I think we can take this to mean both "Don't hold your breath" and "We aren't going to do an announcement of an announcement because that PR trend is ridiculous and stupid." I think the second half of the statement is something most of us will agree with, and the first half makes a lot of sense. Both DLC packages have been released as 1 game, and Take-Two just had some very embarrassing facts about their corporation come to light. I imagine they will be preoccupied with the fallout from that for a while. The earliest we'll here of the next GTA (excluding portable releases) I think will be sometime in 2010.
@amirsahib: african GTA= far cry 2
japanese GTA = yakuza
british GTA= gangs of london
they should make a Canadian GTA. guns would be hard to find but if you die the hospital is free.
Considering the two expansions for 360 are getting a boxed release, I'd say thats the end of 360 DLC. Which hopefully meants a new GTA game is next on the...er... menu?
@SlowDaddie: As cool as it'd be, I think Rockstar or Take-Two would be worried that a very large portion of their market drives on the right side of the road (and steers from the left in their cars). I know it's not that big of a deal (most players likely drive all over the road), but it might be just enough of a reason for the Take-Two and Rockstar brass to nix a GTA London ...
I don't get why people in the comments are so annoyed about annnouncement annnouncements. It is basically because of sites like Kotaku that they happen. If Kotaku and other sites stopped reporting on them then it'd be a waste of time for companies to make them. However I assume Kotaku blogs about them because those posts get a lot of clicks and so make revenue for the site.
So to sum up the only people to blame for the current situtation is ourselves for clicking on the damn link whenever an anouncement announcement is made.
Srsly though, to steal a line of thought from the PC Gamer Podcast crew, the first Tomb Raider was a smashing success. The second was really good too. The third was good. The fourth... eh. The fifth? Bleh. Eventually it got so bad they had to reboot the franchise. Why? Oversaturation of the market of the same kind of gameplay. (This thought-line really is -stolen- as I never played the first... seven? However many Tomb Raiders beyond about five minutes. Though I did play a chunk of the remake of the first one. I rather liked it.)
Announcing GTA5 so 'soon' after GTA4 (and its subsequent expansion packs/DLC/addons/whatever) can only lead to a saturation of the market. Plus... hello?! They had #3 on the PS2/Xbox generation. They had #4 on the PS3/360 generation. Lets follow this line of reasoning, shall we?
(PS: The stolen line of thought from the PCG Podcast? It's somewhat surprising that they (the PCG crew) don't apply that same line of thought to L4D2, and instead constantly chide folk for being bothered by L4D2's release so soon after L4D. Same gameplay so soon after? Oversaturation.)
@BlueToast: Agent is an entirely new project, it's just being developed by the GTA team. That being said, I would assume it will be an open world game and include some GTA elements. Just seems likely.
I want to give Zelnick a high five for this statement. THANK YOU, Take Two, for being smart about this. Announcements of announcements are the worst thing to happen to this industry since DLC and paid subscriptions.
@Archaotic: Agreed. Here's a guy who comes off as level headed, seems to pay attention to what gamers want and how they feel about things like "announcements of announcements", and managed to fight back against that EA takeover all the while staying true to what they do best: make games.
Maybe Bobby(satan) over at Analvision should look to take-two to see how it's done.
I really hope they go back to the style of SA/VC/3 next time. The "realism" in GTA4 utterly ruined it for me. Real cars don't handle like shopping carts made of lead and with wheels of molasses, why do the ones in GTA4? :\ Real people don't fall for 5 seconds after gently tapping a vehicle...
I didn't like the city, the missions, the driving...the only part of GTA4 I liked was free mode online, and evne then it would've been exceptionally better had the driving and city been more fun.
I want a true follow up. Where is San Andreas, but with a new city, pretty graphics, and all the features?
Until they do what everyone expected, and make a huge wacky game with ice cream truck bombs and tying people to the hood of your car and an annoying girl with an annnoying accent, I guess I'm stuck with Saints Row 2(the closest thing possible), but I've played the hell out of that...
@WhiteMage: I agree. I won't be buying a new GTA until there's a return (at least in some form) to the PS2 era of the franchise, in terms of game design.
