Grand Theft Auto - where to next?

beside the grapic and character animation stuff. I think better AI would change the game a lot for the better. This would be able to add charcter to them nodes walking around in the game now. Also inside building would be cool to have more of.

A more real world would be cool, tree that you are able to run down, grass fields which you can mow down which will grow back after time (project ego kind of stuff).

Oh, I think the game layout could be change alot to, now the way it is you olny go and do the mission to get to other parts of the city, maybe if there was more of a BioWare RPG element to the game and a real story would add a hell of alot to the game. which has not real charcater to it, just a lot of cool fun shit to do with no real direction, which is very good, but I think the mission could have had more character development.

Not to kock GTA, but the game isn't that good, the concept is the real winner and also anyone could have putted it off a game as good if they had the chance. (just think about it how under developed is the game conparted to what it could have been)

i didnt play GTA 3 that much...but it is a very fun game...

i think that in the next GTA, you should be able to use almost any object you find as a weapon or tool...that would add greatly to to fun factor from my perspective...

Well, I think the tongue-in-cheek humour has to stay, it's an integral part of the series that does not take itself seriously.

It'd be good if they could get the graphical detail to a level like those cool illustrations (I dont want to see the series go ultra realistic -- boring!) that complement the game. Perhaps a new setting or maybe head back to London? They could make it an online type game where you form your own gangs etc under the guise of major corporations or something.

As Doord mentioned, AI improvements should occur and perhaps more people in the street, it seems a bit bare for a bustling metropolis. Although, I think Vice City had a lot more character to it than the first, from what I heard. Probably a result of giving the main character a well known actors voice (Ray Liotta). With AI improvements, you could be able to hold up a bank (maybe with another person in 2 player link up mode?) and keep the people under control etc. The improvements in AI will open up new ways to play.

massive mutliplayer
mass gang wars. :)

i haven't played gta3 too much at all, but i was a big fan of number one and less of a fan of number two.

i definitley agree that the humor MUST stay. number one was great because it just didn't take itself too seriously. nuber two destroyed that element for me. this also means that the violence shouldn't be made even more 'realistic'. as much as people want it to be more believable, dont have the ability to use a pedestrian as a human shield or anything like that. keep ot simple.

i definitely agree about the massively multiplayer aspect. one person hijacks a school bus, 20 other pile on, rock up to a gang war and everyone piles off this little bus with weapons drawn. different 'job' possitions would also be nice. the ability to be a cop, and have to stop gang warefare and single killers from breaking the law. build up so that you can make it into the SWAT and really kick arse.

i wont complain about graphics/sound/ai quality as those things will ALWAYS improve. hell EA keep on releasing sports games just because of better technical improvements and new roster changes. a more alive world also fits into this. GTA3 was made with middle ware, so you can't expect it to be anywhere as powerful as the HL2 or Doom3 engine. it will come with time.

I reckon a different setting could work quite well too - eg cyberpunk (think Deus Ex meets GTA :) or far-future sci-fi.

Heck, the game concept could even work in a medieval town - but perhaps wouldn't have the same appeal without the
fast vehicles. "Grand Theft Warhorse", anyone? ;->

That said, I think the humor works so well because it's got a lot of real-world and movie material to draw on.
Perhaps this would get lost in the translation to another setting.

As Jonathan mentions, the robbing a bank idea seems like a great addition to the gameplay - although then I
guess we'll get silly gits robbing banks in real life claiming that GTA made them do it rather than taking
responsibility for their own actions...

So who else reckons that the guy who does the indian talkback radio announcer voice in VC sounds
like Hank Azaria? I'm not sure if it's just the similar accent that's being attempted that makes
me think this (ie similar to Apu (spelling?) in the simpsons)...

I wonder how much multiplayer will show up in GTA series. It's possible that they'll do GTA Online (supposedly, they already are) but the online market is a lot different from the casual gamer who makes up most of the GTA sales. It's the game that nearly all people who have a PS2 have played. ie - the casual gamer are not the demographic who'd make up the market for the online game.

Something that I wish was in Vice City would be the ability to replay any of the missions, after you have completed it of course. There are some that I would like to play agian, but I cant be arsed completing others just to get to it again.
Hopefully they could use this small feature in the next one.

