Grand Theft Auto Retrospective

Sadkey writes "In light of the release of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for the PSP, UGO has posted a retrospective around the GTA games. "Come take a trip through time, and see how a franchise went from a cult hit to a cultural phenomenon, set the tone for an entire generation, and made open-ended gameplay a buzzword of the early 21st century. It's a long, bumpy ride, but at the end, Grand Theft Auto stands tall as the game that changed everything.' ." I remember playing the top down GTAs and just loving it. Great games.

Comments

So far as open-ended goes...

[el-spectre]

I seem to recall a few obscure games from a company called Maxis! Sheesh, GTA3 is great, but they hardly invented or popularized the open-ended game.

Re:So far as open-ended goes...

[davidphogan74]

It's a total re-invention of the open-ended game though. In the Maxis games you never were just one person, making one city Hell On Earth.

Re:So far as open-ended goes...

[bypedd]

That's true, but for all the Sim games, it is macroscopic, whereas this is microscopic. The Sims was similar, but that was on a level of finer detail than GTA - you don't have to worry about whether you slept or ate in GTA. So in this sense, GTA is unique in that it was a day-to-day kind of open-ended game play that also happened to be a crime spree.

But even with GTA, the "open ended" aspect wasn't really all that great. The frustration of not being able to leave the island, even if you figured out how to get around the barriers set up, was one example. And it's not like the "life of crime sim" was new, Rockstar just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Same for Maxis, actually.

Re:So far as open-ended goes...

[ejito]

but for all the Sim games, it is macroscopic

Wrong... Check out Streets of Sim City and Sim Copter. Both were 3d worlds and played from the perspective of one character.

  Check out some sim copter screens... Remind you of something else?

GTA was fun

[Turn-X Alphonse]

GTA 1/London/2 and GTA 3/VC/SA shouldn't be called the same game series. They're vastly different (in playing style and looks) to the point where they're almost polar opposits. It's like comparing the 3D sonics to Sonic on the mega drive. One was great and the other is good but it's just not the same.

Re:Was GTA 3 the pinnacle?

[mrchaotica]

In my opinion, some things that they've added in Vice City and San Andreas do have value, but some others do not.

For example, I like how Vice City added planes and motorcycles and whatnot, as well as the extra mission types (pizza delivery, "property" missions). I also like how San Andreas was just so big -- unlike Vice City and GTA3, it actually feels like a world.

The thing I don't like about Vice City and San Andreas, though, is how the character has his own personality. With GTA3's "generic thug" character, it felt more like it was you in the game. It's considerably harder to suspend disbelief in San Andreas, since the character has such a strong personality of his own.

What I'd Like To See

[miyako]

I've never really liked the GTA games personally. I've thought that they had alot of potential, but for myself- and I'm sure a lot of other people, the story and the missions never really held much appeal for me. It's not that I'm against the violence in the games, I enjoy violent games quite a bit- but I've never been able to empathise with the characters of the series at all.
What I would like to see is some of the "influence" that the GTA series has supposely had in gaming put into something other than making clones with crappier gameplay and crappier stories. Instead I would like to see developers take the massive non-linear 3D world concept and create more games like Shenmue, or given the emphasis on driving in the games, something like Fast and the Furious where the player starts down at the bottom, maybe jacking cars or working as a delivery boy, and rises on the street racing circut (OK, I would hate that game too, but it's just an idea). What about an RPG that takes place inside of a single living city? Something like Blood Omen where you play a vampire who stalks the streets of a huge vibrant faux-new york city feeding on the innocent and battling for territory against rival vampire gangs?
Of course, GTA wasn't the first game to take place in a large, non-linear city. Shenmue had a much deeper world and IIRC was out a few years before GTAIII. Crazy Taxi had a huge non-linear city, fast dangerous driving and missions as well.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that GTA may have been well executed in a lot of ways, but it wasn't necessarily THAT innovative, and that if it was as influential as the article states, then why are the only games I can find now that are vaguely based off the GTA formula horribly inferior ripoffs with the same criminal motif?

Re:Was GTA 3 the pinnacle?

[bypedd]

"Have they really added value as they have continued the franchise"

No. They've expanded, and they've introduced things like new vehicles, different scenery, etc, but it's the same game, just with new content. Hence the "franchise" aspect. As long as franchises are popular, then each successive game is just an expansion pack that doesn't require the original. Which is great - there are some games I'm dying for sequels because I just want more. But I know that I don't want them to change the things I like - so we expect a degree of permanence in the features and the feel of the game.

Re:Top down was ok....