GTA4 was painfully boring, and lacking nearly all the heart and charm that the three PS2 installments had in DROVES. Bring on San Andreas Plus.
@Archaotic: I'm quite happy the first response I got was a positive one. People seem to freak out when GTA4's 10/10 ratings get challenged.
I enjoyed it for a week, but then the problems and missing things started to become more obvious, and I ended up trading it in. I couldn't stand it after that initial hype wore off. :\
Then I got Saints Row 2 and it was basically everything I was hoping GTA4 would be.
I would love a not-so-orange awesome-graphics remake of San Andreas, though...hell, take GTA3, VC, and SA and mix em together and give us a new game with new graphics using those cities.
@Archaotic: Agreed to the max. IV was so dreary and out of character for a GTA it ruined the whole experience. Every GTA in the past had me coming back all the time and i would never have dreamed about trading them in, IV on the other hand i had for around 4 months, played it loads in the first few days, got bored then came back a few months later completed it and traded it in.
IV went agains the whole original foundations the games were built on, mindless violent freedom, none of which were really present in IV.
@WhiteMage: I don't HATE GTA4, but I definitely miss the PS2 installments to a huge degree after playing it. There was just so much hidden beauty in those games that you could only find by NOT following their rules.
GTA4, on the other hand, seemed to discourage random chaos; it was harder to escape the cops, the Tank and Apache were gone, there were no hidden weapons, and it was incredibly difficult to sustain any sort of rampage for too long.
I remember back in college, my friends and I used to have competitions to see who could last the longest in a sustained chaotic killing spree; as soon as one of us died, we'd pass the controller to the next guy and they'd try.
You just can't do that as effectively in 4 because there's just not as much to do, and not as many tools to do it with.
I think Rockstar just tried too hard to make the world feel realistic, and they did it at the expense of the heart and soul of the series. They can fix it though; BAGT seems to be adding back some of the stuff I missed...it's just a shame Microsoft had to go and pay for the exclusive. Jerks.
@Pyrefly: IV was the only one I actually went through the story mode and completed. The previous games I just drove around running over people and seeing how many stars I could get.
That lasted maybe a couple days to a week.
I feel I got my moneys worth with IV, not so much the previous entries. Maybe they should have packaged it as another title.
@Archaotic: What I think has a big impact on it is, well, look at the city.
Imagine those buildings, without textures. It's basically a bunch of rectangles. That's not a city, that's not a game environment. It's just a bunch of senseless obstacles. I don't know if this will make sense, but if you took the textures off San Andreas, you're gonna have more fun with it, and it'll seem more sensible. Probably because it's not all big buildings. They're less barriers and more buildings. GTA4 seems to confine you to the roads. The other GTAs don't, to anywhere near the same extent.
And while I talk about the city itself, I want to ask- what is up with GTA(whole series) and shop windows? Real photos of real windows with real reflections that don't match anything in-game, compressed to terrible quality, and repeated incessantly? That aggrivated me a lot in GTA4. In this gen, that's unacceptable. In particular I remember a corner store that had a door texture that was not only at the wrong angle(the floor inside seemed to be going up at a 45 degree angle), but the door was twice the height of Niko!
Little things like that damaged even the exploration aspect.
Whereas san Andreas had so much exploration that clunkers would spawn in the woods just in case you got lost/stuck. :\
@WhiteMage: I hear you entirely. One of my favoritte things to do in San Andreas was to take a little kid's bike ALL THE WAY to the top of the mountain...then drive RIGHT off the jump on the summit with it. Sometimes I'd hop off and release my parachute and just sail across the map; other times I'd just see how long it took to hit the ground.
The level of exploration, experimentation, and immersion in San Andreas was unlike anything else in the series before or after it; the fact it had actual local co-op only made things even better.
I hope Rockstar keeps that in mind when making GTA5.
@WhiteMage: Meh. I thought 4 was a nice departure. R* North needed to do something to get rid of that stale feeling the GTA series was collecting. I played GTA3 to death when it came out. Probably one of the few games that large that I 100%'d multiple times.
