I agree with the third point. For the rest you have the Saints Row series.

GTA has a found a mature voice and it's good. The humor is subtler now, instead of being present and out of place in all the dialogue and cutscenes, they put it in the radio, the billboards, the TV, all those general pop culture parodies.

@Humanity: God forbid the driving physics be realistic...

I can't be alone in loving the driving of GTA IV. That was one of the few things I legitimately, entirely enjoyed about that game.

I really don't get the people who hate the driving in GTA4. I was awful at it when I first started, but half way through that game I was swerving in and out of traffic like a boss. The only bad part was with driving motorbikes, which you got knocked off too easily, but they fixed that with Lost and Damned.

@kingzetta said:

@ds8k said:

@Humanity: God forbid the driving physics be realistic...

I don't know my real life car does not handle as shitty as the cars did in that game. It was not realistic it was just bad.

This also the fact that up until GTAIV the series has been fun and entertaining - since when do people associate realistic with Grand Theft Auto? It doesn't have to be wacky like Saints Row, just fun. Vice City had a great story and you come out on top in the end. How great was that story in IV? Arguably this was also a huge problem for me in San Andreas but when do you stop doing missions for other people and finally start working towards your own goals? When I beat GTAIV I literally felt like for the last 30 hours or so I had accomplished almost nothing. It was even worse than CJ's idiotic "hey man were rich but gotta keep reppin' the streets don't be a busta Grove Street!!" ending.

I haven't played any of the other GTA games, but I liked IV's driving.

How about making it so that the gameplay and controls aren't complete and utter shit?

I agree that IV lost the edge and fun found in San Andreas. I hope Rockstar returns to their classic formula.

I think Im the only person that didnt mind driving in GTA IV. 

I thought GTA IV was an incredible game. I had fun playing it, but it wasn't just a game. It made me feel, and have to make hard decisions. And when a game makes me have an emotional connection with the characters and their story and have me take a moment to really think about my next action, that is what makes a game memorable to me. I hope that GTA V can keep the same balance of humor and seriousness that GTA IV had, the immensely fun multiplayer, and just about everything that made GTA IV great, with of course all of the awesome new additions I'm sure R* will include. :)

I liked the multiplayer in GTA 4. I've never been as amazing at any games multiplayer as I was at that. My k/d was something stupid like 10:1

I hope they stay as far away from Saints Row driving mechanics as possible. GTA IV Driving was perfect when you got used to it. I'm not drunk or stupid.. I just don't like taking any fucking corner at full speed and managing to oversteer. Stupid twitchy SR driving can go feck itself

yo son hate all you want and be the coolest GTA SA loving 13 year old out there but GTA4 was the best one yet.

I don't really care about the tone of the story so much, but i definitely agree with the "fun" aspect of your argument in terms of the sandbox. It should be fun to get around, and you should have fun doing it. I wasn't a fan of the driving physics in IV, but on top of that, i want some of the more fun ways to get around, ie. Planes, jetpacks, and tanks!!!

Also, Fuck having to push a button to jog.

And bring back good radio stations.

Or, y'know, just play Saints Row 3. It's exactly what you want. I'd rather the Rockstar guys work on something they are passionate about doing, which for the moment is going into uncharted territory by trying to make some well-made crime epics in video games.

@Cloudenvy said:

I think the "bring back the crazy" is in general kind of a bad point now that we have Saint's Row for that.

I'd personally rather have GTA stay serious now so we can have both types of games. : )

Also, claiming people that do not agree with your opinion are drunk or flat out stupid is a sure way to make people disregard your entire opinion.

This exactly.

@Mmmslash said:

I can't be alone in loving the driving of GTA IV. That was one of the few things I legitimately, entirely enjoyed about that game.

While it was swimmy, I also really liked just cruising around the world. It helps that the actual worlds Rockstar builds are incredible. I'd drive a boat around the world and still be head of heels happy.

@Master_Prophet:

So if GTA 5 doesn't bring back all of those points specifically, like 'Don't be like GTA 4', then the game will suck? It will be a foregone conclusion that, if those exact points are not address, there is no hope for GTA 5? Huh.

Well, for the 'Don't be like GTA 4' point. Why would they not make it like GTA 4? You know what else was like GTA 4 in tone? Red Dead Redemption. Like GTA 4, RDR sold an absolute shit-ton of copies. Why in the world would Rockstar want to change from this winning formula? Further, Rockstar has become, basically, a game developer God in terms of story telling. They are one of the most highly regarded story telling developers out there. WHY would they ever want to do anything that would break from all that good will?