[mrchaotica]

For some of us, it's the other way around: I never really liked the top-down GTAs, but I thought GTA3 was the greatest thing ever (or perhaps second only to Half-Life). I guess it just depends on the kind of game you want -- the older GTAs were much more "arcade-like," while the newer ones are more immersive.

Yeah, I thought of a few myself.

[hackwrench]

Final fantasy once you get the airship, the "Secret of..." games from the same company, the Legend of Zelda games (moreso than the Squaresoft games). Mario 64?

Overrated

[vonPoonBurGer]

For my money, the GTA series has to be one of the most overrated franchises currently being milked. While it certainly enjoys lots of free press by virtue of its once-shocking but now-old-news violence and depravity, it really doesn't seem to have grown much since it first went 3D. Rockstar found a working formula in GTA3 (after the the original games failed commercially), and have been suckling at that same teat ever since. I played the original GTA3 for a short while, and saw a little of Vice City, and I have to say, it does nothing for me. Once you get past the shock value of being able to beat a granny to death with a baseball bat, there's really not much in the way of compelling gameplay. The missions are fairly uninspired, the story is utterly generic, and there's nothing in it that really grabs me. I think "open-ended" in and of itself doesn't necessarily make for a good game, and leads to the pacing of the game being very haphazard, depending. I'm sure fans of the series would disagree, but perhaps they're better able to overlook the games' flaws than I am.

Re:Overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

At a default score of 1, your comment, for my money, has to be the most overrated nonsense currently being milked.

Aside from weapons, cars, etc., VC improved on GTA 3 by giving the main character lines, making the map a loop as opposed to a line allowing for more fluid movement between sections, had better side characters, such as the coked up lawyer no doubt inspired by Kleinfeld from Carlito's Way, and of course a more satisfying ending. SA further evolved the main character idea away from the simple brute of VC, had a rich cultural environment of cityscape, clothing style, hair cuts, tattoos, eating, working out, of course a fucking great soundtrack, was way larger than GTA 3 or VC, had planes and parachutes, and perhaps the best advancement, you could finally swim.

But, I guess your right, no change, no fun game play... I guess all of us who love the series are just smoking crack.

Re:Overrated

[tedrlord]

I don't really get it when people say the game hasn't grown. I mean, sure, they didn't add yet another dimension to make the first 4d game or anything, and they didn't break new ground by turning it into an underwater high-crime baking sim, but they took the stuff that worked and expanded upon it, and fixed the stuff that didn't. Hell, in San Andreas I could break into the airport, steal a 747, and fly twenty minutes in any direction. There's a frigging Harrier jet.

Personally, when I first got that game, I spent the entire day riding a mountain bike through the countryside north of Los Santos, finding paths and doing jumps. I kept getting lost, though. I think San Andreas' map was six times the size of Vice City, at least. Los Santos proper is probably bigger than the entire area in the last game.

Personally, while I agree GTA3 was pretty generic, Vice City and San Andreas really had decent stories. They're not oscar contenders or anything, but compared to most insane video game plots, they're quite well-written and keep my attention. I liked the characters I was supposed to like, hated the characters I was supposed to hate, and was appropriately outraged whenever I was betrayed. A popcorn flick at best, but that's still high praise in the game industry.

Of course, it depends on what you're looking for in a game. As another reply states, there are a lot of games that do specific things GTA does and does them better, but that's obvious. I like it because I have this large area, the open-ended feeling, and all these possible choices. Sure I could grab a game where I'm Bike Man and do crazy bike tricks, or Nameless Racing Person in a car with better graphics and courses, or Heavily Armed Guy In Space Armor that specializes in running around and shooting stuff, but it loses the experience that GTA has. I like being Tommy or CJ, with the silly little catchphrases and the outfits, going through my town and wreaking havoc or playing relatively harmless games as I choose.

That's the one other thing. The violence was hardly the focus for me. I mean, sure, I'd run down gang members when I had the chance, and I hated drug dealers, but I'd swerve to avoid the elderly and some of the more likeable citizenry. In San Andreas, when you were given the option to chat with passers-by, I was very polite to people that complimented me. It just made the game more interactive. That was why I played. It's a city sim from the little guy's perspective. And you can do whatever the hell you want with it.

Re:Interesting

[mrchaotica]

Oh, I never meant to say that the GTA3 character was perfect; in fact I agree that the fact that he couldn't talk was a flaw in the game. However, to improve upon that requires that the character talk with the player's words, not ones that are scripted into the game.

