Topic: GTA 6 Thread

You knew this thread was coming, and after watching the GTA6 reveal Netflix I think that time has come. I thought the games looks incredible (was there really any doubt it wouldn't?). Also very happy to see the writing is still satire as there were worries it would be toned down. The only gripe I have so far is Jason has 0 personality when compared to Lucia - but that can obvs change through-out the game. So anyway feel free to use this thread to discuss anything GTA6 related.

@Oram77 I'm a little surprised one didn't pop up until now. It's sure it's about to get very busy.

@BearsEatBeets You've changed your profile pic again it confused me for a second since I recognised your name 😅 Did you watch the reveal? If so what are your thoughts?

@Oram77 yeah I transformed for a day or two for Peter. I cancelled my Netflix at the start of the year after the Stranger Things finale and haven't seen a reason to resub so I haven't seen it yet. I guessed PS would put up a write-up soon after and I pondered if I would read it before watching it for myself tomorrow but I did just have a quick read.
It all sounds very promising and I look forward to watching it later.

I wonder what the view count will have got to by the time I get up and watch. I reckon it will have broken 100m views again. I'd be curious to know how many watched on Netflix, I wonder if they will mention at some point.

Edit: I just noticed Netflix posted a 26 second trailer for their 26 minute extended look at the time it went live so I've seen a few seconds 😄

My favourite thing so far "every NPC is thinking" a quote from TGG based on time spent with Rob Nelson at RSN. The NPC's aren't just going to be dumb fodder any more, and to me that means the game will have to be played differently to normal GTA, so building more on how RDR2 worked. Obviously you can still rampage and do GTA stuff (RDR2 was mad when you just went around doing stuff to see what happened, remember, and we now get the more advanced version of that 😁) but also a lot more of the general gameplay will be heavily decision based for the player because you will know every NPC will be more functional as humans and part of the world, and so it becomes more like an emergent RPG 😄 And if you do want to rampage or do crime sprees it's going to be more fun within the game because the world will be reacting to you more realistically and you will have to always have to think about what you are going to do next and who might be watching/reacting to your actions, and how to escape punishment. Like, just imagine a dense city environment with these systems upgraded from RDR2, it could be quite literally insane for emergent gameplay 😁

Actually, no... Dog s*** in a bag can be used as a weapon. Now that is the best thing I have heard 😅

The city itself looks biiiiiig, too. Properly dense big. I did hear they did something with the scale of how the people fit into the environment. Bigger vehicles, smaller roads, just a better scale, overall.

It's weird, everything i'm seeing is awesome, I know I'm excited, i'm typing things that excite me, but i'm still keeping my hype in check, internally. And I will not allow myself to be fully bought-in until the game is installed and playable.

For anyone interested:

This guy will have tonnes of content with actual inside information that isn't outdated and vegetable based, direct from the horses mouth (the horse being Rob Nelson).

@Ravix From everything I just saw, it's looks to me R* were like "You know RDR2 was a pretty neat game, let's times that by 100 and put it in a modern setting" I only say that because they seem to be using a lot mechanics from RDR2 and can you really blame then?

As a fellow lover of KCD2, we know how important NPC interaction is and why it makes that world so immersive, I feel that's was Cyberpunk's biggest failing (after they patched the game and made a god tier DLC of course) the NPC just seemed to exist to walk down pavements... while not a deal breaker it was still noticeable to me at least.

Like I said at the top, I'm happy they are keeping satirical writing and definitely weren't pulling their punches regarding violence I mean did you see the cops gunning down the guys in flat 👀. I actually had my hype in check for most of the year but yeah that reveal has just uncorked it for me now and I don't think I will be able to put it back in the proverbial bottle...

Two minutes to Two in the AM and I have to say it does feel good to have stuck to my guns. I never agreed with Rockstar pay-walling footage like that. It's not the kind of world I'd like to live in. I'll Edit in some thoughts either after I watch it or tomorrow.

