by Anthony Perez, Co-Publisher
A week after its release, it's pretty much unnecessary to say anything about Grand Theft Auto IV. It's great, everyone loves it, everyone's addicted to it, and no one is going to read this because they're going to be busy getting drunk with Roman, jumping in a car, and effectively pissing off "the establishment." So rather than talk about GTA IV, let's chat about some possible ideas for Grand Theft Auto V.
I'm going to outline some ideas that could be interesting if they were implemented in GTA V. We must also keep in mind that probably none of these ideas will ever make it in a GTA game, and that Rockstar North has a very focused design which tries to keep what is quite a complex game very accessible to a lot of people. Therefore, some of these ideas may be too involving to incorporate if they make the game overwhelmingly complex for too many people.
Dialogue Trees
Grand Theft Auto games are some of the most immersive around, but there is something missing in the experience: choice. Freedom of choice is the philosophy behind open world gameplay like the kind pioneered by Grand Theft Auto, yet its storytelling is locked into a very set narrative. While the narratives are great, it almost seems anti-GTA to not give the player some power over the plot.
This can easily be remedied with the addition of a dialogue tree reminiscent of the RPG genre, with last year's Xbox 360 hit Mass Effect providing the model for how it should be designed. It should not be as deep as in Mass Effect since you can sometimes become lost in a sea of backstory, but should at least provide options during cutscenes that can change the outcome of the game.
Random Rival Family Hit
Do you remember the hit set up on Sonny Corleone in the 1972 classic The Godfather? If you do, then you have a pretty good idea of what I mean. The basic idea is simple. As you progress up the ranks of the organization you also become a more important figure. So it would be cool if sometimes other families would put a hit out on you that would be attempted while you weren't on a mission.
So let's say you're just cruising around whatever city in which GTA V takes place and all of a sudden a car swerves in front of you. You try to back up to get away and another crushes you from behind. Suddenly a van pulls up and two guys jump out and start firing away, blowing out the tires of your car and making it nearly impossible to get away without dueling it out. This would only happen once depending on your progression in the game and it would also only happen while you're not on a mission. It would have to feel completely out of nowhere to completely surprise you. This event would trigger an entire side story, rather than happen over and over. If it happened multiple times, it would kill the initial surprise and excitement of it.
Informants Among Your Friends
Grand Theft Auto IV really paved the way for giving your character a network of friends. While this may be in GTA IV for all I know (I haven't run into this yet), it would be great if while building your relationships with people you could become suspicious of their allegiances. If you become particularly worried about someone, you could call up your boss and request to have him kidnapped and interrogated.
If it turns out he's a rat, you could have him smoked. If not, then your relationship would go down big time and you would have to put in major work to repair it. The informants will be different for every player depending on how you develop your relationships and the choices you make with the dialogue tree. This way, it would be a dynamic experience for everyone and avoid the disappointment of knowing who the rats are because of some loud mouth on a message board.
Protagonist: Son of a Mob Boss?
I'm done with the rags to riches stories. They're fun and there's a logical progression, especially in gaming, to work your way up through a hierarchy, but I think the next GTA should work from a different angle. Rather than start from the streets, you should start from within the family as the son of a mob boss. It would certainly be a different kind of story, but there's also a lot of inherent drama in being the son of the don.
This is going to sound very similar to the Godfather, but imagine the conflicts with siblings and lower level "soldiers." Realize the potential drama in having meetings with your father about the "business," talking about potential rats, and offering suggestions and options using the branching dialogue trees. It could all make for just as interesting of an experience.
Let's Head to Colombia
But maybe we're tired of the Italians, Russians, and LA gangsters. Hell, what if we're even partially done with the United States. What if we take GTA overseas and set it in Colombia: the heartland of the drug trade. You would have to deal with corrupt government officials, other drug lords, and make runs to the United States to drop off shipments of cocaine.
There would certainly be plenty of new material to work with, not just from a narrative standpoint but from a gameplay one as well. Given the requirements of your job by comparison to those in the previous games, there could be a slew of dramatically new and interesting missions in the single player. It would make for a hell of a back drop.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
These are just some ideas that could be welcome and interesting additions to a series that continually raises the bar. The Houser brothers should be commended as luminaries in the art of game design, and maybe, just maybe, they'll take a gander at what I've come up with.. They'll have plenty of time to create GTA V, seeing as how it seems the official numerical sequels tend to be dropping when a new platform is released. Until then, I've gotta go get some Cluckin' Bell with Little Jacob.