Then Vice City came out, played it quite a bit, enjoyed the new stuff, and finally did everything in the game. Finally comes San Andreas. By the time it came out, everything just had a nice, big "been there, done that" sticker slapped on it.
The story was great, the new features were awesome, and I could tell it was the best GTA entry to date. Yet any and all motivation to keep playing it was lost 'cause it all just felt the same. That, and so much of the new stuff felt pointless. A triathlon contest? Really? There was very little point to do any of it.
Then finally, GTA4 comes along and it's an absolute breath of fresh air. The game has been more streamlined with a lot of the crap cut out and given a nice coat of paint to separate it from previous entries.
If 4 didn't reinvent itself, it would've been miserable. Who the hell wants to play the same game they've already played with only a few new features added to it? *Looks at Halo and Dynasty Warriors fans* . . . Oh.
@Kanji08: It sounds more like you're taking your experience and applying it to everyone.
You may have thought it was stale, but the millions of sales and rave reviews San Andreas got show otherwise.
However a counter would be "GTA4 got just as good reviews, if not better!" but I am just gonna outright say that that was the hype train pulling into station. 10/10 reviews all over the day the game comes out are not a good indication of quality. :\
@WhiteMage: GTAIV, to me, was an experiment. I'd say it succeeded (It's still my most played GTA by far), although I can see why others disagree.
But yeah, I would love to see Vice City and San Andreas redone on IV's engine, with the crazy weapons/kill frenzies/bullet time pills. Just imagining San Andreas redone in the sheer detail of IV's Liberty City makes me giddy.
@quidsquid: I think it largely depends on what you want from games and want you want GTA to be. Some prefer the new story driven, mature style it is now pitching and that is fine but for many GTA is about freedom to do what you want, not to play through a storymode. The compaign in the originals was almost like 1 large sidequest that was jus tput in place to give it structure. For me the fact that i actually completed IV is a testament to how boring i find the game, i have never completed a GTA before as all i did was have endless fun throughout the game.
@WhiteMage: You're describing how the realism in GTA4 ruined it for you. We're both discussing our own opinions. You say rave reviews for San Andreas counter my argument, but that if the same were to be said about 4, it's merely the "hype train". GTA was plenty hyped by the time SA rolled around as well, so it works both ways.
I'm not saying San Andreas was bad by any stretch of the imagination. I even stated that, at that time, it was obviously the best in the GTA series. All I'm saying is, if you played GTA3 and VC extensively, SA can really get bogged down in that "more of the same" feeling that other rehashed franchises experience.
A lot of people didn't play a GTA game 'til VC or SA, or they didn't play the previous entries 'til after SA, so it's obviously not that way for everyone. If if you play them extensively though, all in succession, I don't see how you can say SA doesn't feel stale by the time you near the end of it.
@Kanji08: I know these are still opinions but there is a far larger variety of things to do and explore in SA than there is in IV. Sure IV has a more well structured and graphically appealing aspect of the city but when you think about it there isn't that much to do. It's all well and good making the city feel alive but that doesn't make it fun. As i stated before i think it boils down to what you want and expect from GTA. IV for me moved away from the core foundations that made me love and admire the previous games. The mindless fun of the cheats, the varying environments, the crazy weapons, the crazy characters, the ways of exploration heck even the freedom all felt as if they were missing from IV.
Now none of this is to say it's a bad game because it isn't, it has high production values and is loved by many people but just for me personally and by the sounds of it others too just find it a shift away from what we want and expect from GTA.
@WhiteMage: In defense of the level design, it was a surprisingly faithful adaptation of NYC. To the point where I actually remember finding the building I was living in at the time of release. Obviously it wasn't the exact building, but the amount of detail put into even side streets was pretty impressive.
Otherwise I agree with you. 4 was meh. It was fun for a week or two and then the hype and surface charm drifted off and left a rather shallow core. Vice City/San Andreas style and gameplay in a NYC setting would have been absolutely perfect. Hopefully 5 will hit the mark whenever it comes out.
EDIT: I just wanted to add, I'm not saying the level design worked for the game, but in the vein of the "realistic" GTA they were going for, I think they hit the mark suprisingly well. NYC is a big city to tackle.
