Grand Theft Auto Grieving Thread - Yep, I've been drinkin' again...

[D.Angus]

Interesting video on maps in the GTA series and how GTA 5's Los Santos is less interesting the previous maps.

GTA V - Whole entire state, I swear I only fucking visit the same damn dozen locations.

GTA IV- Smaller map, but I can remember what mission took place where.

 

[Sicko Hunter]

GTA IV- Smaller map, but I can remember what mission took place where.

I recently did a full playthrough of GTA IV including the DLC and while the map is objectively smaller then V's because it's spread out into four different islands it feels much bigger to me then GTA V's map. The density of the city also makes it feel much fuller then V which has a mostly empty north.

 

[The Last Stand]

I recently did a full playthrough of GTA IV including the DLC and while the map is objectively smaller then V's because it's spread out into four different islands it feels much bigger to me then GTA V's map. The density of the city also makes it feel much fuller then V which has a mostly empty north.

One word: interiors.

They need to return in VI.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Was Arthur Morgan really supportive of womens rights, or just dealing with that shit so he could talk to the...Braithewait girl?

Late, but it's that, and because he thought the act of voting itself was pointless, so he didn't give a shit if women could do it, or not.

 

[TVB]

GTA V - Whole entire state, I swear I only fucking visit the same damn dozen locations.

GTA IV- Smaller map, but I can remember what mission took place where.

Even LCS also had three major locations to scout and the missions there were very easy

 

[The Last Stand]

GTA IV- Smaller map, but I can remember what mission took place where.

One flaw I noticed with IV's Liberty City is navigating to Charge Island. It's underneath a few overpasses. The GPS navigation cannot handle waypoints over or under highways and overpasses. Hail a taxi there, it'll spawn you below or above your intended location.

 

[Haftag]

it wants to inject its social commentary onto you AS a criminal

Specially when your mission partner won't shut the hell up during entire rides. And the worst offender in this is, well Max Payne 3. Terrific TPS but awful Max Payne. If not for McCaffrey, I would've turned the voices all the way down.

 

[Slav Power]

I recently did a full playthrough of GTA IV including the DLC and while the map is objectively smaller then V's because it's spread out into four different islands it feels much bigger to me then GTA V's map. The density of the city also makes it feel much fuller then V which has a mostly empty north.

It reminds of this:

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl was composed of a dozen surface maps with half a dozen underground maps, all of which required a loading screen to go in between. They weren't especially large, some of them weren't even a perfect rectangle of explorable areas, with the largest map being the ChNPP which got divided into two separate maps, and going from one map to another wasn't especially a long journey.

But it felt like one, because the world map had a lot of padding to make you feel like you're going through a massive journey, and to go from one end to another you had to go on foot and fight off any bandits, mutants and other hostiles, with the entire world design making you feel like you're desolate, constantly in danger, even though the gameplay itself is relatively easy and nowhere near as bad as the game makes you feel it is.

This is masterful game design, making a small play area feel massive and actually make it engaging. R* managed to accomplish that in IV since they were making NYC, a tightly packed city that has a lot going on in it, and they've populated it with plenty of things to do to keep the player engaged.

With V, they just made a massive map that was barren of any content. They decided to make the biggest map in an open world game ever, but failed to make it engaging. There is so little to do in V besides doing another circle around the state. Most of the map is taken up by Mount Chiliad, that again, has fuck-all to do on, the desert, being a desert, is fucking boring, and even Los Santos is boring.

Hell, an even better example. GTA: San Andreas.

It's not a big map by today's standards, it's amazing that they managed to pack it into a PS2 game back in 2004, but the way they've designed the map, and the game itself, it felt like a massive map, bigger than it actually was. The fog did a great job to make the player feel like the map is bigger than it actually is, so going from LS to the counties, then to SF, then to the desert and LV, it all felt like a grand discovery of a massive world.

And nothing shows better how important the fog was in San Andreas' game design to make the game feel massive and engaging than R* lazy cash grab outsourced to the same incompetent studio they've been using to port the 3D trilogy to consoles, where they completely fucked it up, removed the fog and made the render distance infinite.

Suddenly the world feels small, because you can see Mount Chiliad from fucking Grove Street. Get onto this highest building in LS which is accessible from the very start of the game and now the entire game is not only spoiled, but also exposed as being tinier than it was meant to feel like. And most importantly, it just looks wrong. Because it was never designed to be seen like that. It's a square map that has a specific design to fit the gameplay and the story itself, that the player is supposed to discover slowly. And the player will never see that it's a rectangle, and it won't feel like one. Plus, this smaller scope of the map's size allowed R* to more effectively populate it with activities and memorable mission locations so that it would be engaging rather than boring and tedious like the map in V.

You could write an entire essay on this single aspect of game design. The goal isn't to make a massive world, but to make a small world feel massive. Because a massive game world won't be memorable or enjoyable, but a small game world can be made very memorable and very enjoyable, without making it feel small. And you can show it with GTA games alone, where R* nailed it in 2004 then completely fucked it up in 2013.

 

[The Last Stand]

This is masterful game design, making a small play area feel massive and actually make it engaging. R* managed to accomplish that in IV since they were making NYC, a tightly packed city that has a lot going on in it, and they've populated it with plenty of things to do to keep the player engaged.