...I have a feeling you're not going to respond to me. Prove me wrong dude!!!

Where the did all this GTAIV hate come from? I was under the assumption that everyone loved it. Did Saints Row 2 come out and everyone was like "I just want to do stupid stuff in an open world. GTAIV makes me care too much about the story." I have played all of them and I am REALLY not sure that GTAIV being so much more serious is correct. Realistic, yes, but tons of dumb stuff still goes on. "PUT MY DOG IN YOUR MOUTH".

Do any of you people fucking realize that EVERY NUMBER IN SAN ANDREAS WAS A 69?

@MattyFTM: I totally agree with all the points you made except I think the driving was stellar in GTA IV. I don't know why, but the driving in that game was, for me, an absolute delight.

@gorkamorkaorka said:

Where the did all this GTAIV hate come from? I was under the assumption that everyone loved it. Did Saints Row 2 come out and everyone was like "I just want to do stupid stuff in an open world. GTAIV makes me care too much about the story." I have played all of them and I am REALLY not sure that GTAIV being so much more serious is correct. Realistic, yes, but tons of dumb stuff still goes on. "PUT MY DOG IN YOUR MOUTH".

Do any of you people fucking realize that EVERY NUMBER IN SAN ANDREAS WAS A 69?

By the time San Andreas rolled around I was done with that type of game. I was so happy when they changed tones for GTA IV. I don't get the hate for it. It seems like some people just hate change and want the same general game over and over and over and over and over again.

Also I loved the multiplayer in GTA IV. Getting a group of friends on and just rolling around the city in helicopters shooting rockets at each other was great. Worked great as an open online sandbox type thing to fuck around in. Didn't even bother with the competitive side of things because there are few games that can actually make me bother with that crap.

I played Saints Row 2 and I find the arcade driving mechanics lame and unchallenging. GTAIV's driving mechaincs was much more realistic and challenging.

However one thing I think everyone has missed in the GTAV trailer is at the 1:05 mark is the convertible being chased by the cops turns a corner whilst clipping a cars left hand side rear end and still drives on. Could mean a possible return to arcade style as you couldn't really get away with hitting anything mid corner in GTAIV.

I'm one of those who wonder where the GTA4 hate came from as well. San Andreas to me was pretty serious cept for a few comic relief character and a few "wait what" weidos - which is what GTA4 happens to have. The driving model was realistic and easy, but I can understand that people who have no idea at all how to drive or are looking for arcade like controls and movement disliked it.
 
5: Bring back hilarity. If it fits the story and the world, it fits the story and the world. Ballad of Gay Tony was fun right? Hurr, penises and gay people.
4: Bring back rampages etc. I agree with, because fuck pigeons and seagulls. Add more game to the game
3. They focused a lot on the multiplayer aspect? And it was a joke? Spend more than two minutes in it? Did you even enter a game of it at all? Does it have to be competitive action friendly and pro-mode?
2: You're driving on a thin sheet of ice because the car has bad controls and is a veritable land barge. The brakes are also quite shit because in LC a car only needs to pass the emissions test. I finished all the races and I did them for fun. Man up.
1: Go play Saints Row 3 you little scamp. Leave the GTA series to us.

@Cloudenvy said:

I think the "bring back the crazy" is in general kind of a bad point now that we have Saint's Row for that.

I'd personally rather have GTA stay serious now so we can have both types of games. : )

Also, claiming people that do not agree with your opinion are drunk or flat out stupid is a sure way to make people disregard your entire opinion.

I'd be with you on this one except that the gameplay doesn't really allow for that, that is why it feels so weird, unnatural to have a character like Niko, wanting to do right and having to deal with real problems when he is running people over and having massive shootouts on the streets. To get that good serious feel they need to go the LA Noire route where you can't actually do that stuff.

Grand Theft Auto can't go back to being crazy and funny. If they try that now it'll fall flat next to Saints Row.

@Hitchenson said:

I hope it's like GTA IV, so we're at a pass. If I want crazy, I'll play Saints Row. It just so happens I'd rather a GTA IV type game than crazy.

I'm right there with you

I want my GTA to be story driven and based in reality. Basically I want to feel like I'm in the movie Heat.

