A big AAA game like Cyberpunk falling short of a 2013 game makes headlines, but no one else is doing better either.
But Cyberpunk has a more open line for it's missions and choice, RDR2 and even GTA 5 are quite linear with how you approach a mission unless scripted otherwise
 

YCoCg

Member
Michael had a lot of potential as a character. A retired criminal getting pulled back into the game would make for an interesting game but they did it wrong. The game was actually quite good until Trevor came in. That Jewelry Store job was actually Rockstar at it's finest and it could have worked with just him and Franklin. A black gangster from the hood and a retired old white criminal could have been an interesting concept.
They blew their load too early with Trevor, killing off like 3 gangs in his intro left him wandering aimless through most of the story (seriously the dock heist was pure pointless). Should've kept The Lost and Aztecas around and have them be Trevor's antagonist .
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I could be wrong but isn't GTA games are much more categorized as "sand box" rather than "open world"?
 

Eric187

Banned
Seriously man comparing any open world game to rockstars is a joke now. GTA5 came out in 2013 and it’s urban environment has yet to be beat. Watchdogs, yakuza, these games don’t even remotely compare in size scope or ambition. They don’t feel lived in or real at all in any sense. Details like radio stations with news reports and commercials add so much to making this world more alive and believeable. You can spend countless hours walking and observing this world, you can’t do that in any other game. It’s almost laughable that people think these games are more realized worlds.
 

Fbh

Member
Because even though the story was just ok and the gameplay and mission design were mediocre, Rockstar are on a tier of their own when it comes to creating sandbox type open worlds.

They have the time, talent and budget to put a level of attention to detail in their games that goes beyond pretty much every other dev, and that just makes their worlds feel alive and fun to interact with.

In games like The Witcher, Horizon, Cyberpunk, Arkham Knight or Assassin's creed the appeal is usually the quests and missions and stories and maybe the combat too, and the open world is more like a nice big background for that stuff to take place in.

In GTAV the appeal for many people is not the quest or stories or combat, but the sandbox openworld itself.

I don't think it necessarily makes it the benchmark for open world games in general because open world games can be a lot of things and focus on different aspects to appeal to different players (I, for example, prefer a less detailed world with bettter quests and gameplay).
But you can't deny that if you are just looking at the open world itself, no one quite makes them like Rockstar.
 
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Woggleman

Member
But Cyberpunk has a more open line for it's missions and choice, RDR2 and even GTA 5 are quite linear with how you approach a mission unless scripted otherwise
This right here. I will fully admit CP needs major improvement in how you interact with the open world but their mission design is way better than GTAV. I enjoyed RDR2's missions and story very much but they are an on rails experience.
 

DeeDogg_

Banned
It was always overhyped and overrated to hell. This is coming from one of rockstars biggest fans who followed the marketing from the game since the minute it was announced in 2011
 
Because it's a Rockstar game and Rockstar has the resources, money, and time to deliver incredibly detailed open worlds.

That's really all there is to it. While I'm sure there will be Youtbe videos detailing pointless physics downgrades or whatever that no one actually gives a shit about, the truth is for a modern open world game GTAV is still incredibly detailed and expansive. Rockstar is able to create 3d worlds filled with unique assets, animation, mechanics, textures, dialogue and so on. There's really few games that match the production values of a Rockstar game.

I feel the problem gamers have is they are unable to remove themselves from this kind of conversation.

Terrible story? Terrible character? Tedious missions? For you maybe, but who cares? You fail to understand the question you are asking. I'm not a huge fan of GTAV at all. I think the story was mediocre and characters so uninteresting, but that dosen't matter. The sheer scale of the game is impressive. Matched only by Red Dead 2.
 
when GTA III was released

GTA3boxcover.jpg
 
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-Arcadia-

Banned
I don’t like GTA V as a game.

As a city, in a visual sense, it is the most wowing experience I have ever had with that kind of environment in a game. It looks amazing all the way up from close, granular detail, to miles away in the country, looking at all the itty bitty cars and their headlights traveling down various streets and overpasses, and seeing the entire realistic awesomeness of it all.

If it’s a benchmark, it’s in this area. Perhaps some are confused and have extrapolated that out to it being anything more than an average gameplay space, which it really wasn’t.
 

BluRayHiDef

Banned
I think Night City is more impressive. It's graphically more impressive, has a higher population density, and has many more accessible buildings. My comparison is based on the PC versions of both games, by the way.
 
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