The gameplay and exploring the city, not the story or suspension of disbelief, is was keeps most of us replaying the game years after its release.

This serves to illustrate my point -- the reason I don't like CJ as much is that there's too much story. Sure, you have the illusion of choice, but the main storyline plays out more like a movie than a game. At least it's not as linear as Half-Life, but if they made it really open-ended, like an urban Morrowind or something, it would be even better.

I do like the Tommy Vercetti character, for the same reasons you do. Additionally, they managed to not load it down so much as to become obnoxious (unlike San Andreas).

Re:Eh?

[colmore]

Hate to tell you this dude, my dad has a whole shelf full of his grandparents books from the 1890s and thenabouts. Most of them: crappy, commercial, and pretty trashy. Most of the classics you read in school were commercial failures, frequently published with university or patron's aid (much like the high-brow fiction of today), then, as now, commercial and artistic successes like Dickens were the exception.

And as far as immersing yourself in things not OK in the real world, I'd hardly hold up written fiction (or cinema, or opera, or mythology or...) as a good example of the "right" way of doing things.

Re:Interesting

[pandaba]

Have to disagree. Fido (Claude?) was perfect as is. By being silent, he allowed GTA3 to be a true RPG. You never had his backstory, his personality, or any sort of character development intrude into your imagination of what sort of character he would be.

And the missions were perfect. If you avoided the rampages, you never had to kill innocents. So you could easily be a 'noble' mobster who doesn't endanger the lives of bystanders. You save the gun, baseball bat, grenades, rockets, etc., for the people who are soldiers: other gangsters or the police.

That was what was perfect about GTA3: you could make your own moral choices. Even though the game let you play sniper, run over pedestrians, or kill prostitutes for their money, you didn't have to. You could even be especially moral and only steal parked cars or police cars, thus endangering innocents even less.

I liked Vice City and San Andreas, but the games lost something when the main guy started to talk. San Andreas lost extra points by having missions where you had to kill innocents in order to advance.

Re:open gameplay - waste of time

[mcrbids]

I enjoy so called "open ended games" for a few minutes to a few hours, after that I feel that it is a waste of time.

All respect to Rockstar, the game is kickass, I just cannot help it but it leaves me all the time with the game unfinished and me bored to hell of it.

What I find interesting is that the type of games you mention above strike me as incredibly boring! I don't feel like I'm getting anything done, more like just trying to run a race fast enough.

It gets boring very quickly. But, with the "open ended" games, I get the feeling like I can do whatever I want. If I want to break into an airport and steal a plane and fly around, I can. Or, drive a car, or swim across the ocean, or go look for shellfish, or whatever.

Typical gameplay might go something like this:

I do missions for a while, and get bored. Then, I grab a bike, and try to see how much money I can get for an "insane stunt bonus". After a while of that, I drive the bike into a lake, and start mowing down cops just to see what kind of gun I can get. Then, I buy a house and save game to shed the wanted level. (wouldn't it be neat to be able to mix/match Sims2 with GTA?) Do a mission or two. Grab a boat and do some jumps. Then, be a cab driver and try to get 5 people delivered before having to bail the cab. Etc.

If I could do this multi-player, it would just so rock. Also, it'd be way cool if the map could be edited. Can you imagine how lost you'd get if you could make buildings with arbitrary graphics, sorta like the WAD or PUD files of old?

But, whatever you do, don't give me a boring, linear, mono-topic game where I just run around and shoot people. Ayugh!

Re:Was GTA 3 the pinnacle?

[Nuskrad]

I don't think it's a race thing atall. GTA 1-3 had none speaking player characters, so you could play however you wanted to play the character. GTA:VC had Tommy Vercetti, who was a cold blooded killer, allowed the player to cause random deaths and murders without feeling it was out of character. CJ of San Andreas however was thrust into the situation against his will (framed by cops when he returned to San Andreas for his mum's funeral). During dialouge he is shown to have remorse and hesitation about murder and other criminal acts - meaning that it's harder to accept random senseless violence as the actions of the character. Incidentally, the early (top down) GTAs had characters of various races and sexes you could choose from.

IHBT?

Re:GTA is pure evil

[Cackmobile]

and learn to enjoy games for what they are. a bit of fun to play sometimes.

Re:Multiplayer

[rebelcan]

Ah yes..... Carmageddon. The one time I wish GTA was more like Carmageddon was when you were driving the bus. In Carmageddon, if you got up to a good speed, you could split the bus in two. I'd always nearly die laughing every time that happened.

Yes, I know the bus in GTA is more realistic... but that doesn't make it any funner to drive, does it?