One of the things in GTA2 that I think they should bring to the 3D versions is the ability to use a truck to tow trailers. It sounds useless but it could be cool for missions. You also could tow cars on the trailers in GTA2 and if you found a trailer with a car already on it, it meant the car had a 'Kill Frenzy'.

I think something that would add to the game would be a Criminal ranking system. Not like the police most wanted ranking. Meaning instead of just being a grunt for some crimelord you should be able to become a crimelord yourself by completing certain missions. or by building your own organisation from the ground up e.g. stealing cars and selling them 'gone in 60 seconds' style. This might also include organisations like the emergency services. Perhaps you could even become a Pimp...

I would like some more interaction... Once you complete the missions there isn't much else to do aside from causing a bit of havok for the hundredth time. I want to be able to have a round of golf on the VC golf course, I wanted to go into the arcade and play some old-school 80's games.

It would also be good if you could build yourself up as a gangster, make your own decisions instead of working for everyone else. Something focussed around a livable city that you can work in, slowly take over from other gangs in your own way, would be a nice change from the normal mission format.

I think some race type events would be cool. Steal a dirt bike and you can enter the supercross. Steal a race car and enter a nascar or Indy type event. Steal a speed boat and enter a water skiing event. Steal 4x4s, monster trucks etc. etc. Ofcourse you shouldn't be able to do the events without the right vehicle and the vehicles you need should be rare or even one of a kind.

quote:Originally posted by Happy Camper

I think some race type events would be cool. Steal a dirt bike and you can enter the supercross. Steal a race car and enter a nascar or Indy type event. Steal a speed boat and enter a water skiing event. Steal 4x4s, monster trucks etc. etc. Ofcourse you shouldn't be able to do the events without the right vehicle and the vehicles you need should be rare or even one of a kind.

Vice City had this to a certain extent. You can race other cars around the city, and there are motorcross timetrials and demolition derbys... Even a nascar style oval race but on dirt. I still want to be able to pull up at the lights next to some ricer and have a proper drag in my custom car :)

Happy Camper: I doubt if you stole a vehicle it would make sense that you could legally enter it in any sort of event. [:P]

In GTA 3 I prefer to get the diablo and an uzi, change my character model to the spanish gang members and go loco cruising the town listening to hip hop doing drive bys lol.

what if you stole the cars put them into your garage and leave them there for a couple days. they get stripped down etc you come back get the car then you can enter those races? :)

quote:I still want to be able to pull up at the lights next to some ricer and have a proper drag in my custom car :)

or find a nice cliff edge and play chicken[:)].

chicky run. chicky run. yay high school high. i think you could take most elements from that movie and put them into a GTA game quite successfully.

this may becoming to boonerish or indepth. but the ability to actually rip parts out of cars and make your own twisted device of destruction would be amusing.

I wanna save anywhere, and I want more variation in missions. Missions that can take between 15 minutes to hours to complete. For a game that's known for it's openess and free roaming, it's a bit of a shame that you drown as soon as you're in water. Let the character swim for chrissakes! Underwater missions?! Why not! I want Rockstar to embrace the mod community and release tonnes of tools themselves. Let the community add vehicles, objects, suburbs, islands, entire continents to the map!

I have no clue on how it all works, but it would be nice if there was some sort of easy scripting scheme where you can add new responses pedestrians and people react to every event.. let it trigger off an animation sequence you made. Let the community in on it, and we could have a huge database of these things to randomly choose from. At the moment, it's very predictable what the crowd does when you, say, shoot someone or commit a crime. More consequences for your actions! More interactivity with objects.

I agree too about nothing left to do once you finish the game. So, more side missions and tiny activities, and perhaps a random mission generating routine. You'll have the story mode with preset missions, and those random missions as a side mission. Make an experience scoring scheme so you can level up your status with every completed mission, ala Elite and Frontier. (You can darn well play that game for a loooong time). Heck, throw in some trading and transporting elements in there as well.

