GTA V is lauded as one of the best additions to the GTA series. And for good reason. On paper it seems bigger and therefore better. Bigger sandbox. Bigger selection of thingies to shoot, drive, fly, blow up. Bigger array of characters. It's bigger. But unfortunately the core gameplay suffers due to its over ambitious nature. GTA V is supposed to be your normal sandbox shoot em up, but instead it's four games in one. The first game is a narrative driven piece, exploring how criminals weave their everyday lives into their enterprises. The second game is a niche heist based game, where the joy of the game is derived by choosing creative ways to rob targets and following through with those plans for the eventual pay-off. The third is our normal sandbox shoot em up we all know and love. And finally the online play can be viewed as its own entity. To say that a game can't achieve all of these modalities in one game would be presumptuous. Nothing is inherently mutually exclusive on this list. Unfortunately GTA V does not pull of any of the game modes particularly well, creating a game experience where you're constantly left wanting more.
Let's start with the story. The pacing of the story early on works very well. The opening sequence setting up the eventual long term conflict between Michael and Trevor work perfectly as an impetus for the player to keep moving along. Unfortunately there's so much unrelated material in between we never get to sink our teeth into the story. Enter Franklin who exists merely as a foil for both characters, preventing any huge emotional pay day. Furthermore, aside from Michael, Franklin and Trevor have static story lines. Franklin and Trevor are each given some opening "character building" missions, just so the player can get to know them as characters, but once the fun is done you are scurried right back to the main plot which really centers around Michael. Unfortunately Michael also has his host of side projects (the movie) and personal issues (his family) that seem to get sucked into the narrative at random. The result is a cluster fuck of narrative ties that don't seem to make any sense. Why didn't Franklin get angry at Michael when he stole those cars and received no payment, while Michael was clearly compensated via the director connection? Also, I know Trevor is a psychopath, but why is it that his sudden interest in his fictional company diminishes? What happened to the Grove street gang and why aren't there others in the gang who are outraged at Franklin's blatant turn of the back?
These are all questions that should have been explored, but instead the narrative was married to this romantic notion of the "thief." It was through the recreation of the daring con-man tale that GTA V was going to develop its narrative gravitas. But when you rely on another aspect of game play to establish narrative, it needs to come through.
The heist gameplay in GTA V was a refreshing change in the series and one I genuinely enjoyed. Even though the options were near linear (A or B), the prospect of me creating a master team of hackers, gunmen, and drivers excited me. I wanted to create the A-team. Unfortunately with the game having only a handful of heists, I found myself spending more time drudging through pointless missions just to get to heists. Most of the time the game followed a fire fight, fire fight; heist, fire fight, fire fight; heist gameplay timeline. The issue was everything seemed to pale into comparison to the heist. Nothing feels better than walking out of a bank in full body armor with a gattling gun at your side.
Why couldn't I have more opportunities to do that? The obvious answer is that GTA isn't intended to be that kind of game, which is fine. Then don't even put it in the game. I wish the dev team would have realized early they had a great game concept that could stand on its own without the GTA brand. Then those working on GTA could focus on what makes GTA so fun, the sandbox experience. I don't have a stinging condemnation of the heists in the game, more so I believe there wasn't enough. Not enough heists. Not enough options to broaden my team and its skills. Not enough gattling guns. And as I alluded to in the previous paragraph, the narrative was dependent on the player being immersed into a romantic notion of thievery.
The sandbox existed in GTA V, I just never compelled to explore it. And that's a problem. Sandbox games should be centered around exploration. If you want to go for broke on narrative, that's fine, but it must be understood that it will in some way hinder the narrative. If it ain't broke don't fix it is an adage that comes to mind for this flaw, but I also can't get too critical of an attempt to redefine the power of a sandbox game. The vastness of a world can be used as a narrative tool, but due to the natural limitations of game, its impossible to add the narrative flair and detail necessary to make a sandbox feel like a unique story. Eventually you get Elder Scrolls syndrome, where every cave is the like the last cave you plundered; every random town you run away from the cops in becomes like the last time you ran away from the cops.
