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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."
is it possible to obey the law?
will police get all over you just for not slamming on your brakes when a light turns red?
can I hit someone over the head, drag them into a warehouse, chain them up, and fuck them with a dagger?
If I kill someone, will the police not just give up after 5 minutes of looking for me?
Are acciidents persistent?
Can I completely eliminate the prostitute population of the city?
If I start killing all the taxi drivers, will the taxi drivers stay home?
Will all the various murders which are just too fucking easy to pull off in vice city be harder to do en-masse?
I want a game that will let me kill people, but will beat me down if I dont do it clean!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Vice City was supposed to be bigger than Liberty City, but they felt about the same size.
I can't wait to go throw down a million bucks on red then chain gun the whole casino when it comes up black.
Forum, pix, info and more at GTA-SA.com.
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!
This article was the feature of the June 2004 issue of Game Informer [the magazine].
Eurogamer's article seems to have almost "ripped" complete sentences, verbatim, from the GI magazine article [if my memory serves me correct; I read GI's article yesterday @ the library].
Can anyone confirm my suspicions ?
You'd better be careful when you pick up that pretty "female" prostitute in San Fierro.. :-p
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
First, GTA3 was unarguably seminal in video gaming. No doubt about that. It framed not only how games are played, but how they're perceived, how they're designed - through and through GTA3 changed everything about video games.
Enter GTA:VC. It did what - great music? This new GTA is as groundbreaking how? They have mountains? Eating? Minigames? Ragdoll physics?
Rockstar has produced one groundbreaking game. One. And, they've been living off it ever since. Even Midnight Club II, which was racing bliss at its most pure, was developed by a company they bought that had designed the original Midtown Madness series for Microsoft on the PC. Maybe they're waiting for the next gen systems to really do something new, but as far as I'm concerned Rockstar is an overrated one-hit wonder that, apparentely quite accidently, hit an oil well in their background and are sucking it dry. Most of their other work has been luck (Midnight Club II) or medicore to above average at best (State of Emergency, Revolver, Manhunt, etc). What remains to be seen is how long the public will endure variations of the same thing, made more difficult by Rockstar in that other companies are trying to draw from the same well.
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."
I am seriously worried that a large amount of this game will never be seen by gamers. Why?? I am sure that everyone here remembers all of the whining and crying that was done by the Haitian community over the "Kill all the Haitians" phrase in VC. What did Rockstar do? They caved and blurred out that phrase in future versions. Go ahead and flame me about being a killjoy on what looks like an incredible game, but does anyone else here think that the NAACP won't scream wildly and make a public scene about what they think is racial stereotyping in LA? You are a black man, in a gang, committing murders and robbing houses with your homies. This non-racial issue will be turned into a racial scene by the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
God, do I hope I am wrong and we all see this game how it was intended, but I will not be surprised if it is changed just prior to release.
http://www.tomandemily.com
They should have called Las Vegas "Lost Wages" (like in Leisure Suit Larry (Yes, I'm that old)).
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Turn off the trails in the video settings. For some reason they're on by default, and they give me a headache.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
I couldn't help but read this and cringe. I know the GTA franchise has done a great job of satirizing cars and such, but that was because they had to legally.
I am terrified that there will be a real McDonalds in this game. In a game that's been about a quasi-real world, a real restaraunt would take away from the feel of the game I feel. Some games like Gran Turismo NEED real company logos/cars etc. to make it feel right. GTA needs fake things to make it feel right.
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