In terms of story complexity and depth, I completely agree with you. RDR2 is even better than GTA IV, and that was a pretty hard act to pull to begin with!
As an overall game, though, I do see it somewhat on par with GTA V.
Sure, the story’s nowhere near as gripping or even smart necessarily, but the characters do have depth, the narrative content makes sense, and it does have some interesting interactions between the characters which humanise them just enough for me to want to see the story through. It kinda’ feels like someone tried to pull off Seinfeld in the world of GTA and sort of succeeded in creating a game about nothing much as far as the themes are concerned.
This is compensated a lot by the Online component, which seems to be the second half of the story - there are a lot of returning characters, we get to see the evolution of some favourites, the missions and objectives themselves pretty much go nuts way more frequently than the single-player ones. It’s clear that Rockstar focused a lot more on the online component that time, but the story content’s still good and even more interesting overall.
Now, credit where it’s due, RDO does a lot more to keep the multiplayer in the sandbox, with far fewer activities being relegated to dedicated lobbies, and has a lot more NPC interactions as well, but it still feels relatively barebones when compared to GTAO (this loops back to my first point about it receiving less love, thus less development post-launch).
But, yeah, again, GTA IV (especially when including TBoGT and TLaD) and RDR2 are THE epitome of Rockstar storytelling.
Edit: hey, maybe I’m just being a sourpuss and Rockstar will knock our socks off with the storytelling in VI!
Trevor - most interesting IMO (esp. w/ end of game “mission”), but surely he’s interested in ruling the Los Santos drug trade, so why don’t we get any missions doing that?
Franklin - most promising since he claimed to want to start his own business at the start, but once he gets money, he just chills at his house and doesn’t do any more missions? The closest we get to ambition is trying to work with the Grove Street gang, but that’s a handful of missions that go nowhere.
Michael - the most developed, but also the least interesting; he’s just a cuck whose wife is cheating on him and whose kids don’t respect him, and his life’s dream is to succeed at something he failed at years ago (massive mid-life crisis energy)
I guess there’s a message there, but every other game had driven characters with clear goals that the player could relate with. In GTA V, the entire point of the game is just to get rich by doing heists, yet you only do five, and you can’t even repeat them.
sort of succeeded in creating a game about nothing much as far as the themes are concerned
And that’s probably my problem with it. Every other game had a point, which was steeped in satire at every turn. GTA V seemed simultaneously too serious (not nearly enough satire) and unfocused. Here are the previous games in the series (starting w/ III, I didn’t play I or II):
GTA III - Claude gets shot by his GF during a heist, and is befriended by someone in a mafia family. Plot happens, he’s passed between various criminal organizations, and eventually deals with all opposition. In the final scene, his new “gf” whines, and he’s the one to shoot her, wrapping up his arc.
GTA VC - Tommy is released from prison and goes back to work for his boss. Plot happens, he sets up his own crime family, finds out his boss was the one to put him in prison, and he kills his former boss, wrapping up his arc.
GTA SA - CJ returns to Los Santos from Liberty City to find his childhood gang having lost most of its power. He helps them reestablish themselves, is betrayed, leaves Los Santos, and then returns later to reestablish the gang and deal with his betrayer, which ends his arc.
GTA IV - Niko arrives in Liberty City with a friend promising a new life, but is quickly dragged back into crime. He deals with various criminal orgs, and eventually either his best friend or girlfriend gets killed, after which he takes revenge. Having dealt with his problems, he finds out Roman’s fiance is pregnant, implying he has new meaning to his life.
GTA V - Michael and Trevor fail at “the big heist,” Michael thinks Trevor died, and both go on with their lives. Michael gets Franklin to help, Trevor arrives in Los Santos and finds Michael, and together they plan to have another crack at the big heist they failed. Plot happens, they succeed, and Franklin is given the choice to kill Michael, Trevor, or try to save them both. Michael’s arc is largely completed, but Franklin and Trevor don’t really get closure on their goals in life.
Each story was more complex and interesting than the past, but GTA V ended that trend.
Online component, which seems to be the second half of the story
Never tried it. Maybe that’s why I dislike the game so much.
RDO
Also never played. I’m just not interested in any online component whatsoever, so I evaluate the games based on their SP experience.
Here is my list of Rockstar games that I’ve played by quality of story and character development:
RDR2
GTA IV
RDR1
GTA SA
Bully
GTA VC
most other rockstar games
GTA V
GTA III
I actually stopped and started GTA V a few times before deciding to force myself to finish it, because I kept coming back (people kept saying I should give it another shot) and re-downloading it just to be disappointed again was getting old. The game really fell flat for me, but at least I finished it and have no more desire to give it another shot. In fact, I played GTA IV after GTA V and had a much better experience (had started it on my Xbox, which died, so I re-purchased it on PC after playing GTA V). In fact, I thought Saints Row The Third had a better story than GTA V, and it’s certainly nothing to write home about.
