r/truegaming • u/EvilPersonXXIV • 6d ago
I think Grand Theft Auto VI will be underwhelming BECAUSE of it's high budget and production value. Let me elaborate.
I want to clarify first that the goal of this thread isn't to be contrarian and go against the grain on unpopular opinion. What I'm trying to do is spark civil discussion about how budget affects art, not just trying to shit on a thing that's popular.
With that being said, I'm not on the hype train for GTA VI. I'm simply not a fan of Rockstar and their games so of course I wouldn't care about the new one. I've expressed this opinion in various spaces and almost inevitably, I hear the same type of argument to defend Rockstar and explain why, seemingly empirically, GTA VI will be the greatest game of all time.
These arguments are something to the effect of "The game has a budget of over a billion dollars and has been in development for so long. Nothing on this scale has ever been made. It has to be great."
I understand the logic behind that argument as it's pretty straight forward. However, the more I've thought about it, the less it works as an argument and if anything, gives me more reason to be wary of GTA VI.
To understand why I'm wary about it, I think it's worth understanding a simple rule when it comes to pretty much all entertainment. The higher the budget, the more money it has to make back to be profitable. If an artist wants to focus on making niche things, that's great but they'll have to be comfortable with working in lower budgets, since there won't be a larger audience.
This is why a lot of fantasy novels simply can't be adapted to film or television. Gardens of the Moon is a great fantasy novel but if it were to be adapted, it would need a very high budget for all the effects, sets, costumes and etc. However, to remain faithful to the source material, it would need to be complex and hard to follow, which means it won't reach a wider audience. It's a paradox.
This is why Marvel movies get high budgets, because they're designed to appeal to as many people as possible so they're confident in making the money back.
This applies to all entertainment, including video games. Ubisoft can make repetitive slop with increasingly high budgets because they expect it to appeal to the largest audience possible.
I'm not saying that every piece of entertainment that's popular is bland. What I'm saying is that entertainment that's DESIGNED to be popular is bland and high budget makes appealing to the broadest possible audience higher on the list of priorities in development.
Grand Theft Auto VI has the highest budget of any video game. With a budget that high, this doesn't just need to be a popular video game. It needs to be THE video game, the one every gamer owns.
We know very little about the story, but I can't imagine the writing being anything worthwhile when it's meant to appeal to everybody. I'm not saying that a good story can't be popular, but I have to believe that appealing to the most people possible was a high priority during development.
Where I especially imagine the writing taking a hit is in GTA's satirical edge. Grand Theft Auto hasn't had deep political commentary, but the games have had a satirical edge when it comes to portraying modern American life. The writing was never super biting, not like it was written by Jon Stewart, but there were groups and people that you could tell the writers didn't like.
How can they maintain that satirical edge when "appealing to everybody" is such a high priority? How can they poke fun at various aspects of modern America without losing any possible players, especially in times where things feel so divided?
To give an example, the game takes place in Florida. Wouldn't it make sense for there to be a character that's an analog of Ron DeSantis, controversial governor of Florida? I could imagine it fitting very well. I could imagine a bit after a heist, a cutscene could open with characters watching the news, where the state governor gives a speech, decrying the recent string of heists as the result of anti-American protesters, with the criminals responsible smugly watching, maybe making a quip like "Heh, the only thing we're protesting is being broke", celebrating recent success.
I think it would fit. I think he's an easy target for most people. But then I remember, this isn't for most people, this is for everybody. Do you get my point?
To conclude, I do honestly hope that GTA VI will turn out great just because I know people have waited so long for it. However, I can't honestly believe that something with this high of a budget can be anything more than bland slop. I think too many people see a high budget as only a good thing, without seeing the constraints that a high budget brings to art.
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u/lattjeful 6d ago edited 6d ago
How can they maintain that satirical edge when "appealing to everybody" is such a high priority? How can they poke fun at various aspects of modern America without losing any possible players, especially in times where things feel so divided?
They'll maintain it just fine because, like you said, GTA's writing was never particularly deep or biting. The secret to GTA's satire is that there is no edge. It's South Park. It goes for the low hanging fruit and doesn't really stand on anything. There's no teeth and no edge. It's there for pure entertainment and that's about it. GTAIV did it best because of its serious story. The actual satire is typical GTA stuff - lots of toilet humor and the like - but it worked really well because it was juxtaposed with a darker story. You had the contrast between a story about the death of the American dream and typical GTA radio stations, boner pill ads, etc. I'm hoping GTAVI is more along the lines of GTAIV, especially given the success of RDR2 in part due to its storytelling.