GTA3 - money wasn't really a motivator in the game. You can buy guns, and that was it. In Vice City, it's slightly better, since you can buy property too. Give money a better use in the game. Money would be good for purchasing skill upgrades? Weapon handling and other attributes? Stuff that helps with gameplay..

I want street names, house numbers. [:)] Elite had the potential for two hundred and eighty-two million million galaxies, complete with names for every solar system and planet, using a [url="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1064107,00.html"]a simple algorithm[/url] on a BBC Micro, I'm sure they can come up with a similar suitable idea for GTA. I want all those 100 story buildings you see to be fully accessible!! More vehicles on roads and larger crowds in busier areas. Peak hour traffic.

I agree with everything you said Souri. A random mission generator would be great. One thing that annoyed me with Vice City was that I didn't like islands as much as the first. In GTA3 there were hills, overpasses, tunnels, everything. The third island was particularly nice with the huge dam and hills, cliffs etc... In VC everything is flat. They also claimed that VC was three times larger than Liberty City. Well it was, its just that about two thirds of VC was water and that huge beachfront. Give me a bit of variation in the landscape and I'll be happy. I want to go out of town to somewhere with a bit more open land.

Give us some mod tools as well... I'd love to make a GTA: Australia![:)]

Oh yeah, go the kingswood.

quote:Originally posted by Malus

Oh yeah, go the kingswood.

Hehe, I can just see it. Cruisin around in your HQ Kingswood Styleback ute, with a carton of beer slidin around in the tray as you go around corners! [:p] Or maybe even a Cattle dog in the back too!

That seems to be the current fad at the moment, duplicating real locations in games in great detail. The Getaway (London), True Crime (L.A), Project Gotham Racing 2 ([url="http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/driving/projectgothamracing2/preview_60759…"]Sydney[/url], Yokohama, Washington DC etc).. I would absolutely love a GTA:Sydney [:)]. Something about walking/driving around in a game which you live in real life appeals to me.
There's a bump in the road for developers doing real life locations in games though.. Sony had to pull a level from Syphon Filter 4, after [url="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/31/1067233371688.html"]some protest from politicians in Quebec[/url].

Just read the PGR2 link Souri. I like the quote on the second page (the page about Yokohama).

"After consulting Microsoft Japan, it was recommended that we should consider Yokohama for inclusion in Project Gotham Racing 2. Their advice proved to be first-class. Yokohama has some great raceable streets around some wonderful, easily identifiable buildings, [and it also has a] world-class skyline."

I bet I can guess what they were up to when they weren't working :D

Ever since I was young though, I thought that Sydney would make a great city to race in (any game will do as long as it has vehicles). Just the fact that it is a grid based city that then has some odd streets coming off at odd angles and looping back onto themselves. Plus, how wouldn't want to fly down Market St, onto Pyrmont Bridge, dodge all the monorail pylons and then fly back onto Union St and then onto Pyrmont Rd. That would just be fun :D

It seems so crazy to me that developers think this way.

You can never have the city look perfect, so you will fall short. Yes, most gamers familiar with the city will say "hey wow, i know here..." but what about the rest of the world? Why not just make up a city rather than spend however long the Getaway team did trying to emulate the real thing.

However, that interesting side-effect of young kids knowing their way around cities they've never visited is rather intriguing...

cheers

It's the realism aspect. Some developers aspire to realism and others aspire to abstraction. Both are equally worthy goals and are capable of advancing the artform of videogames.

I imagine that the modelling of London for the Getaway was a USP (unique selling point) and to my knowledge, it's never been done before? At least, not on that sort of scale. I think it was a good idea, videogames should grow in both directions.

quote:Originally posted by smeg

It seems so crazy to me that developers think this way.

You can never have the city look perfect, so you will fall short. Yes, most gamers familiar with the city will say "hey wow, i know here..." but what about the rest of the world? Why not just make up a city rather than spend however long the Getaway team did trying to emulate the real thing.

However, that interesting side-effect of young kids knowing their way around cities they've never visited is rather intriguing...

cheers

I think you would find that copying a city would save time, you don't spend time disigning a city which will work because it is done for you. Art directon/concept is much easyer because you have that all disgned also.

and you can just take photo's for textures.... :P
CYer, Blitz