And that's fine. It gave GTA replayability. Sometimes all I want to do is turn on my xbox and begin sniping people from the top of the ferris wheel. But in a game that seems to be pushing me in other directions, I never get around to exploring why this world was so fun. This critique slightly bleeds into a larger critique of the GTA series' push into realism and abandonment of humor and satire, but even when refraining from that vein of criticism I found myself oddly disinterested with the open world of Los Santos.
GTA online is GTA online. It's neither bad or good. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I'm sure some people do. I'm just not one of those people. I consider it separate from the game proper anyways so moving on!
So should we rage at Rockstar? No because at the very least they're creating unique material that had ambitious intentions backing up the game. Rockstar could have created Vice City 5.0 over and over and over and still make millions. Instead they decided to push the bounds and limits of their game. It just turns out that this time it didn't work out. The game was too big. Unfortunately the GTA brand is too big to fail, so its sins won't be fairly taken into account. We will still by GTA 6. And you know what I'm ok with that. I'd rather support triple A games that are willing to take risks, then a slew of Call of Duty clones.
Let's start with the story. The pacing of the story early on works very well. The opening sequence setting up the eventual long term conflict between Michael and Trevor work perfectly as an impetus for the player to keep moving along. Unfortunately there's so much unrelated material in between we never get to sink our teeth into the story. Enter Franklin who exists merely as a foil for both characters, preventing any huge emotional pay day. Furthermore, aside from Michael, Franklin and Trevor have static story lines. Franklin and Trevor are each given some opening "character building" missions, just so the player can get to know them as characters, but once the fun is done you are scurried right back to the main plot which really centers around Michael. Unfortunately Michael also has his host of side projects (the movie) and personal issues (his family) that seem to get sucked into the narrative at random. The result is a cluster fuck of narrative ties that don't seem to make any sense. Why didn't Franklin get angry at Michael when he stole those cars and received no payment, while Michael was clearly compensated via the director connection? Also, I know Trevor is a psychopath, but why is it that his sudden interest in his fictional company diminishes? What happened to the Grove street gang and why aren't there others in the gang who are outraged at Franklin's blatant turn of the back?
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| Yea grove street for life, until I get enough money, then fuck that shit |
The heist gameplay in GTA V was a refreshing change in the series and one I genuinely enjoyed. Even though the options were near linear (A or B), the prospect of me creating a master team of hackers, gunmen, and drivers excited me. I wanted to create the A-team. Unfortunately with the game having only a handful of heists, I found myself spending more time drudging through pointless missions just to get to heists. Most of the time the game followed a fire fight, fire fight; heist, fire fight, fire fight; heist gameplay timeline. The issue was everything seemed to pale into comparison to the heist. Nothing feels better than walking out of a bank in full body armor with a gattling gun at your side.
The sandbox existed in GTA V, I just never compelled to explore it. And that's a problem. Sandbox games should be centered around exploration. If you want to go for broke on narrative, that's fine, but it must be understood that it will in some way hinder the narrative. If it ain't broke don't fix it is an adage that comes to mind for this flaw, but I also can't get too critical of an attempt to redefine the power of a sandbox game. The vastness of a world can be used as a narrative tool, but due to the natural limitations of game, its impossible to add the narrative flair and detail necessary to make a sandbox feel like a unique story. Eventually you get Elder Scrolls syndrome, where every cave is the like the last cave you plundered; every random town you run away from the cops in becomes like the last time you ran away from the cops.
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| So much to see, so much to explore, except for when I have a mission that requires me to go to the same 4 locations |
GTA online is GTA online. It's neither bad or good. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I'm sure some people do. I'm just not one of those people. I consider it separate from the game proper anyways so moving on!
So should we rage at Rockstar? No because at the very least they're creating unique material that had ambitious intentions backing up the game. Rockstar could have created Vice City 5.0 over and over and over and still make millions. Instead they decided to push the bounds and limits of their game. It just turns out that this time it didn't work out. The game was too big. Unfortunately the GTA brand is too big to fail, so its sins won't be fairly taken into account. We will still by GTA 6. And you know what I'm ok with that. I'd rather support triple A games that are willing to take risks, then a slew of Call of Duty clones.
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