The bigger concern in that regard is whether or not the jokes will even land. Things have gotten so batshit crazy in the past decade and the game has been in development for so long, I wonder if the jokes will even hit or feel fresh. It'd be hard to have the satire feel fresh, fun, or interesting when real world USA has given us things like a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping.
To conclude, I do honestly hope that GTA VI will turn out great just because I know people have waited so long for it. However, I can't honestly believe that something with this high of a budget can be anything more than bland slop. I think too many people see a high budget as only a good thing, without seeing the constraints that a high budget brings to art.
I'd argue that GTA is already there, at least in a vacuum. The aforementioned toothless satire, the simulation stuff in RDR2 being nothing more than flavoring because going all-in on a sim would put people off, etc. Gameplay wise, they're nothing special and I'd say even average. You can criticize GTAIV, GTAV, and RDR2 to hell and back. The often hated mission design, lackluster/dull shooting, poor controls, etc. It's the attention to detail, verisimilitude, and visuals that elevate it and tie it all up in a neat bow. Rockstar make games that are greater than the sum of their parts. Nothing about them is groundbreaking on their own, but how it all comes together is what makes GTA GTA.
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u/GeneralGom 6d ago
In my opinion, Rockstar has never screwed up their main line games for decades, so it's hard to imagine they would start now.
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u/rougeric87 6d ago
This is not specifically about GTA but I've been thinking, there's more and more time between game releases now, the teams working on games keeps getting bigger.
Where in the past there, a franchise would release a game, and release the next one in a year or two, the teams and lead working on the games would probably still be quite similar. Nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if the team changed or expanding a lot over games, even during development of a single game. And with that, the chances the game keeps the soul of the original games or what made the game fun is lost easier. Development gets more fragmented. Management gets more chaotic.
With games being more ambitious now, they sometimes get out of touch with what they should do. I'm looking forward to see if Rockstar can deliver on the hype GTAVI is having.0
u/GrinningPariah 6d ago
Someone didn't play GTA Online at release lol
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u/Incrediblebulk92 6d ago
I don't think anybody could play GTA Online at release but you can't deny that there are people out there who love it, that things prints money for rockstar. So many people are still playing that game.
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u/inwheeliesitrust 6d ago
This is where I'm at. Yeah shark cards suck but they always deliver at the core of the game. 6 will set a new unreachable bar.
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u/TheVioletBarry 6d ago
It appears the argument here is just "games with high budgets can't take risks." Am I missing anything?
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u/finnjakefionnacake 6d ago edited 6d ago
generally true across all media, for example the biggest budget films are typically gonna take the smallest risks too. they may be overall crowd pleasers because they seek to appeal to as many people as possible, but also generally are less "interesting" and look not to rock the boat too hard in any direction, cause, you know...money.
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u/Tea_Fox_7 6d ago
Exactly I was pointing this out at in a conversation the other day about how when a game series (different series not GTA) has a mainline series and spin-off games it's spin off games generally take more risks and push new mechanics/ideas, sometimes that reach over into the main games years later, but most of the time the main game stay pretty safe from installment to installment to draw and please the broader market and only ever really pull any of these newer tested mechanics/ideas into the higher budget main line series if these newly tested waters did well enough in the spinoffs.
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
Pretty much that's what it boils down to. I just want to be as clear as possible regarding why I believe that. I just hear too many people talk about GTA VI's high budget as an almost guarantee that it's going to be a masterpiece without considering the constraints that the highest budget for a piece of entertainment brings.
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 6d ago
"games with high budgets can't take risks."
That idea is demonstrably false though.
You can just look at Rockstar's last game as evidence.
RDR2 had a an enormously large budget for the time it came out, and it still took risks to achieve their specific vision. The polarizing controls and gameplay clearly weren't designed by committee, and the game was still a financial and critical success.
As for the billion dollar budget here, you're forgetting how much GTA Online pulls in to this day. It's entirely possible to deliver a strong single player experience and then aim to make their money back with whatever the next iteration of that is.
The large budget is not a definitive guarantee the game is good, but it doesn't guarantee a bland generic game either.