Edit: Mixed feelings. The lighting looks fantastic, whoever did the motion-capture did the transition between shotgun and pistol very realistically, I like Lucia she looks fun to play, those men at the very start had some very interesting air, petting that puppy did give him some kind of good karma so that might mean I can pet all the animals in the game, the driving was quite good, the writing seemed less like Grand Theft Auto which is a good thing, overall it's visually impressive, fire-fights look more fleshed out.

The bad: I've been to Florida and they do have to stay pretty accurate to the real thing, those roads were kind of tight, the activities look good but what was shown was very specific like kayaking and it did show the everglades but there's no much there in real so I'm not sure how that translates to the game, I'm not sure of the scale of the map in-terms of usable space and they didn't focus all that much on showing the scale outside of the city-limits. Hearing that it will be 30Fps on PS5 sounds bad for base model owners.

Final thoughts: I tried to feel that much needed spark and it wasn't there yet, I think it's like I said to @Ravix some games sell a lifestyle and when you live that lifestyle it forms some kind of personal dichotomy, that airport mission especially, but games like that do offer a kind of 'play it your way' and though I didn't really see that element I do think I'd probably play it for the story, I'm just not sure when.

Just had my breakfast and watched the video. I'll probably go into more detail on specific things later but it did look very impressive but also a little bit more of the same. Considering it's 26 minutes there is a lot of footage yet it also feels like it barely scratched the surface.
GTA is a strange one where I love just getting lost in the world but never really get excited for playing out a criminal lifestyle. I super curious about this karma system. I noticed when shooting people there were yellow hit marks and red on the reticle, plus the same colours used when using the 'slo-mo x-ray' mode. I wonder if yellow denotes a non-lethal takedown and allows you to potentially have a less mass murderer playthrough.

I'll probably have another watch or two before commenting on more specifics. I wonder if this is the only one of these we get as it was soo long or there will be more. I think GTA V and RDR 2 both had three gameplay trailers several minutes long.

Also, how does the gameplay video only have 2.7m views?? The Netflix thing really must of sucked a lot of the attention.

Ooh, what did you have? 😛

And yes, non-lethal when you have the choice is very much an option. You like deep dives, so maybe you should check out TGG, I posted the live stream above (I assume he is finished by now and it is just a video you can skip through) I get the sense that Rob Nelson really wanted him to stress that this game has more advanced morals and decision making, but within a criminal setting. Your role is still that of a criminal, but you are in a world where a professional criminal is more needed by some than a psychopath. You can, of course, be a psychopath, a violent criminal, or one that at least tries to keep murder separate from 'the job', that kind of thing. And he was big on saying you have to think more, the NPCs think, the player has to think (if they want to engage with that side of the game) and it also seems very fluid to whether you choose to engage with those mechanics. But the feeling I get is, say you are on the run for whatever reason, you need to rob a store (it is a crime drama, after all) do you go in unmasked, shoot them and take what you want? Do you put your mask on, and try to keep things under control as you are only there for the take, or do you shoot them in the leg, laugh at them, take the money, antagonise them and then throw a grenade into the store on the way out? Those are 3 very different approaches to the same goal. The player can do what they want to do, but the game will react accordingly. More ways to play, based on actual mechanics rather than just mindlessly doing whatever whenever with no real consequences. In old GTA what you did didn't really affect things that much, you could be a psycho for one day a saint another, there was no way to engage in it other than gaining wanted stars that then vanish anyway.

It feels like an advancement of RDR2 but in GTA and it feels like there is far more to engage with, moment to moment, as the player 😄

I had some time to sleep on it and I know what was missing from my expectations. It may have been lost in translation, but to me an extended look didn't just mean the game itself. I'd been expecting something similar to studios like Bethesda where they bring a camera into the studio itself, they go boots on the ground and splice in footage of the game along with a kind of approachable technical breakdown. I.E. a camera pans through Rockstar's Studio and we get a brief glimpse of the people who actually worked on the game working on the actual game. Lending some of their experiences, addressing challenges, confirming their commitment to supporting the game post-launch, something more 'real'. I thought doing it that way would have done two things, showcase the game and acknowledge the human element. The latter meaning Rockstar saying 'these are the people responsible for what you are about to watch and we here at Rockstar value these people'. It would have been redeeming. It would have reminded gamers/viewers that there is that human element in the industry and that people matter, not just money.