I'm going to outline some ideas that could be interesting if they were implemented in GTA V. We must also keep in mind that probably none of these ideas will ever make it in a GTA game, and that Rockstar North has a very focused design which tries to keep what is quite a complex game very accessible to a lot of people. Therefore, some of these ideas may be too involving to incorporate if they make the game overwhelmingly complex for too many people.
Dialogue trees in GTA V seem to be the next logical step for bringing the series to the next level. Though, doing so would mean even higher development costs
Grand Theft Auto games are some of the most immersive around, but there is something missing in the experience: choice. Freedom of choice is the philosophy behind open world gameplay like the kind pioneered by Grand Theft Auto, yet its storytelling is locked into a very set narrative. While the narratives are great, it almost seems anti-GTA to not give the player some power over the plot.
This can easily be remedied with the addition of a dialogue tree reminiscent of the RPG genre, with last year's Xbox 360 hit Mass Effect providing the model for how it should be designed. It should not be as deep as in Mass Effect since you can sometimes become lost in a sea of backstory, but should at least provide options during cutscenes that can change the outcome of the game.
Random Rival Family Hit
Do you remember the hit set up on Sonny Corleone in the 1972 classic The Godfather? If you do, then you have a pretty good idea of what I mean. The basic idea is simple. As you progress up the ranks of the organization you also become a more important figure. So it would be cool if sometimes other families would put a hit out on you that would be attempted while you weren't on a mission.
So let's say you're just cruising around whatever city in which GTA V takes place and all of a sudden a car swerves in front of you. You try to back up to get away and another crushes you from behind. Suddenly a van pulls up and two guys jump out and start firing away, blowing out the tires of your car and making it nearly impossible to get away without dueling it out. This would only happen once depending on your progression in the game and it would also only happen while you're not on a mission. It would have to feel completely out of nowhere to completely surprise you. This event would trigger an entire side story, rather than happen over and over. If it happened multiple times, it would kill the initial surprise and excitement of it.
Informants Among Your Friends
Grand Theft Auto IV really paved the way for giving your character a network of friends. While this may be in GTA IV for all I know (I haven't run into this yet), it would be great if while building your relationships with people you could become suspicious of their allegiances. If you become particularly worried about someone, you could call up your boss and request to have him kidnapped and interrogated.
If it turns out he's a rat, you could have him smoked. If not, then your relationship would go down big time and you would have to put in major work to repair it. The informants will be different for every player depending on how you develop your relationships and the choices you make with the dialogue tree. This way, it would be a dynamic experience for everyone and avoid the disappointment of knowing who the rats are because of some loud mouth on a message board.
Drop the rags to riches story and play as the son of a mob boss, like in The Godfather. The movie, not the game. God no; not the game.
I'm done with the rags to riches stories. They're fun and there's a logical progression, especially in gaming, to work your way up through a hierarchy, but I think the next GTA should work from a different angle. Rather than start from the streets, you should start from within the family as the son of a mob boss. It would certainly be a different kind of story, but there's also a lot of inherent drama in being the son of the don.
This is going to sound very similar to the Godfather, but imagine the conflicts with siblings and lower level "soldiers." Realize the potential drama in having meetings with your father about the "business," talking about potential rats, and offering suggestions and options using the branching dialogue trees. It could all make for just as interesting of an experience.
Let's Head to Colombia
But maybe we're tired of the Italians, Russians, and LA gangsters. Hell, what if we're even partially done with the United States. What if we take GTA overseas and set it in Colombia: the heartland of the drug trade. You would have to deal with corrupt government officials, other drug lords, and make runs to the United States to drop off shipments of cocaine.
There would certainly be plenty of new material to work with, not just from a narrative standpoint but from a gameplay one as well. Given the requirements of your job by comparison to those in the previous games, there could be a slew of dramatically new and interesting missions in the single player. It would make for a hell of a back drop.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
These are just some ideas that could be welcome and interesting additions to a series that continually raises the bar. The Houser brothers should be commended as luminaries in the art of game design, and maybe, just maybe, they'll take a gander at what I've come up with.. They'll have plenty of time to create GTA V, seeing as how it seems the official numerical sequels tend to be dropping when a new platform is released. Until then, I've gotta go get some Cluckin' Bell with Little Jacob.
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