One of the few things I didn't like in GTA 4 was the disk jockeys, they seemed way out of place.

i absolutely hope they dont try and bring back all the stupid "wacky" hijinks. GTA4 was amazing. it felt right.

now that theres saints row, GTA can stay in its more mature serious tone, while allowing saints row to be the wacky goofy one. its a good seperation and is good for both franchises because it puts a clear separation between them.

the ballad of gay tony tried to do the wacky goofy stuff again and it was terrible. the lost and the damned was WAY better.

basically, if you want the wacky goofyness, go get saints row. let me have my serious open world crime game.

They can do whatever they want, if they continue down the halfway serious road, fine with me. I'll play Saints Row instead.

The only thing they could do to get me back is to go all the way with the story and tone down the rest of the filler. Like Mafia 2.

In terms of tone, GTA can basically do whatever the hell it wants in this genre and everybody else will just have to get out of the way if they want to survive.  Saint's Row only works because GTA shifted further along the dumb/serious spectrum and made room for it.

Don't make me repeat a mission unless I die. Seriously, that's my biggest gripe with GTA games (and that includes Red Dead as well), Ive given up on GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption because I reached a point where it was either you had to protect a badly scripted NPC, or you had to chase someone, or tail a car or some other activity which you could easily fail due to the open world nature of the game.

I thought GTAIV's driving was perfect, to me it was one of the most enjoyable handling physics out of any non-racing game. Maybe they were a bit loose but they were far from abysmal. Saint's Row on the other hand, I only played SR2 on PC but I don't think I've ever played a game that made me absolutely hate any moment I have to use a vehicle more than SR2 did. Most of the time I would just use an infinite sprint cheat and just run everywhere, or just take taxis.

And I guess they could make GTAV a bit less serious, but GTAIV didn't seem all that serious to me. Sure, it was far more serious than SA was, but to me SA was the downpoint of the series in a lot of things. Since they focused on make everything super wacky and over-the-top, the story ended up being a complete mess with mostly annoying and uninteresting characters. CJ was just... ugh...

Now that Saints Row 2 and 3 happened, I want GTA V to be about a million times more serious than IV was.

GTA IV deserved all the praise it got.  
 
I want Rockstar's stellar writing and open-world tech put to good use, I can play crazy action games whenever I want, but Rockstar can do so much more with what they have than just wacky action. 

I played GTA 4 for like 2 whole hours so I think I know what I am talking about, here. I did not like the driving. Total bs arcadey as it was, I loved the driving/racing in Vice-city(I played that one about 60 or so hours total so yes I know it just a little better) But the driving seemed counter intuitive (great phrase) in IV, but.. perhaps I would get used to it? And I just plain lost interest. I kind of liked the hotdog stands.

Having said that I will probably buy V outright, just probably will.

after SR3 and everything they brought... What can GTA do to out-cray cray that?

I think they need to keep their gritty, realistic tone. I think that tone works, for when they bring in some of the more, colorful(?) characters, it provides a pretty good contrast.

they also need cars that all dont all of a sudden spawn once your driving the same car..so many times i have driven around and you just see the same car parked that your driving around in

@Liquidus said:

@DeeGee said:

There was humour in GTA IV? I don't even recall the odd joke. It was just fucking mind numbingly serious from begining to end.

And hey guys, guess what, you can have a less serious GTA without it being like Saints Row. Saints Row is all out crazy, way more then San Andreas was.

Think about Vice City. There is nothing over the top crazy about that game, it's a story about a psycopathic mobster rising to the top. But it was fun in a way that GTA IV just never managed.

I agree with this person.

I don't know if you guys remember this guy, Brucie, but he was pretty much entirely a joke. Granted, he wasn't a major player in the game, but he was definitely put in for comic relief.

@oobs: Yeah, that is definitely noticeable. It happened in all the GTAs since III and at least the first Saints Row as well. It's to do with saving memory and resources, but it definitely breaks immersion, and destroys the feeling of being cool when you jack a really awesome rare car only to discover that everyone and their mom has one.

@Scrawnto said:

@Liquidus said:

@DeeGee said:

There was humour in GTA IV? I don't even recall the odd joke. It was just fucking mind numbingly serious from begining to end.

And hey guys, guess what, you can have a less serious GTA without it being like Saints Row. Saints Row is all out crazy, way more then San Andreas was.

Think about Vice City. There is nothing over the top crazy about that game, it's a story about a psycopathic mobster rising to the top. But it was fun in a way that GTA IV just never managed.

I agree with this person.

I don't know if you guys remember this guy, Brucie, but he was pretty much entirely a joke. Granted, he wasn't a major player in the game, but he was definitely put in for comic relief.