The video costs them one-hundred million USD so I went for an outside opinion. I went to a businessman, one who understands that figure. I explained the situation, the union busting, pay-walling the footage, the greed and how the company (for some people) had fallen out of favor. He watched some of it and the first thing he said was 'that's very violent I'm not sure I want you playing that' (I shot myself in the foot there) I told him my grievances with the game and with the company and when I mentioned usable space on the world map he reminded me that if we spent one-hundred million on a space in Central London that each pound would relate to usable space.

What he was effectively saying was that Rockstar used each dollar to highlight what they thought would sell the product, and like always he was right. It's hard to not let personal grievances affect how I view the game. Rockstar are a studio who understands the kinds of games I do like to play, they build worlds that I enjoy spending time in. I didn't always know that politics and greed played a part in the gaming industry. I thought Developers were happy doing something they had a real passion for, it sounded like as they say the dream job. To learn otherwise did dim a lot of that light.

At the same time I can acknowledge that what I saw was visually and technically impressive. I don't know if others feel the same way because many negative comments towards the game (in the comments) didn't offer much context other than (meh) I'm all for personal opinion but I like context too. I do think there were some other factors when it came to today's 'viewing', afterwards he said to me that as someone who enjoys the hobby, appreciates leaps in technology (I do) that I was crazy for not wanting to play it right now and I was half expecting him to say put some shoes on we're going to Edinburgh, nothing surprises me. I do think there was some bias, I think he saw a very vibrant, possibly expansive open-world. One so realistic that it would help me to once again face the 'outside world' in a safe and contained environment, more exposure-therapy so to speak.

I think he saw those elements too and he wanted me to experience it. Not all that different to a Parent seeing a warm day and wanting a child to go outside and play in it, instead of moping around in the shade complaining about something they can't fix. None of us can fix the industry. I can't help but think that had I not found about those external factors, union-busting,etc that I would have a lot more hype for the game. For me it was food for thought, I have quite sometime to muse and ponder it over, digital means that pre-orders/time really isn't a factor.

@BearsEatBeets Also, how does the gameplay video only have 2.7m views?? The Netflix thing really must of sucked a lot of the attention.

• Torrents, piracy sites, other people uploading it to vendors like Youtube and Eastern European/Chinese alternatives, those cringey 'reaction videos', it was a school night, it wasn't just Netflix. I waited until two in the AM because I don't support pay-walling footage when it's the community that put Rockstar and every other Studio where they are today, if we didn't buy their games they didn't see that profit. So I waited, and like I said above it felt good, a little bit of balance.

Not everyone can afford Netflx, not everyone has access to Youtube. That's the surface-web, I've not checked the stats on other networks, DeepWeb etc, it's climbing fast.

@Ravix I plan on watching that vid with my lunch and will come back with thoughts later.

@GirlVersusGame yeah lots of people managed to get the footage out before the 'official' Youtube vid. It's just an interesting comparison when the reveal trailers did about 100m views in about a day and the full in depth gameplay has a fraction of that (up over 5m now).

@BearsEatBeets I think it says more about society than the people who play the games. We shouldn't be seeing game trailers labelled as extended footage used as leverage to flood a platform that is already the be all and end all of content and entertainment. It's also possible that because we as gamers do exist in a echo-chamber that we hyped it up too much ourselves and that it's really not as big as we thought it was. I like the franchise but there are so many limits with a game like that, it has to be set in reality, has to involve humans and humans have limitations. Many other games offer more freedom, more niche worlds, magic, they allow a person to really escape. Criminality is not an escape, it's a cold hard reality that some people have to live and survive through it.