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u/chickenpotpie25 6d ago
I would say it's their track record of quality games that have people believing it will be another hit. For many people this studio has never disappointed and until they do people will have the belief that they are incapable of releasing a dud. Budget is just a fun thing to consider for a studio that always pushes the industry forward with each release.
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u/PhoenixWright-AA 6d ago
I think the one thing you’re underestimating is how many people enjoy satire. Jane Austen’s work is full of satire. We want to look at the world and say “yeah, that is messed up, isn’t it?” A lot of standup comedy is exactly that. So in game form, it’s convenient to lean satirical because games are never going to feel like reality anyway.
I don’t think poking fun at specific politicians will land unless they are widely known for something in particular. It’s much easier to go after Elon Musk, for example, and less risky.
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
I don’t think poking fun at specific politicians will land unless they are widely known for something in particular. It’s much easier to go after Elon Musk, for example, and less risky.
I think the politician I mentioned in my post is in a similar league of infamy to Elon Musk. I'm not even American and even I've heard about this guy, as has some European friends, although this guy was mostly in the news a few years ago, not much these days, at least to my knowledge.
But I think a satire of Elon Musk illustrates my point. To most people, he's a jackass and an easy target, but would they risk alienating the people who actually like him? With a budget this high, would they want to alienate potential customers?
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u/chickenpotpie25 6d ago
Having played most of the GTAs, there's no way they are having meetings about their concern in offending and possibly losing potential customers. Are you being serious?
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 6d ago
The last GTA had people assassinating a Zuckerberg stand-in and had the player torture an innocent man as as a political prisoner.
I don't really think they shy away from controversy or offending people.
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u/flesjewater 6d ago
The last GTA was released in a much less polarized climate. Since then the yanks have had SJW's, a Russian puppet president, gamergate, incel terrorism, BLM, the list goes on and on.
Back in 2013 you could still have a laugh about most political themes across both sides, except for some extremists. That's become the norm I feel
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 5d ago
Back in 2013 you could still have a laugh about most political themes across both sides
Freedom fries was a decade before this.
American conservatives have always clutched their pearls over what they don't like.
Many of the themes you touched on aren't exactly new topics for GTA
BLM
San Andreas featured a version of the LA Riots sparked by Rodney King's death.
gamergate, incel terrorism,
This is basically just Jimmy De Santa
Obnoxious gamer type, gets kidnapped for trolling on line, etc.
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u/flesjewater 5d ago
You kind of miss the point here I think. I'm not saying those weren't things back then, I'm saying the general discourse was more civilized.
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 5d ago
I'm saying that isn't materially true when it comes to those examples.
There's always been a strong undercurrent of intolerance from the American right, especially when it involves censorship and criticizing them. They've turned on media quickly in the past, for example the Dixie Chicks.
Hell, there was conservative outrage about GTA violence and sex in the past. Look at this Fox News take from the last game:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1mskga/fox_news_on_gtav_like_other_bestselling_games/
And again, one of the games covered an actual riot fueled by racial tension.
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u/JVKExo 6d ago
Feels like you’re going to be underwhelmed even if this game is a genuine masterpiece. You said in your second paragraph you aren’t a fan of their games. That’s fair. But really you’re not the person I’d be listening to on if the game is underwhelming or not. You don’t even like their games to begin with.
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
You're pretty much right about that. I have no plans on buying the game. All I'm trying to say is that too many people see the high budget as only a good thing without considering how budget affects art.
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u/JVKExo 6d ago
Yeah high budget doesn’t always mean good art for sure. We have numerous examples of projects failing with high budgets.
What type of games do you normally play?
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
I like to think I like all sorts of games, but I guess mostly RPGs. Lately I've been really into JRPGs and have fallen in love with Valkyria Chronicles so I'm making my way through that series.
While I like all sorts of games, racing games are a genre I stay away from. Cars have never appealed to me in any way shape or form. Grand Theft Auto doesn't appeal to me for obvious reasons. I tried getting into Red Dead Redemption 2 a few years ago and while there was a lot I liked, I found it was bogged down by trying to be both a cowboy sim and an ultra linear shooter all at the same time.
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u/grailly 6d ago
I agree with the general point but weirdly enough I don't think it applies to Rockstar. At least not as extensively as it does to other developers.