WhiteMage Says Fix the Promotion System promoted this comment
Edited by Sir-Lucius does anything for Dethklok at 09/02/09 2:03 PM
Sir-Lucius does anything for Dethklok was starred
Sir-Lucius does anything for Dethklok was unstarred
No, 10/10 reviews basically means that the game is shite, basically stripped of quality. You're actually saying that GTA: SA was a better game because it didn't get as good reviews..?
Define quality for me, would you?
I loved GTAIV. Things I liked about it:
the graphics, the voice acting, the cutscenes, the city, the driving (it took a while to get used to in the start but after that - driving was a blast) the missions, the plot, the people (those that were relevant to the plot), everything all those "random" people in the city did - like using cell phones etc. (it may sound stupid, but it kinda made it feel like a real city).
I'll admit that it wasn't as hysterical as GTA: SA, but it was several times better (imo). And don't get me wrong, I liked SA too. In fact, I have one of my best gaming moments from that game. But to me, GTAIV just is BETTER.
And why are you guys complaining..? Go play Saints Row, it looks to me that you guys wanted R* to make that game instead. I would pick GTAIV over SR 10 out of 10 times. #grand
@rodrigues124: No, 10/10 reviews basically means that the game is shite, basically stripped of quality. You're actually saying that GTA: SA was a better game because it didn't get as good reviews..?
@Sir-Lucius does anything for Dethklok: Yeah, the level design was pretty bad, game-wise. how many times during the game did you have to go down that street with the mini arc de triomphe or whatever? And how many times did you try to drive through it like a badass to hit a stupid pole on the other side?
That street...I got so damn sick of seeing that street. #grand
Surely you don't think that GTA can live on forevermore through DLC, Mr. Zelnick? I'm more than fine with waiting for GTA V (especially since I can derive whatever GTA related pleasures that I need through playing Vice City and San Andreas), but there's no need to appear so bitter regarding a simple question. I realize that statements, removed from their proper context, are easily misinterpreted, but it's difficult to read this and not presume Zelnick to be a dick.
By saying that he will not announce it, he actually did announce it. He just didnt give any details whatsoever. But I guess we all know its in development anyways so who cares.
IMO we will see a new GTA in Q1 2011.
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And here comes Pachter stealing my prediction. Whoooosh! There he goes.
I really wish Rockstar would make a zombie game. I mean it could even be DLC, where it turns all the pedestrians into zombies for all I care. I guess I'll just have to wait for Dead Rising 2.
@Rockabully: The problem with that is the openness of the environment and the existence of vehicles. Left 4 Dead works because you can't simply get into a truck and drive away. That, and the environments are really claustrophobic.
Also, while the combat engine in GTA IV was light years ahead of previous installments, it still isn't good enough to make an entire game around.
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japanese GTA = yakuza
british GTA= gangs of london
they should make a Canadian GTA. guns would be hard to find but if you die the hospital is free.
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So to sum up the only people to blame for the current situtation is ourselves for clicking on the damn link whenever an anouncement announcement is made.
09/02/09
For example,
Here is the debut trailer of GTA, we will be talking more about it next month at TGS.
09/02/09
Srsly though, to steal a line of thought from the PC Gamer Podcast crew, the first Tomb Raider was a smashing success. The second was really good too. The third was good. The fourth... eh. The fifth? Bleh. Eventually it got so bad they had to reboot the franchise. Why? Oversaturation of the market of the same kind of gameplay. (This thought-line really is -stolen- as I never played the first... seven? However many Tomb Raiders beyond about five minutes. Though I did play a chunk of the remake of the first one. I rather liked it.)
Announcing GTA5 so 'soon' after GTA4 (and its subsequent expansion packs/DLC/addons/whatever) can only lead to a saturation of the market. Plus... hello?! They had #3 on the PS2/Xbox generation. They had #4 on the PS3/360 generation. Lets follow this line of reasoning, shall we?
(PS: The stolen line of thought from the PCG Podcast? It's somewhat surprising that they (the PCG crew) don't apply that same line of thought to L4D2, and instead constantly chide folk for being bothered by L4D2's release so soon after L4D. Same gameplay so soon after? Oversaturation.)