I hope GTA VI is better because I love the rest of the series, but there’s no way I’m getting it anywhere near launch because I’m expecting it to be more like GTA V than previous entries.
Yeah, I agree in that they’re not really given anything interesting to do with that depth. It felt like one of those shows which you keep running in the background because you take some interest every now and again and is irrelevant enough to allow you to ignore it completely for a couple of hours.
Again, I feel this has more to do with the fact that they focused on the Online component to the point where it almost feels like they’d initially planned on having your player character act as the fourth (the selection wheel is the main clear indicator of this to me), which is why a lot of the story’s there instead of the single-player. Concrete example and a bit of a spoiler, but Franklin does get that bow for his character arc in online, and you as the player character directly help both him and yourself with it. And many of the “quest givers” in Online are the same as in single-player, some of which even hint at what the SP characters have been doing (off-screen).
It’s very unfortunate that they tied that story content to such a deliberately hostile multiplayer (I’m referring to how it pretty much encourages everyone to grief everyone else), because there are some neat moments which get lost in the slaughter… Same goes for RDO, although with much, much less hostility - actually enjoy roaming around and doing missions and unrelated stuff in Online, most of the time it feels as though I’m playing single-player.
Yeah, that’s why it feels like Seinfeld to me, it’s like the point is just to watch these people try to go about their lives with the added context of them being high-profile criminals. Could’ve been a very interesting character study even so, but it does kinda’ lose the plot after a while and the developments start meandering all over the place. Even that psych profile at the end gives me the feeling that it was their initial direction, but, again, I think the Shark Card Gods needed appeasement and back we go to the Online component…
I share that list with you, except for Bully, because I always forget that game exists for some reason, and RDR1, which I’ve just now started playing thanks to the PC port release. It really does feel like it has that same flavour of ambition as RDR2, even from the starting bits! And, again, I agree, although I’d argue GTA III had a fun enough story (“of its time” elements notwithstanding) for the time when it came out, it was good enough to keep me moving forward and wanting to see where things ended up. I think of it as a decent enough pilot which didn’t yet have its tone figured out. Also, I’d say GTA V is about on par with Vice City overall for me, although Vice City was more focused, not gonna lie.
I can certainly understand what you mean about it being a grind to play through, especially with your preference for single-player, I did feel the need to push myself through it a couple of times, yeah… And, same, jumped into IV afterward and ended up playing it through to the end again, and in a much more binge-y way. Oh, and Saints Row 2, 3 and 4 are gloriously campy, yes! Love them for entirely different reasons, but I do love them nonetheless!
Same… would be nice for them to lean into those storytelling chops they demonstrated with RDR2, they could blow a lot of contemporaries out of the water if they really gave it an honest try. And I, too, fear that online monetisation will, yet again, take priority…
Same… would be nice for them to lean into those storytelling chops they demonstrated with RDR2, they could blow a lot of contemporaries out of the water if they really gave it an honest try. And I, too, fear that online monetisation will, yet again, take priority…
Yup, that’s where I’m at and why I’m going to be a lot more hesitant about trying GTA VI. If they launch with the online component, I guess I have my answer.
This stings so much the more I think about it, to be honest. This discussion about the former glory of GTA made me realise just how much potential would be lost…
As a side note, I sincerely thank you for your replies, it’s been so refreshing to lay things out on the table like this!
In terms of story complexity and depth, I completely agree with you. RDR2 is even better than GTA IV, and that was a pretty hard act to pull to begin with!
As an overall game, though, I do see it somewhat on par with GTA V.
Sure, the story’s nowhere near as gripping or even smart necessarily, but the characters do have depth, the narrative content makes sense, and it does have some interesting interactions between the characters which humanise them just enough for me to want to see the story through. It kinda’ feels like someone tried to pull off Seinfeld in the world of GTA and sort of succeeded in creating a game about nothing much as far as the themes are concerned.
This is compensated a lot by the Online component, which seems to be the second half of the story - there are a lot of returning characters, we get to see the evolution of some favourites, the missions and objectives themselves pretty much go nuts way more frequently than the single-player ones. It’s clear that Rockstar focused a lot more on the online component that time, but the story content’s still good and even more interesting overall.
Now, credit where it’s due, RDO does a lot more to keep the multiplayer in the sandbox, with far fewer activities being relegated to dedicated lobbies, and has a lot more NPC interactions as well, but it still feels relatively barebones when compared to GTAO (this loops back to my first point about it receiving less love, thus less development post-launch).
