GTA IV was dominated by the idea that as Niko completed missions and earned money any sense of his morality and any humanity he had was being erroded, so essentialy when the game was finished Niko was left as an empty shell of a human being who's only hopes of regaining his humanity were either dead or refused to talk to him. In short GTA IV is a masterpiece.

Will GTA V continue this exploration of humanity. I hope so.

I think you're looking into it too much.

Also, I think you may have gotten the bad ending, because that's not how GTA IV ended for me. Nico was still buddies with a bunch of people.

Niko. Not Nico.

GTA IV was boring as fuck.

It is the stark contrast between Niko feeling so bad about killing all those people, and me running around the city firing RPG's into crowds, that made the main story in GTA IV feel less than effective for me.

I sincerely hope they go for a lighter tone this time around.

GTA V should continue the dark, depressing tone. Saints Row goes crazy, GTA goes and looks at the human implications of the fucked up shit which occurs. This is how it should be.

You picked out one of the worst things about that game to call a masterpiece. Niko was a terrible character, and his whole "I want to be a good guy" mantra while shooting people in the face just made no sense. He was not a conflicted, tortured soul like they tried to make him out to be. He was a dick who murdered everyone for money yet bitched about doing it.

At least all the other GTA protagonists had clear reasons for being dicks.

@Jaytow said:

GTA IV is not a masterpiece.... It's fine, it's not great. Red dead redemption was twice the game GTA IV was.

This.

I agree GTA 4 was a masterpiece and I am super pumped for 5. I know it will be great because the writers at rockstar know what they are doing.

What epistemological or ontological concepts were explored in GTA IV?

@Jaytow said:

GTA IV is not a masterpiece.... It's fine, it's not great. Red dead redemption was twice the game GTA IV was.

It seemed to have a lot going for it, aye, but gameplay wasn't one of them.

I really hope so. The name of the protagonist - if true - sounds already very promising to me. Albert De Silva. Awesome.

It would appear not all of you are able to fully appreciate a study of the human condition.

GTA IV was a masterpiece I played through it three times..I usually play through a game only once. RDR was good(not great). The main character didn't have much personality and I didn't like the ending.

@Jaytow said:

GTA IV is not a masterpiece.... It's fine, it's not great. Red dead redemption was twice the game GTA IV was.

Pretty much this.

Okay guys, seriously, stop. Red Dead Redemption was lame.

What epistemological or ontological concepts were explored in GTA IV?

Okay guys, seriously, stop. Red Dead Redemption was lame.

@General_Mapache said:

It would appear not all of you are able to fully appreciate a study of the human condition.

You don't seem to understand the definition of "metaphysical". Riddle me this:

@tooPrime said:

What epistemological or ontological concepts were explored in GTA IV?

@MooseyMcMan said:

I think you're looking into it too much.

Also, I think you may have gotten the bad ending, because that's not how GTA IV ended for me. Nico was still buddies with a bunch of people.

Could've sworn both endings had an unfortunate death or two in them.

@Napalm said:

@MooseyMcMan said:

I think you're looking into it too much.

Also, I think you may have gotten the bad ending, because that's not how GTA IV ended for me. Niko was still buddies with a bunch of people.

Could've sworn both endings had an unfortunate death or two in them.

Yeah, but the dude made it sound like Niko had no friends left. Roman, Packie, Brucie, and Jacob were all still alive and bros with Niko in the ending I got (Packie was a little depressed though).

Essentially

John Marston clicked for me in a way that Niko didn't. I didn't want to be a bad guy in RDR, unlike every other game with a morality system that I've played. It just felt wrong.

I've been trying to decide for years if that was a success of John Marston as a character or if it was a fundamental flaw of the game's free-form nature. The problem of Niko being a pretty well-written tortured reluctant criminal juxtaposed with the occasional RPG rampage is something that needs to be fixed. Maybe we can have an open-world game WITHOUT the ability to murder everybody.

@Jaytow said:

GTA IV is not a masterpiece.... It's fine, it's not great. Red dead redemption was twice the game GTA IV was.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I did not enjoy GTA IV at all, but that was mostly my fault for playing it too late after it came out. I think this game was more of a product of its time than other games.

I'm still holding out for a genuinely well-written female protagonist. I think with the writing chops they have at Rockstar, they can pull it off. It would be interesting to see the "same story" in a way, through different eyes.