I do believe that for some people there comes a point where they outgrow that want or need, they become the demographic of something else. I could be entirely wrong but I feel like sometimes FOMO creates a sense of The Emperor's New Clothes. I admit the game looks stunning, technically flawless but I do want to enjoy the story too and right now that part isn't there for me just yet. I also acknowledge the subtle fact that the game involves a couple, some people are solitary and have no Other in their lives, games like that can be a reminder of what they are missing in life and when I see people calling the story 'meh', I have to wonder if they are projecting some of that same lack of something.

I think had they also promised a sneak-peek at Grand Theft Auto Online 2? Netflix would have gone down, Youtubes servers would have struggled. We often forget that the online aspect is a 'game' to a lot of the people who bought the last game. Some people don't want it for the story and when they hear that it won't feature and online footage then perhaps they don't focus too much on blowing up those numbers. I did see some people say they aren't buying it until it includes that online content.

What do you think? Did you watch any Transformers after? I considered, but I never grew-up with the series so it would be an act of imposterism, pretending to care about a man I never knew. That's why I watched some Tim Curry movies instead like Legend and Home Alone 2. When I lived in New York I was 'lost' just like the title and like the protagonist used carte blanche to try to fill that void. I've always liked that movie for many reasons and Tim Curry was definitely one of them.

Also thank you for adding the reveal trailer stats, I'd never compared the two, I didn't know the figures.

I watched the video (via YouTube, despite subscribing to Netflix) over dinner (it was Cajun stir-fry, I case you were wondering, @Ravix 😅) and came away mixed.

No doubt there’s some very good visual fidelity, and the flow and animations are really good. Almost Naughty Dog level as far as facial expressions, realism, and attention to detail in not just the characters but the environment. The cover shooting looks solid and the driving segments are a step above.

Perhaps it was the way the video just jumped around to show a wide swath of activities and set pieces, but it did come across rather disjointed and I honestly didn’t feel any connection to the characters or story. I know this has to be a quality narrative, based on the excellence of RDR2’s, but this video didn’t showcase that at all. Absolutely no clue as to the motivations or drama. Just two people taking criminal jobs and making their way through the seedy underbelly of Miami. What I loved about RDR was the Redemption part. A criminal who is trying to make things right and do what’s right. Mafia had that as well. This needs some kind of personal inner struggle, moral dilemma, struggle to escape one’s past, noble cause… something. I’m sure that there’s storytelling that they are keeping close to the vest and maybe Jason’s mom has cancer and can’t afford her chemo. Or maybe Lucia’s dad is in prison, wrongfully accused and she needs money to pay his legal fees. Whatever. It’s probably in there somewhere, but for an extended look it basically came across as a bunch of heists, fetch quests, and car chases with a load of F2P types of side activities like playing basketball or jet skiing. The great thing about RDR2 was the way all the side content seamlessly folded into the world immersion and supported the background narrative. Sure, you could waste a dozen hours hunting for a rare animal, but you’re trying to survive in the Wild West. Does wrestling or kayaking fit within Lucia and Jason’s character arc? Hopefully.

Some of my difficultly penetrating the GTA scene is as GVG stated, it feels a little too familiar at times, maybe? Like the whole urban crime scene is not as much of a fantasy escape as playing through ancient Egypt, a futuristic wasteland, or an alien planet. Not that I have any firsthand experience with the criminal underworld, but it’s less of a leap to see that play out versus something more fantastical. I do recognize the ironic uniqueness of a modern urban setting in gaming, where most of game worlds are far-fetched places playing as people with super powers. So in that sense, there’s few games like this. I don’t know. I’m not completely out on it yet but the video didn’t necessarily sell me fully.

