Slashdot Mirror
Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas Details Revealed
Thanks to Eurogamer for its article revealing many new details about Rockstar North's ravenously-awaited PlayStation 2 title, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which had first screenshots revealed during last week's E3 show. Hitherto unavailable information includes the setting ("comprising Los Santos (Los Angeles) where you start out, San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturra (Las Vegas), it's an epic environment allegedly six times the size of Vice City") and unorthodox new features ("through dozens of accurately modelled restaurants and other eateries, the criminal wannabe will be able to top up his stamina meter, and actually visibly gain weight"), with Eurogamer concluding happily: "We fancy that Rockstar North's dark and satirical sense of humour, and passionate obsession with minutely detailed gameplay will see us through many a lonely night in San Andreas."
Vice City was supposed to be bigger than Liberty City, but they felt about the same size.
I've only recently started playing the GTA games, and they're pretty cool. Not for the whole criminal focus, though I understand there are people who like that sort of thing, but for all the submissions and stuff. When I found out that GTA3 had its very own Crazy Taxi mode I nearly died.
To me, that's what makes GTA worth playing: the giant sandbox play style. Like Zelda taking place in a real city.
Indeed, GTA is a real argument against setting your gigantic sprawling action-adventure game in a fantastic setting. Because when you see a taxi running down the street, you immediately understand what that means, that there's a guy inside running fares for customers, and in general how that works. A sci-fi or fantasy implementation of that would have to do some extra work to connect that concept with that game's world.
It's possible, mind you, and one of the great things about Zelda is how they manage to put in a little of that despite the somewhat alien setting, but it doesn't have the same feeling of verisimilitude GTA has.
On the other hand, um, uh, GTA's talk radio stations cycle too much! Yeah!
Twenty years ago, a single company could be cranking out 10 different games a year because, well, it would take a total of 10 programmers (each game requiring support personnel, but just one true "creator") to accomplish it. Added into this was that customers would only really expect one gameplay style (one "thing to do") per game. Right now, it's extremely rare and difficult to get a good team together that can excel in multiple genres. If you've got a group of people who can do an awesome RPG, there's a better-than-even chance that the same team isn't going to be able to develop an awesome FPS. Add in the high monetary risk factor and it could kill a company to even try.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but what you're describing is the case for MOST game developers.
I thought of this as I was writing. Perhaps what I should have emphasized more is that with the exception of GTA3, anything good that Rockstar has done is based extremely closely to GTA3 (I don't think MC2 counts). SimAnts - while still a Sim game - is fairly different in principle than SimCity. Sure, it's overheard, and it's management. But there's more to SimEarth and SimAnt than SimCity + More Vehicles and mountains, or even SimCity with Ants or SimEarth with Earth. The gaming principles, objectives, design, is all different. What is the same is merely the gaming interface really. With GTA, it's the interface that's changing in small degrees but the gaming theory behind it is barely changed. I'd agree with you about iD, as I'm not a fan anyway. Bioware? Well KOTOR comes immediately to mind - sure it's a variation of Baldur's Gate to some degree, but it's much more different from Baldur's Gate than GTA:SA/VC is from GTA3. Even Neverwinter Nights is substantially different enough from Baldur's Gate that it's nowhere near the similarity between the GTA 3-SA.
So you're right; companies do well in something and they keep doing similar games (Blizzard also comes to mind). But good companies, the great ones that you mentioned (I'll accept iD even though I'm personally no fan) take their initial breakthrough and improve on it well beyond mere ascetic variations. You mentioned the difficulty of producing games, and yet Rockstar will have managed to produce 3 GTA games in ~2 years (GTA3, 2002; GTA:VC, 2003; GTA:SA, 2004). That's what I mean by soaking it dry.
I think we'd agree that the few great companies are the ones who do things radically different but do them well. Miyamoto's Mario and Zelda, Wright's SimCity and Sims, Irrational's System Shock II and Freedom Force, Bungie's Myth and Halo/Marathon; the great developers can create great games whatever the language, be it FPS, RPG, or RTS.
In addition, I would mention that there's no shortage of games available and on the way in a multitude of styles and genres. If you're tired of GTA, then buy something from some other company. It's certainly not necessary that one buys games from Rockstar alone.
Short version: While I can hardly disagree with your facts, I think it's complaining for the sake of complaining instead of complaining about a real "problem."
Who says you have to be groudbreaking every time? Vice City wasn't revolutionary, but it was a great game. As long as Rockstar keeps making great games, I'm not going to complain.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.