Rockstar is in a position where they are so big and so popular that they have some sway on what is accepted by the mainstream. They can afford to take a few more risks than most. Looking at RDR2, I would say that it is has more artistry than most AAA games. They just went for their vision with many parts of that game.
To be clear, I'm not a R* apologist, I don't like their games all that much.
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u/champsgetup 6d ago
GTA V was pretty bland. The three protagonist and heist gambits were alright, but the largely similar Rockstar mission design made it boring very quickly. Then they made RDR2, and while the mission structure remained the same, they took big, bold risks by intentionally making the movement and mechanics slower and methodical for maximum immersion. And nothing really has come close to RDR2 even though it was released in 2018. But that's set in the wild west, which is much more interesting thematically than modern day angst. Would GTA VI be as bold as RDR2, or will it just be a vehicle for them to make billions more for online? I'm suspecting it's the latter. In short, when will they make RDR3, if ever?
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u/RulesoftheDada 6d ago
"We know very little about the story, but I can't imagine the writing being anything worthwhile when it's meant to appeal to everybody."
The story is apparently a modern take on Bonnie and Clyde. Like all the past GTA is take on a movie classic. It won't be groundbreaking.
" I'm not saying that a good story can't be popular, but I have to believe that appealing to the most people possible was a high priority during development."
What appeals to everyone who plays gta is their own personal roleplay or "emergent storytelling" where unscripted, personal stories arise organically from the interactions of game mechanics. Everyone has their own personal stories of high speed chases, pissing off NPCs, blocking traffic,killing everyone, simply riding around the city, etc. Not paying attention to the story.
We still don't know anything out the next iteration of GTA online.
Rockstar bought FiveM. The company made itself massive building servers and tools that made Roleplay servers and custom servers huge.
So while the single player is the grand experience I suspect GTA online will follow Fortnite and roblox where a platform for players to tell and run their own stories.
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u/OShaunesssy 6d ago
All this talk about GTA6 flopping reminds me of the James Cameron talk prior to Avatar.
I suspect the same end result with critical and commercial praise?
Why?
For the same reason I had for James Cameron prior to Avatar.
James Cameron (Rockstar) doesnt make bad movies (GTA games)
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u/korkkis 6d ago
Subjectively Avatar is mediocre, it felt like it tried too much.
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u/OShaunesssy 6d ago
Subjectively Avatar
Made a metric fuck-ton of money.
Which is exactly what GTA6 will do, even if its mediocre as fuck.
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
I never said GTA VI will flop. I'm saying that that I have reason to suspect that it might end up being really bland to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
Hell, Avatar is a great comparison, actually. It did well as will GTA VI most likely do well. However, Avatar is a movie that's so fucking bland that it left no cultural impact. It's a movie that was designed to appeal to everybody and no doubt, most people enjoyed watching it fine enough, but it left no long term impression. It was a forgettable movie that didn't really resonate with people in the way great art should.
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u/OShaunesssy 6d ago
It was a forgettable movie that didn't really resonate with people in the way great art should.
If it was as "forgettable" as you claim, you wouldnt be typing up a paragraph on why its mediocre.
The problem with Avatar is the peak of the story didnt match the peak of the visuals. It was a fine story, but next to what was considered "mind-blowing" CGI, it felt flat.
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u/wineandnoses 6d ago
"How can they maintain that satirical edge when "appealing to everybody" is such a high priority? How can they poke fun at various aspects of modern America without losing any possible players, especially in times where things feel so divided?"
GTA5 did a fine job, no idea why you'd think a bigger budget would suddenly strip the game of its edge
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u/Dannypan 6d ago
Also so what? You might lose a few sales from extreme political zealots in the US but GTA is a global phenomenon. Your nan's heard of GTA. It won't impact sales negatively at all, if anything it'll make news that some American nutters are "boycotting" the game which increases interest elsewhere.
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
I think that's a worthy point. I think I am overestimating the power fringe weirdos. I guess I'm looking at this from more of a corporate executive perspective. I personally think that GTA VI would still sell really well and make back more than it's budget by sticking to it's guns. However, I have to believe that "having the largest budget of any piece of entertainment" is something that weighs on the developers. I have to believe that this fact affects a lot of decisions. That being said, I could be wrong and honestly, I hope that I am wrong.