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Or the two will be worked on in tandem. Hard to tell.
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Maybe Bobby(satan) over at Analvision should look to take-two to see how it's done.
09/02/09
I didn't like the city, the missions, the driving...the only part of GTA4 I liked was free mode online, and evne then it would've been exceptionally better had the driving and city been more fun.
I want a true follow up. Where is San Andreas, but with a new city, pretty graphics, and all the features?
Until they do what everyone expected, and make a huge wacky game with ice cream truck bombs and tying people to the hood of your car and an annoying girl with an annnoying accent, I guess I'm stuck with Saints Row 2(the closest thing possible), but I've played the hell out of that...
09/02/09
GTA4 was painfully boring, and lacking nearly all the heart and charm that the three PS2 installments had in DROVES. Bring on San Andreas Plus.
09/02/09
I enjoyed it for a week, but then the problems and missing things started to become more obvious, and I ended up trading it in. I couldn't stand it after that initial hype wore off. :\
Then I got Saints Row 2 and it was basically everything I was hoping GTA4 would be.
I would love a not-so-orange awesome-graphics remake of San Andreas, though...hell, take GTA3, VC, and SA and mix em together and give us a new game with new graphics using those cities.
I can dream ;-;
09/02/09
IV went agains the whole original foundations the games were built on, mindless violent freedom, none of which were really present in IV.
09/02/09
GTA4, on the other hand, seemed to discourage random chaos; it was harder to escape the cops, the Tank and Apache were gone, there were no hidden weapons, and it was incredibly difficult to sustain any sort of rampage for too long.
I remember back in college, my friends and I used to have competitions to see who could last the longest in a sustained chaotic killing spree; as soon as one of us died, we'd pass the controller to the next guy and they'd try.
You just can't do that as effectively in 4 because there's just not as much to do, and not as many tools to do it with.
I think Rockstar just tried too hard to make the world feel realistic, and they did it at the expense of the heart and soul of the series. They can fix it though; BAGT seems to be adding back some of the stuff I missed...it's just a shame Microsoft had to go and pay for the exclusive. Jerks.
09/02/09
That lasted maybe a couple days to a week.
I feel I got my moneys worth with IV, not so much the previous entries. Maybe they should have packaged it as another title.
09/02/09
@Archaotic: What I think has a big impact on it is, well, look at the city.
Imagine those buildings, without textures. It's basically a bunch of rectangles. That's not a city, that's not a game environment. It's just a bunch of senseless obstacles. I don't know if this will make sense, but if you took the textures off San Andreas, you're gonna have more fun with it, and it'll seem more sensible. Probably because it's not all big buildings. They're less barriers and more buildings. GTA4 seems to confine you to the roads. The other GTAs don't, to anywhere near the same extent.
And while I talk about the city itself, I want to ask- what is up with GTA(whole series) and shop windows? Real photos of real windows with real reflections that don't match anything in-game, compressed to terrible quality, and repeated incessantly? That aggrivated me a lot in GTA4. In this gen, that's unacceptable. In particular I remember a corner store that had a door texture that was not only at the wrong angle(the floor inside seemed to be going up at a 45 degree angle), but the door was twice the height of Niko!
Little things like that damaged even the exploration aspect.
Whereas san Andreas had so much exploration that clunkers would spawn in the woods just in case you got lost/stuck. :\
It just all seemed...fake.
/ramble
09/02/09
The level of exploration, experimentation, and immersion in San Andreas was unlike anything else in the series before or after it; the fact it had actual local co-op only made things even better.
I hope Rockstar keeps that in mind when making GTA5.
09/02/09
Then Vice City came out, played it quite a bit, enjoyed the new stuff, and finally did everything in the game. Finally comes San Andreas. By the time it came out, everything just had a nice, big "been there, done that" sticker slapped on it.
The story was great, the new features were awesome, and I could tell it was the best GTA entry to date. Yet any and all motivation to keep playing it was lost 'cause it all just felt the same. That, and so much of the new stuff felt pointless. A triathlon contest? Really? There was very little point to do any of it.