They managed to make GTA III's world feel massive through their small draw distance and distant props to create an illusion that the world is bigger than what the player can actually access.



Example: you know that tunnel up by Shoreside Vale that you cannot access? That tunnel "connects" Liberty City to "upstate" according to the above map. Small things like this give an illusion that there's more than what is literally provided.

With V, they just made a massive map that was barren of any content. They decided to make the biggest map in an open world game ever, but failed to make it engaging.

Ubisoft games love to use that fallacy of creating these massive open worlds for "exploration," only to have the overall experience be a bloated drag because there isn't much interesting to occupy the space or player enjoyment.

With V, they just made a massive map that was barren of any content. They decided to make the biggest map in an open world game ever, but failed to make it engaging. There is so little to do in V besides doing another circle around the state. Most of the map is taken up by Mount Chiliad, that again, has fuck-all to do on, the desert, being a desert, is fucking boring, and even Los Santos is boring.

This bloated world rears its ugly head with GTA Online. Many missions and properties require you to drive from the city to the countryside repeatedly for little payout. Example: to access the Doomsday Heist missions, you need a bunker. Only bunkers around are in Blaine County. So you'd have to drive from Los Santos to Blaine County to trigger the mission. Then, you'd have to drive back to the city for one thing and drive BACK. Does that sound fun to you as a consistent gameplay loop?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

@Slav Power
I’m going to go ahead and say it
You can rate me autistic if you want
GTA San Andreas is a masterpiece that transcends gaming and even art
It is an achievement of humanity

 

[soulgains]

GTA 5's San Andreas felt like a tech demo, but Im a fan of the liminality in so much of the map (although I doubt it was intentional). Driving the loop around the map reminded me of driving along the coast from NorCal to Washington. Fallout New Vegas has the same emptiness between large towns, which is often criticized as well, but in my opinion it adds to the atmosphere.

 

[Bring Back 2012]

It seems like GTA 5 was going to have more interiors, there's glitches where you can go through the buildings without falling off the map, there's collision that would otherwise have been inaccessible. If GTA 5 had more interiors to explore then it would've felt very massive. I'm hoping GTA 6 fixes this, especially since it coming to the PS5/Xbox Series X. They have no excuse not to have more interiors.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

This is what GTA V would have looked like if it had been a good game.

 

[Spud]

View attachment 5711864
This is what GTA V would have looked like if it had been a good game.

The monkey paw would be a collectible equal to the Pigeons from IV. All over the map.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

View attachment 5711864
This is what GTA V would have looked like if it had been a good game.

you really wouldnt. let me spend 30 to 60 real time minutes driving from los santos to bootleg san fran, as if people enjoy driving 30 to 60 minutes somewhere in real life

 

[jeff7989]

you really wouldnt. let me spend 30 to 60 real time minutes driving from los santos to bootleg san fran, as if people enjoy driving 30 to 60 minutes somewhere in real life

Then aircraft could get more realistic speeds to compensate for map size. There is a good reason why planes are so slow in San Andreas.

 

[William Murderface]

It's even worse when you consider how much of the GTA V map is effectively inaccessible. The Air Force base, the prison, the secret laboratory all take up real estate that you can't do anything with. I know the secret lab features in a mission and you can use Trevor to explore the Air Force base when he has the one hunting mission pseudoglitch, but beyond that, why bother having them at all?

 

[Fartificial Insmelligence]

It seems like GTA 5 was going to have more interiors, there's glitches where you can go through the buildings without falling off the map, there's collision that would otherwise have been inaccessible. If GTA 5 had more interiors to explore then it would've felt very massive. I'm hoping GTA 6 fixes this, especially since it coming to the PS5/Xbox Series X. They have no excuse not to have more interiors.

I don’t think having collision inside the buildings means anything, they usually draw out the map first and the plop down buildings on top, it wouldn’t make much sense to go back after and cut out the square of the map underneath a building for no reason.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

It's even worse when you consider how much of the GTA V map is effectively inaccessible. The Air Force base, the prison, the secret laboratory all take up real estate that you can't do anything with. I know the secret lab features in a mission and you can use Trevor to explore the Air Force base when he has the one hunting mission pseudoglitch, but beyond that, why bother having them at all?

Prison and military base are just missed opportunities. At least the Prison got a mission in Online. The real culprit of wasted space is all of those mountains. They are literally just big pieces of land with nothing to do on them, and otherwise completely inaccessible to most players, not that there's is any reason to go to them. Since VI is set in a pastiche of Florida, it should, thankfully, lack mountains. The large ocean floor was also a waste, since it had all kinds of things on the sea floor, but nothing actually interesting and no reason to explore it. Only, like, two missions saw you even diving under the water.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Prison and military base are just missed opportunities. At least the Prison got a mission in Online. The real culprit of wasted space is all of those mountains. They are literally just big pieces of land with nothing to do on them, and otherwise completely inaccessible to most players, not that theirs is any reason to go to them. Since VI is set in a pastiche of Florida, it should, thankfully, lack mountains. The large ocean floor was also a waste, since it had all kinds of things on the sea floor, but nothing actually interesting and no reason to explore it. Only, like, two missions saw you even diving under the water.

I’ll actually but GTA VI if it has scuba diving as a side activity.