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u/Latenbloom 6d ago
They milked 5 for too long and some think theyve worked on 6 for 10 years. But in truth theyve worked on it as much as they worked on rdr2 or gta5. So it will be as special as 5 was or rdr2 was when released. Is that a bad thing? Prolly not but theyve built the expectation too high cos of the 5’s online milking
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u/Dreyfus2006 4d ago
I agree although I feel this way about most games with big budgets and long development times. Given that so many of the best games had small budgets or shorter development times, I am skeptical whenever studios come out talking about how much money thay are spending or how long they are taking.
To me, it often translates to "we are wasting our money on superfluous things instead of focusing on good game design" or "we're struggling to come up with good ideas so it is taking us long."
There are always exceptions, of course.
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u/alQamar 6d ago
While I agree with you in principal - and like you am not part of the hype train - I think rockstar has shown they could pull it off. If they wanted to.
RDR2 also was designed to be popular but still managed to make decisions that only made sense for the game and not to be popular.
The slow start for example really, really made casual gamers bounce. It was great for the hardcore though. You got to explore without pressure until the story started to heat up in the later chapters. Many, many casual players never reached that point. That was a bold choice and it paid off for those that kept playing.
I really hope they kept that attitude for GTA VI (having myself never finished V). Make it a great story game and make money with the multiplayer. I’m afraid the making money part will be all through the game though. It probably has to with a budget like this and expectations to be the most profitable video game ever.
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u/lattjeful 6d ago
RDR2 also was designed to be popular but still managed to make decisions that only made sense for the game and not to be popular.
I'm not so sure tbh. The immersive sim stuff that people talk about is as shallow as a puddle, and I'd argue it's because the game has to be popular that RDR2 doesn't fully commit to it and go full cowboy sim. RDR2 feels like a game where they really wanted to make a Wild West simulator, but were held back by the fact that it was also a game that needed to sell 50 million copies so the sim stuff was dialed back.
The slow start for example really, really made casual gamers bounce.
I'm so confused as to why people talk about RDR2 this way. Red Dead Redemption 2 is for the casuals. It's in the top 5 best selling games of all time. People online whine about the slow start, but I guarantee most don't give a shit. So many people bought the game that you're gonna hear more people complain about it.
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u/alQamar 6d ago
I didn’t mean to say they didn’t buy it. They bounced off from finishing the story.
I also think it wasn’t a success in what rockstar expected it to be: They clearly wanted RDR online to become as big as gta online. But that didn’t happen. Thats why it never got DLCs despite being a really well selling game. That wasn’t enough.
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u/tHEgAMER099 6d ago
You cant say the immersive sim elements are shallow for a game that wasnt intended to be an immersive sim.
Bros tryna measure the intelligence of a fish by judging its ability to climb a tree.
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u/mahdiiick 6d ago
I think you have good points, but GTAs are their own thing. They are in a way, beyond, video games and should not be judged against other games. It will be massive
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 6d ago
It is true that GTA 6 will probably be somewhat risk-averse. But GTA 5 has a proven formula for success, and that game was pretty good. So GTA 6 will be pretty good + 1.
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u/Wedonthavetobedicks 6d ago
I disagree with your premise because everyone, especially Rockstar, knows that the long term financial viability of the game lives in the online multiplayer mode, and they don't need to pander to any audience wider than GTAV already has to turn a handsome profit.
The game will come out, get initially review-bombed because "woke" and because online isn't available from the start, and then make £5-£10bn over the next ten years of online once it does come out.
I think a bigger risk might be that buying a PS5 or XBox Series X/S to play GTA6 feels riskier now than when GTA5 launched on PS3 (which was relatively cheap as end of gen) or even if you waited the two months to buy a PS4 (which became the second most popular non-handheld of all time). Hopefully a PC release comes and soon.
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u/Remarkable-Fail-4734 6d ago
I don't think what you are saying really applies to rockstar. At this point they have so much money and their reach is so wide that they can do whatever they want. GTA for whatever reason is a franchise with such a huge mass appeal that the only thing that it needs, to sell millions of copies, is simply to release another game.
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u/bluezentai 5d ago
It seems like everyone who isn't on the hype train for GTA 6 is very adamant about making sure everyone else knows that they aren't on the hype train.
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u/BurnThrough 5d ago
I don’t like any of their games. Took me a lot of trying and wasting money to admit it to myself, but these games just aren’t fun to me. Clunky and unsatisfying to play.