Then finally, GTA4 comes along and it's an absolute breath of fresh air. The game has been more streamlined with a lot of the crap cut out and given a nice coat of paint to separate it from previous entries.
If 4 didn't reinvent itself, it would've been miserable. Who the hell wants to play the same game they've already played with only a few new features added to it? *Looks at Halo and Dynasty Warriors fans* . . . Oh.
09/02/09
You may have thought it was stale, but the millions of sales and rave reviews San Andreas got show otherwise.
However a counter would be "GTA4 got just as good reviews, if not better!" but I am just gonna outright say that that was the hype train pulling into station. 10/10 reviews all over the day the game comes out are not a good indication of quality. :\
09/02/09
But yeah, I would love to see Vice City and San Andreas redone on IV's engine, with the crazy weapons/kill frenzies/bullet time pills. Just imagining San Andreas redone in the sheer detail of IV's Liberty City makes me giddy.
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I'm not saying San Andreas was bad by any stretch of the imagination. I even stated that, at that time, it was obviously the best in the GTA series. All I'm saying is, if you played GTA3 and VC extensively, SA can really get bogged down in that "more of the same" feeling that other rehashed franchises experience.
A lot of people didn't play a GTA game 'til VC or SA, or they didn't play the previous entries 'til after SA, so it's obviously not that way for everyone. If if you play them extensively though, all in succession, I don't see how you can say SA doesn't feel stale by the time you near the end of it.
09/02/09
Now none of this is to say it's a bad game because it isn't, it has high production values and is loved by many people but just for me personally and by the sounds of it others too just find it a shift away from what we want and expect from GTA.
09/02/09
Otherwise I agree with you. 4 was meh. It was fun for a week or two and then the hype and surface charm drifted off and left a rather shallow core. Vice City/San Andreas style and gameplay in a NYC setting would have been absolutely perfect. Hopefully 5 will hit the mark whenever it comes out.
EDIT: I just wanted to add, I'm not saying the level design worked for the game, but in the vein of the "realistic" GTA they were going for, I think they hit the mark suprisingly well. NYC is a big city to tackle.
11/15/09
No, 10/10 reviews basically means that the game is shite, basically stripped of quality. You're actually saying that GTA: SA was a better game because it didn't get as good reviews..?
Define quality for me, would you?
I loved GTAIV. Things I liked about it:
the graphics, the voice acting, the cutscenes, the city, the driving (it took a while to get used to in the start but after that - driving was a blast) the missions, the plot, the people (those that were relevant to the plot), everything all those "random" people in the city did - like using cell phones etc. (it may sound stupid, but it kinda made it feel like a real city).
I'll admit that it wasn't as hysterical as GTA: SA, but it was several times better (imo). And don't get me wrong, I liked SA too. In fact, I have one of my best gaming moments from that game. But to me, GTAIV just is BETTER.
And why are you guys complaining..? Go play Saints Row, it looks to me that you guys wanted R* to make that game instead. I would pick GTAIV over SR 10 out of 10 times. #grand
11/15/09
Define quality for me, would you?
What the hell comments are you reading? #grand
11/15/09
That street...I got so damn sick of seeing that street. #grand
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IMO we will see a new GTA in Q1 2011.
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And here comes Pachter stealing my prediction. Whoooosh! There he goes.
09/02/09
@Franky_AAA:
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Pachter: "SONY IS WORKING ON THE NEXT PLAYSTATION!!"
Everyone else: OH MY GOD YOU ARE A GENIUS. HAVE MONEY!
Pachter: "A SUCCESSFUL GAME DEVELOPER IS WORKING ON THE NEXT GAME IN A LONG RUNNING FRANCHISE THAT HAS MADE THEM LOTS OF MONEY!"
Everyone else: WOW! WE NEVER COULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT. MORE MONEY FOR YOU!
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I hate Pachter too. A damn chimp could do his job.
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Also, while the combat engine in GTA IV was light years ahead of previous installments, it still isn't good enough to make an entire game around.
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I didn't approve this, what's going on with the star system lately?
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