Yeah, Brucie was pretty much the only really funny thing in GTAIV for me. And yes, he was hilarious(the whole bullshark testosterone joke) but he still wasn't able to lift the heavy seriousness that game was going for.

Since when do people not like the seriousness in GTA4? Jesus, you people can't be happy.

People have already said this time and time again but, I think going back to san andreas esque crazyness is a bad move imo. With Saints Row filling that role it would put GTA in a weird position where it doesn't satisfy any audience fully. I'm really not sure of what they could do to make me more interesting, maybe a female protagonist or something of that nature. Anyway I'll probably play it regardless of what it ends up being.

@birdflu777: I'm certainly one of these people. I like a mix of fun story and silliness (Saint's Row 3 was too much). The departure from the tone of the III, Vice City and San Andreas style was a big disappointment for me. I didn't play much of GTA IV because while it looked pretty - there wasn't really much to keep me entertained.

Also, the driving. If I want to drive a realistic car, I'll play a driving simulator. San Andreas had it right here, too.

I think that the people most upset about GTA IV are the people who really enjoyed the earlier GTA games, since IV was such a departure.

@MAGZine said:

@birdflu777: I'm certainly one of these people. I like a mix of fun story and silliness (Saint's Row 3 was too much). The departure from the tone of the III, Vice City and San Andreas style was a big disappointment for me. I didn't play much of GTA IV because while it looked pretty - there wasn't really much to keep me entertained.

Also, the driving. If I want to drive a realistic car, I'll play a driving simulator. San Andreas had it right here, too.

I think that the people most upset about GTA IV are the people who really enjoyed the earlier GTA games, since IV was such a departure.

I've been a fan since GTA2, and I get what you're saying, but at the same time I think the games have grown up with their audience.

I liked both pre-IV and IV, but I have to say I hope they don't do a pre-IV tone again- Saint's Row already did that and better, and I'd rather they take IV and run with it.

Although judging by the trailer and Rockstar's recent history with their games, I don't think they'd take a goofy tone to it. They seem to have matured beyond that.

That said, I want some good old-fashioned car surfing.

@Cloudenvy said:

I think the "bring back the crazy" is in general kind of a bad point now that we have Saint's Row for that.

I'd personally rather have GTA stay serious now so we can have both types of games. : )

Also, claiming people that do not agree with your opinion are drunk or flat out stupid is a sure way to make people disregard your entire opinion.

yeah this

@MAGZine: It wasn't a departure for GTA3 or VC, they have more or less a similar tone as GTAIV, only San Andreas had that wacky tone, yet everyone for some reason goes off thinking that every GTA game was like SA.

I think a lot of the love for GTA is going out the window with more enjoyable franchises out there that give you nearly the same thrill. I remember when GTA first released, it was a huge hit because it was one of the only decent open-world - mainstream accessible - platforms out there. Now we have Assassin's Creed, Saint's Row, and tons of other open-world sandboxes that kind of make GTA look more like a word-of-mouth and tried and true franchise than it does the golden-performer it use to be.

I don't know, but I can just see GTA-V being a good game and then disappearing much like GTA-IV did for most fans.

@ccampb89 said:

I think a lot of the love for GTA is going out the window with more enjoyable franchises out there that give you nearly the same thrill. I remember when GTA first released, it was a huge hit because it was one of the only decent open-world - mainstream accessible - platforms out there. Now we have Assassin's Creed, Saint's Row, and tons of other open-world sandboxes that kind of make GTA look more like a word-of-mouth and tried and true franchise than it does the golden-performer it use to be.

I don't know, but I can just see GTA-V being a good game and then disappearing much like GTA-IV did for most fans.

But...GTA IV is by far the best selling and best received game in the series. Despite coming out back in 2008, it sold over 2 million copies last year alone.

Hell, I was looking at the Xbox LIVE charts for last month (or possibly for January, I can't remember) and GTA IV was still in the top 10. More people were playing GTA IV than Saints Row 3. I'll grant you that the GTA audience might be different these days when compared to what it was in the PS2 era, but it certainly hasn't diminished. Quite the contrary.

@MAGZine said:

Also, the driving. If I want to drive a realistic car, I'll play a driving simulator. San Andreas had it right here, too.

This makes me sad. I thought IV's driving was absolutely fantastic.

This makes me sad. I thought IV's driving was absolutely fantastic.

@Fjordson: Ah, mistake then.