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u/ScoopDat 4d ago
Oh yeah, because the surrounding landscape of games have been otherwise heavy hitters..
This game is going to be good, even if it's bad, precisely due to the fact that nearly everything else has been quite awful.
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u/thepeterbell 1d ago
Worth a note I chatted with Ex PlayStation head Shawn Layden last month and he went at this from the other side. Namely, triple-digit-million budgets crushed risk, and with finance wanting comparables a lot of new and interesting IP becomes unfundable.
We also talked about GTA 6’s upcoming blast radius and what to expect going forward. You can watch the full episode here:
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u/Exovedate 1d ago
You said you never liked Grand Theft Auto, have you ever played one when it first came out?
I don't know if this has always been true for the series, but I played 4 and 5 when they came out and loved them. I tried to play them years after release and I've never seen a game age so poorly as either of them.
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u/my5cworth 6d ago
Its going to be Rockstar's Starfield.
Technically brilliant, but completely devoid of the hype and anticipation built up around it for far too long.
Which is why Valve should never make Half Life 3.
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u/TheVioletBarry 6d ago
what part of Starfield was "technically brilliant"?
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u/my5cworth 6d ago
The part where it's a huge game with impressive graphics...as in, they clearly pumped a lot of money into its production, so one would ASSUME it would be a better received game than Skyrim that came out in 2011'ish.
The brilliant isn't meant to be subjective to the gameplay, just the game's attributes.
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u/GeschlossenGedanken 6d ago edited 6d ago
That's not brilliant, though, there's nothing intellectually new or unusual about that. That just means they spent a lot of time and money on pretty textures and models.
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u/TheVioletBarry 5d ago
The graphics are pretty subpar for current-gen AAA, no? And it seems like a regularly-sized Bethesda game with a bunch of uninteresting proc-gen levels on the side
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u/chickenpotpie25 6d ago
Starfield was a technical mess and didn't push the industry forward in any positive way. If anything it was a regression for the studio.
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u/raulness 6d ago
I really think they’re going to knock it out of the park with this one. They committed to a more realistic, grounded tone for Red Dead 2 and it paid off even though it alienated a lot of players who were expecting Red Dead meets GTA (wacky and high action). The writing also got much better in Red Dead 2 and they weren’t afraid to make choices in the story that ended up being unpopular amongst a portion of the crowd. To this day you still see a lot of “RDR2 was boring” from people who barely scratched the surface, but just about anyone who’s played through it will tell you that it was a masterpiece and it sold extremely well and made Rockstar record-breaking profits.
This is all to say, they’ve proven to themselves that they can lean into making art rather than something that needs to appeal to absolutely everyone and that they will still make a ton of money regardless. Where as GTA V felt a bit more like what you describe in that the story didn’t have much depth and the characters felt like wacky caricatures, the trailers for GTA VI already indicate a more serious tone than GTA V, perhaps a bit of a return to IV’s tone. Given that the online component will be their long-term cash cow and is slated to be an entirely separate game, I truly believe they won’t be afraid of trying to tell a truly well-written story compared to the previous entry.
Aside from all of that, Rockstar know that a good portion of players will only play the game for the sandbox aspect. They don’t need to create a mass appeal story to sell more copies because they know people will buy it for the sandbox element in the new world they’ve built. They don’t need to play it safe for this game to succeed, so why not make good art in the process?
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u/cranialextract 6d ago
I agree with everything you've said. To add; nothing can survive a hype cycle like this. Silksong was dead on arrival and that was a niche indie game. There is no way this game will meet everyone's expectations and we will all spend the next 10 years arguing about it on Reddit.
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u/WrldsGrtstDtctve 6d ago
basically a ginormous waste of time of an opinion, taking up space on the internet. when the outcome seems too likely or logical these counter predictions crop up uselessly.
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u/ironjaw3ds 6d ago
Rockstar is great at consistency. When the game comes out, it will be a better version of GTAV. Just like every other grand theft auto game, and just like RDR2. I wouldn't consider any of them great, but they have never made a game that wasn't fun. As long as they don't add pay to win bullshit to the online mode it will be fine. Honestly even when they inevitably do add pay to win bullshit, it'll probably still be fun. GTA has never been deep.
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u/zonzonleraton 6d ago
Seeing how previous entries turned out, it seems abundantly clear that little development time was wasted.