But, yeah, again, GTA IV (especially when including TBoGT and TLaD) and RDR2 are THE epitome of Rockstar storytelling.
Edit: hey, maybe I’m just being a sourpuss and Rockstar will knock our socks off with the storytelling in VI!
Some, but each is a massive disappointment:
I guess there’s a message there, but every other game had driven characters with clear goals that the player could relate with. In GTA V, the entire point of the game is just to get rich by doing heists, yet you only do five, and you can’t even repeat them.
And that’s probably my problem with it. Every other game had a point, which was steeped in satire at every turn. GTA V seemed simultaneously too serious (not nearly enough satire) and unfocused. Here are the previous games in the series (starting w/ III, I didn’t play I or II):
Each story was more complex and interesting than the past, but GTA V ended that trend.
Never tried it. Maybe that’s why I dislike the game so much.
Also never played. I’m just not interested in any online component whatsoever, so I evaluate the games based on their SP experience.
Here is my list of Rockstar games that I’ve played by quality of story and character development:
I actually stopped and started GTA V a few times before deciding to force myself to finish it, because I kept coming back (people kept saying I should give it another shot) and re-downloading it just to be disappointed again was getting old. The game really fell flat for me, but at least I finished it and have no more desire to give it another shot. In fact, I played GTA IV after GTA V and had a much better experience (had started it on my Xbox, which died, so I re-purchased it on PC after playing GTA V). In fact, I thought Saints Row The Third had a better story than GTA V, and it’s certainly nothing to write home about.
I hope GTA VI is better because I love the rest of the series, but there’s no way I’m getting it anywhere near launch because I’m expecting it to be more like GTA V than previous entries.
Yeah, I agree in that they’re not really given anything interesting to do with that depth. It felt like one of those shows which you keep running in the background because you take some interest every now and again and is irrelevant enough to allow you to ignore it completely for a couple of hours.
Again, I feel this has more to do with the fact that they focused on the Online component to the point where it almost feels like they’d initially planned on having your player character act as the fourth (the selection wheel is the main clear indicator of this to me), which is why a lot of the story’s there instead of the single-player. Concrete example and a bit of a spoiler, but Franklin does get that bow for his character arc in online, and you as the player character directly help both him and yourself with it. And many of the “quest givers” in Online are the same as in single-player, some of which even hint at what the SP characters have been doing (off-screen).
It’s very unfortunate that they tied that story content to such a deliberately hostile multiplayer (I’m referring to how it pretty much encourages everyone to grief everyone else), because there are some neat moments which get lost in the slaughter… Same goes for RDO, although with much, much less hostility - actually enjoy roaming around and doing missions and unrelated stuff in Online, most of the time it feels as though I’m playing single-player.
Yeah, that’s why it feels like Seinfeld to me, it’s like the point is just to watch these people try to go about their lives with the added context of them being high-profile criminals. Could’ve been a very interesting character study even so, but it does kinda’ lose the plot after a while and the developments start meandering all over the place. Even that psych profile at the end gives me the feeling that it was their initial direction, but, again, I think the Shark Card Gods needed appeasement and back we go to the Online component…
I share that list with you, except for Bully, because I always forget that game exists for some reason, and RDR1, which I’ve just now started playing thanks to the PC port release. It really does feel like it has that same flavour of ambition as RDR2, even from the starting bits! And, again, I agree, although I’d argue GTA III had a fun enough story (“of its time” elements notwithstanding) for the time when it came out, it was good enough to keep me moving forward and wanting to see where things ended up. I think of it as a decent enough pilot which didn’t yet have its tone figured out. Also, I’d say GTA V is about on par with Vice City overall for me, although Vice City was more focused, not gonna lie.
I can certainly understand what you mean about it being a grind to play through, especially with your preference for single-player, I did feel the need to push myself through it a couple of times, yeah… And, same, jumped into IV afterward and ended up playing it through to the end again, and in a much more binge-y way. Oh, and Saints Row 2, 3 and 4 are gloriously campy, yes! Love them for entirely different reasons, but I do love them nonetheless!
Same… would be nice for them to lean into those storytelling chops they demonstrated with RDR2, they could blow a lot of contemporaries out of the water if they really gave it an honest try. And I, too, fear that online monetisation will, yet again, take priority…
Yup, that’s where I’m at and why I’m going to be a lot more hesitant about trying GTA VI. If they launch with the online component, I guess I have my answer.
This stings so much the more I think about it, to be honest. This discussion about the former glory of GTA made me realise just how much potential would be lost…
As a side note, I sincerely thank you for your replies, it’s been so refreshing to lay things out on the table like this!