Well yeah if you go on silly killing sprees GTA IV's themes fall apart but if you kinda roleplay it a bit it's definitely there. The previous GTAs were all very lighthearted, pulpy references to iconic crime archetypes from Hollywood. Niko had some actual depth to him. I've never been that much into Rockstar games but IV totally sold me on their tone. They have really come into their own with GTA IV and RDR; seems like they now have the confidence to write deeper, actual characters instead of just cartoonesque parody. Even someone like Brucie had some introspective moments as to why he's so fucked up. The reason there's an inherent duality between Niko's hopes of changing and his actions is because that's the point. He wanted to change but he couldn't, and the "American Dream" only amplified his situation instead of offering a fresh start. Say what you will about how much fun you had with the game, I for one love it, but they truly did step it up in the story department.

So yeah, please keep V at least as pseudo-intellectual as IV. They've done the violent chaos shtick to death already and I welcome changes towards deeper narratives instead of just a new setting and different guns and cars.

BUT YOU GUYS JETPA - Shut up.

Edit:

Also looking forward to some actual discussion instead of these clever single lines responses; "No you're wrong it sucked" without any reasoning or arguments behind it. What's the point of a message board then.

Anyway, judging by Rockstar's latest games they will definitely piss off the haters again. Can't wait.

Yeah it was pretty deep the part where Niko said "YOU BITCHING BITCH ILL FUCKING KILL YOU FUCKING BITCH FUCK BITCH FUCK" had me thinking about Jung's duality of man. Also all the jokes about 69's and dicks and stuff were pretty deep too.

@BBQBram Yup all criticism is just haters being haters lol.

@iAmJohn: Me and you should settle this outside by the stables. (spits in bucket)

@General_Mapache said:

GTA IV was dominated by the idea that as Niko completed missions and earned money any sense of his morality and any humanity he had was being erroded, so esientaly when the game was finished Niko was left as an empty shell of a human being who's only hopes of regaining his humanity were either dead or refused to talk to him. In short GTA IV is a masterpiece.

Will GTA V continue this exploration of humanity. I hope so.

I'm a big GTA fan, but I think you're way offbase reading anything into the idea of "morality" in GTA. I think you're also reading depth in a game that has little story beyond paying homage to hit crime movies.

Nico's morality, as GTA is a videogame, is hard to chart in any way shape or form. Largely, because his morality has too much to do with the way the player plays the game. Nico has no dark night of the soul, or conflict about anything he does. He's, more amoral than anything else. And would have to be for the game to function. My Nico had literally hundreds of deaths on his hands by the end fo the game and more were implied before I ever took control.

Long story short, he starts out a scumbag and winds up a scumbag. That's not masterpiece storytelling. It's a videogame.

holy shit op, you're a pretentious cock.

Have you forgotten about the beeg Amereecan teetees!? Now THAT is worthy of philosophical debate.

I love GTAIV, but Niko was the same hypocrite mass murderer he was from the beginning.

@Three0neFive: Haha no good sir I believe it is you who does not "Get" this videogame about a murderous sociopath and dick jokes, now good day.

GTA 4 was great at the time, but it hasn't held up well. Saints Row 3 is far better. The gameplay doesn't hold up at all.

@BBQBram: Well put.

@artgarcrunkle said:

Yeah it was pretty deep the part where Niko said "YOU BITCHING BITCH ILL FUCKING KILL YOU FUCKING BITCH FUCK BITCH FUCK" had me thinking about Jung's duality of man. Also all the jokes about 69's and dicks and stuff were pretty deep too.

@BBQBram Yup all criticism is just haters being haters lol.

It's cool man, when I said Rockstar would piss off the haters again, I didn't mean all the haters, just the ones that don't like the shift into a more "serious" tone. I like the serious tone so obviously that would be a desired situation for me. However, I didn't say that would mean I'm right and they're wrong, I make no claim to some objective truth. And I agree there is still a huge contrast between the themes and the actual gameplay, but at least they're brave enough to try and do something more with it because, from a literal perspective video games are still entirely in it's infancy. Not that there's anything wrong with pure games like, say, platformers or fighters, I'm just really interested in the idea of interactive storytelling and unfortunately, barely any developers dare to step outside of the norm of pulpy genre fiction (admittedly that's still how I would describe Rockstar) and the interaction is action oriented ninety percent of the time. So hey, not trying to say everyone's wrong, just stating my opinion and calling out for people to engage in a discussion instead of just having a yelling match. That's a lot more stimulating and productive don't you think?

Also, satire about low-brow people in low-brow situations can't have literary merit? What?

You can also boil this thread down to this; yo guys, IV had a bigger focus on story and went a bit more serious with it? Like/dislike? Nothing wrong with opinions.

@BBQBram: That's cool.

I just don't think the story was strong enough to carry the kind of shitty mechanics and don't think the gameplay was fun enough to carry a dour story about a sociopath and his sleazy cousin. I dunno, maybe I just should have hung out with Brucie more.