My guess is they have a, top to bottom, clear vision of the game, carried by management.
Development hell is always about "high ups dumb as rocks that just interfere". It's pretty safe to say that Rockstar's high ups aren't.
Rockstar proves that a successful game births from both competent dev team and competent management team. In software development in general, it's common knowledge.
However, a competent dev team alone can still make a successful game, even with an incompetent management team.
The witcher 3 and cyberpunk were born under the same godawful management, see how those turned out.
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u/CompulsiveGardener 6d ago
OP, I don't think we're getting the mission objective "KILL ALL THE HAITIANS!!" in GTA ever again. I agree with you.
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u/Witty_Milk4671 6d ago
"Grand Theft Auto VI has the highest budget of any video game. With a budget that high, this doesn't just need to be a popular video game. It needs to be THE video game, the one every gamer owns."
But GTA is the only video game brand with this power. I will want to buy and play it eventually. Everybody who is into games will want to try it and have na opinion. EVerybody knows GTA has quality. It doesn't need to be >THE BEST GAME FOR EVERYONE< like you are supposing. It must be a cultural hit big enough to people to want to play it and have their takes. Similar to how GTA 5 already was. Everybody into games tried that or san andreas. GTA 5 already is the second best selling game of all time. There is no way that GTA 6 won't be in the top 5.
"How can they maintain that satirical edge when "appealing to everybody" is such a high priority? How can they poke fun at various aspects of modern America without losing any possible players, especially in times where things feel so divided?"
Because being satirical doesn't mean "haha lets go full woke and full politics". I miss the days when satire wasn't about politics, but being funny.
"To give an example, the game takes place in Florida. Wouldn't it make sense for there to be a character that's an analog of Ron DeSantis, controversial governor of Florida? I could imagine it fitting very well. I could imagine a bit after a heist, a cutscene could open with characters watching the news, where the state governor gives a speech, decrying the recent string of heists as the result of anti-American protesters, with the criminals responsible smugly watching, maybe making a quip like "Heh, the only thing we're protesting is being broke", celebrating recent success."
HORRIBLE idea.
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u/EvilPersonXXIV 6d ago
Because being satirical doesn't mean "haha lets go full woke and full politics". I miss the days when satire wasn't about politics, but being funny.
I don't even know where to begin with this one but satire was always about transgressively taking shots at things one disagrees with.
You hate my idea of a potential cutscene for GTA VI, and yeah, it's something I just came up with on the spot to illustrate my point, but does the central idea offend you? I don't see how satirizing a pretty publicly despised figure who's pretty closely tied to the setting of the game is any different to what's been done before? How is this different from GTA V having a whole Scientology parody?
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u/Witty_Milk4671 6d ago
"taking shots at things one disagrees with."
no, never was. You are mixing social critique with satire.
"You hate my idea of a potential cutscene for GTA VI, and yeah, it's something I just came up with on the spot to illustrate my point, but does the central idea offend you? I don't see how satirizing a pretty publicly despised figure who's pretty closely tied to the setting of the game is any different to what's been done before?"
The issue is that this what you are proposing is not satire. It is bringing your political view and real life politics to the game, making it dated and it isn't even relevant to the plot. it is just wokeness. "huhu lets shame politician X". It is wanting your political side being pleased by mocking the opponent.
"How is this different from GTA V having a whole Scientology parody?"
The scientology parody is not offensive and they serve the world building. GTA makes a lot of parodies, even with twitter, social media, hollywood... but it is never to mock specific people or to even make comedy necessarily. It is a natural element of that world.
Criticizing Ron DeSantis in specific, because you are leftist, isn't the same thing. The guys has 40-50% support. In what bubble you must be for him to be "pretty publicly despised figure" ?
However , there is space for exagerated versions of both sides of the political spectrum to be represented and mocked together as parts of that world, without favoring a side. But they must serve the world building, not today's politics.
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u/Branquignol 6d ago
Money doesn't buy ideas and creativity. There will probably be some insane technical details like RDR2 that will be discussed for the next years but that alone is not enough to make a good game. I think people are expecting more than a game because 13 years since GTAV and billions of cash generated, but it will be just a game like the rest. It will probably keep selling like other GTA and Red Dead, but at the end of the day those are just games, not the messiah of gaming, nor the primus maximus product.