latenightnoir

This stings so much the more I think about it, to be honest. This discussion about the former glory of GTA made me realise just how much potential would be lost...

As a side note, I sincerely thank you for your replies, it's been so refreshing to lay things out on the table like this!

Even the fact that they try to do some damage control means they care in a way, otherwise they wouldn't be bothered by the idea of upsetting you.

I feel this one to my very core! And I don't want to hate them, but they sure ain't doing anything to help me like'em, either!

Yeah, I agree in that they're not really given anything interesting to do with that depth. It felt like one of those shows which you keep running in the background because you take some interest every now and again and is irrelevant enough to allow you to ignore it completely for a couple of hours.

Again, I feel this has more to do with the fact that they focused on the Online component to the point where it almost feels like they'd initially planned on having your player character act as the fourth (the selection wheel is the main clear indicator of this to me), which is why a lot of the story's there instead of the single-player. Concrete example and a bit of a spoiler, but Franklin does get that bow for his character arc in online, and you as the player character directly help both him and yourself with it. And many of the "quest givers" in Online are the same as in single-player, some of which even hint at what the SP characters have been doing (off-screen).

It's very unfortunate that they tied that story content to such a deliberately hostile multiplayer (I'm referring to how it pretty much encourages everyone to grief everyone else), because there are some neat moments which get lost in the slaughter... Same goes for RDO, although with much, much less hostility - actually enjoy roaming around and doing missions and unrelated stuff in Online, most of the time it feels as though I'm playing single-player.

Yeah, that's why it feels like Seinfeld to me, it's like the point is just to watch these people try to go about their lives with the added context of them being high-profile criminals. Could've been a very interesting character study even so, but it does kinda' lose the plot after a while and the developments start meandering all over the place. Even that psych profile at the end gives me the feeling that it was their initial direction, but, again, I think the Shark Card Gods needed appeasement and back we go to the Online component...

I share that list with you, except for Bully, because I always forget that game exists for some reason, and RDR1, which I've just now started playing thanks to the PC port release. It really does feel like it has that same flavour of ambition as RDR2, even from the starting bits! And, again, I agree, although I'd argue GTA III had a fun enough story ("of its time" elements notwithstanding) for the time when it came out, it was good enough to keep me moving forward and wanting to see where things ended up. I think of it as a decent enough pilot which didn't yet have its tone figured out. Also, I'd say GTA V is about on par with Vice City overall for me, although Vice City was more focused, not gonna lie.

I can certainly understand what you mean about it being a grind to play through, especially with your preference for single-player, I did feel the need to push myself through it a couple of times, yeah... And, same, jumped into IV afterward and ended up playing it through to the end again, and in a much more binge-y way. Oh, and Saints Row 2, 3 and 4 are gloriously campy, yes! Love them for entirely different reasons, but I do love them nonetheless!

Same... would be nice for them to lean into those storytelling chops they demonstrated with RDR2, they could blow a lot of contemporaries out of the water if they really gave it an honest try. And I, too, fear that online monetisation will, yet again, take priority...

Oh, yepyep, honest and open communication is vital in everything! And I agree that "to each their own," we all have our own love languages and respond in our own unique ways to everything!

I think your point is even reinforced by contemporary circumstances, as a whole damned lot of us would almost kill for a bit of kindness and soft attention...

Plus you can always laugh about it afterwards (as long as it's not a creepy/intrusive/tasteless attempt at flirting), and that can serve just as well!

I fully accepted my complete lack of game, so I purposefully turn flirting into a playful parody with extra-campy Smooth™ lathered all over that puppy, and the reactions so far have been really positive!

I still can't tell when someone else is flirting with me, though, so I just joke about that, too! I make it clear that my love language isn't Sexy Talk in general, so I just ask "are you flirting with me right now?" at inappropriate times, which nets me at least a frustrated chuckle.

As a great man once said: "you laughed, I'm off the hook!"

"Better out than in!" - the green guy from Shrek

In terms of story complexity and depth, I completely agree with you. RDR2 is even better than GTA IV, and that was a pretty hard act to pull to begin with!

As an overall game, though, I do see it somewhat on par with GTA V.

Sure, the story's nowhere near as gripping or even smart necessarily, but the characters do have depth, the narrative content makes sense, and it does have some interesting interactions between the characters which humanise them just enough for me to want to see the story through. It kinda' feels like someone tried to pull off Seinfeld in the world of GTA and sort of succeeded in creating a game about nothing much as far as the themes are concerned.

This is compensated a lot by the Online component, which seems to be the second half of the story - there are a lot of returning characters, we get to see the evolution of some favourites, the missions and objectives themselves pretty much go nuts way more frequently than the single-player ones. It's clear that Rockstar focused a lot more on the online component that time, but the story content's still good and even more interesting overall.

Now, credit where it's due, RDO does a lot more to keep the multiplayer in the sandbox, with far fewer activities being relegated to dedicated lobbies, and has a lot more NPC interactions as well, but it still feels relatively barebones when compared to GTAO (this loops back to my first point about it receiving less love, thus less development post-launch).

But, yeah, again, GTA IV (especially when including TBoGT and TLaD) and RDR2 are THE epitome of Rockstar storytelling.

Edit: hey, maybe I'm just being a sourpuss and Rockstar will knock our socks off with the storytelling in VI!

If we're talking about GTAO, I agree. However I have a different opinion about RDO, it had the potential to be less of a griefer cesspool than GTAO, but Rockstar had even less motivation to prevent cheating than they did in GTAO, so...

"We believe this piece used to be called The Funkolossus of Rhode Island. Humans used to be tiny, y'know!"

This, and all the more nowadays, because anything progressive has been intrinsically linked to a change of the Status Quo. And those trillions of fun bucks in the mattress (as well as their self-importance and self-perceived relevance) must be protected from those pesky Socialists!

Yep, totally no biggie that Fascism's now thoroughly rooted in a Superpower nation and that millions of people are, yet again, being persecuted because rich douchebags think themselves kings. Just a regular Tuesday.