Also, I’m fascinated by the 30 fps controversy. After hearing for years this hardline against anything not 60 fps is “unplayable”, I bet that it’s going to be another example of a vocal minority creating a misrepresentation of the gaming community’s overall opinion. The game will set records and people will be fine with 30 fps. Even reviewers will give it a pass.

@Th3solution think about how crazy it is to have Naughty Dog fidelity and character design and all that good stuff... but in an open-world city and suburbs and swamplands and national park/mountain area that acts like an actual world with people who do what they want and react to what you do, too and also wildlife 😱

Open world games used to look like games with assets placed into little zones and if viewed from above didn't really look real so they had to cleverly hide the reality of the design and scale of the world with little tricks. But now...

Imagine RDR2 but bigger, and someone also built a fully functioning modern city on it 😱

I'm not trying to win you round to the story or anything, but surely at some point you will want to try this out to see how the hell they managed to do so much more with such genuine scale. The Last of Us... but instead of walking 20 yards and meeting a fence you can walk 20 miles and go in any direction.

I think the story trailer will be the last big bit of advertising. But there were some hints at a very sadistic policing operation, at least. And there is lots of talk from R* about decisions mattering. Managing two individuals who may have different goals but are in a relationship is also a thread we get to tug on. Is it a case of "I will stick by you no matter what"? Or will one or both characters be changed by events in different ways that test their loyalties and push them to the brink?

All I know is it will be driven by chapters like RDR2, and we know how that game changed people over time.

Oh, and also... that sounded delicious and I'm very jealous of that Cajun delight! Beets didn't want to share his breakfast (and now lunch, too) so this makes up for it 😛

Just so everyone knows this clip alone got me so hyped:

Edit: I suppose I should add more to the comment. But this one reload animation looks so clean and realistic (obvs never fired a shotgun let alone reloaded), like did they really need to go that hard on a single animation? but that's what makes them R*, and as I said before you can see the RDR2 DNA all over the reveal trailer. Oh I also wanted to point how much I prefer this reticle/crosshair.

It looking great was never in question, but I was curious about the protagonists after failing to get far in GTA V three times due to me loathing the characters I was forced to play. I liked GTA IV's Nico as he was a tragic character more or less forced to walk the path he was on despite attempts to get out and build a better life for himself and his family (disclaimer: memory is hazy and may be rose tinted).

I liked what I saw and it seems like these two are somewhat likeable and may have some redeeming qualities to make them worth investing time in.
I also like the additional life-sim elements, which is something I enjoy dabbling in between missions.
All signs point to me having a better time with this than the previous GTA.

I refuse to buy it at launch price, though. With today's exchange rate, the cheapest version will run me USD $101, which is, IMO, pure insanity and should not be normalised.
I don't expect it to go on sale anytime soon, but I've got a backlog that will potentially last me well into my twilight years, so I'm not all that chuffed

@FuriousMachine GTA 4 > GTA 5 in nearly every category. 100% agree with you about the MCs of 5, Micheal was best out of the bunch (which really doesn't say much), Trevor was one note and after a couple of wacky scenes I actually despised him, and Franklin was just.... there.

I am incredibly hyped for this game after the gameplay footage from yesterday. I don't think I've felt like this since Elden Ring.

I remember being blown away by GTA 3 when it came out, in some ways it was quite overwhelming, but in a good way. Now to play that with the modern bells and whistles. Colour me excited.

One thing I am not sure on is the life sim aspects. Hopefully it will be nothing too heavy, as I didn't like stuff like putting on and losing weight in San Andreas, and your cousin constantly calling you to go bowling in IV. It nothing to put me off getting this on day one however.

Sim aspects are a turn off for me too. Combined with how the characters appear to control. I know it's more realistic than something like Zelda, Elden Ring, Mario (basically anything from Japanese developers) but I really do find it a downer having to wrestle to get the character through an environment. Combined with the 30fps, this is liable to get on my nerves.

I'm also not really fond of having 2 main playable characters, I didn't like it in 5 either and I just don't like it generally.

It's easier to list the cons since overall it was really impressive.