@artgarcrunkle: Well, speaking for myself, it's not just the shooting and driving that carry me through the long story, it's mostly the immersion I get from such a huge detailed setting and the consistent world they created with all the media. Keeping all the zany satire mostly in the media was a smart choice I think, because life can feel like that these days. Still, Liberty City is pretty fucking surreal.

@BBQBram: Same. The two things Rockstar always seems to nail is making immersive worlds and impossible to like antagonists who you can't wait to ice. I'm even a little conflicted about the mechanics because the random bullshit that can make accomplishing objectives super painful can make dicking between missions pretty fun. Stuff like careening into a hot dog cart and being blown up is pretty great so long as it doesn't mean you have replay a tedious mission. I almost never finished the game because of the bad luck I had with the final mission, forcing me to replay that long boring car chase over and over.

@S0ndor said:

It is the stark contrast between Niko feeling so bad about killing all those people, and me running around the city firing RPG's into crowds, that made the main story in GTA IV feel less than effective for me.

I sincerely hope they go for a lighter tone this time around.

Just the number of times within the story that you would have to betray and kill numerous people, yet when it happened to Niko he complained about people betraying him. I get that was part of the point of the story but I mean come on, Niko Betrayed and killed far more people than the man he was after.

@artgarcrunkle said:

@BBQBram: Same. The two things Rockstar always seems to nail is making immersive worlds and impossible to like antagonists who you can't wait to ice. I'm even a little conflicted about the mechanics because the random bullshit that can make accomplishing objectives super painful can make dicking between missions pretty fun. Stuff like careening into a hot dog cart and being blown up is pretty great so long as it doesn't mean you have replay a tedious mission. I almost never finished the game because of the bad luck I had with the final mission, forcing me to replay that long boring car chase over and over.

The checkpoint system in Grand Theft Auto needs to be fixed. I find it moronic how if I fail a mission, I cannot just start the mission over with the same health, armor, weapons, and ammo that I started it with. Instead I have to go drive around the city, repurchase everything, and then restart the mission, or load my last save and drive to the mission start which is a lot faster and less tedious. Even more problematic were car chase sequences, the vehicles controlled decently but they had a significant amount of weight to them, and driving as fast as target vehicles, and maneuvering like they could wasn't possible in most cases without crash, causing one to fail the mission. I remember one of the missions with Florian where I had to drive him to an island for Fun Day, and the first segment of the mission was just driving a boat without anything else going on, I failed the mission later down the road and then had to do the entire mission over, why not checkpoint me throughout the mission so I do not have to repeat thirty-plus minutes of gameplay, half of which is driving tediously somewhere before any action starts? So obnoxious.

@iAmJohn said:

Okay guys, seriously, stop. Red Dead Redemption was lame.

/agree

I found both GTA IV and RDR to both be extremely boring.

I thought GTA IV's story was awful. I've long thought this is because I'm British and that game was so America-focused.

@DxBecks said:

@artgarcrunkle said:

@BBQBram: Same. The two things Rockstar always seems to nail is making immersive worlds and impossible to like antagonists who you can't wait to ice. I'm even a little conflicted about the mechanics because the random bullshit that can make accomplishing objectives super painful can make dicking between missions pretty fun. Stuff like careening into a hot dog cart and being blown up is pretty great so long as it doesn't mean you have replay a tedious mission. I almost never finished the game because of the bad luck I had with the final mission, forcing me to replay that long boring car chase over and over.

The checkpoint system in Grand Theft Auto needs to be fixed. I find it moronic how if I fail a mission, I cannot just start the mission over with the same health, armor, weapons, and ammo that I started it with. Instead I have to go drive around the city, repurchase everything, and then restart the mission, or load my last save and drive to the mission start which is a lot faster and less tedious. Even more problematic were car chase sequences, the vehicles controlled decently but they had a significant amount of weight to them, and driving as fast as target vehicles, and maneuvering like they could wasn't possible in most cases without crash, causing one to fail the mission. I remember one of the missions with Florian where I had to drive him to an island for Fun Day, and the first segment of the mission was just driving a boat without anything else going on, I failed the mission later down the road and then had to do the entire mission over, why not checkpoint me throughout the mission so I do not have to repeat thirty-plus minutes of gameplay, half of which is driving tediously somewhere before any action starts? So obnoxious.

Yeah. They added mid-mission checkpoints in the DLC expansions but they still didn't reset your armor and inventory. It's kinda been the running theme that when you die during free roam there is an implied continuity because you wake up in a hospital or jail and the cops have taken your guns etc. Now that's a cool premise but it totally disconnects during missions because okay, you nearly died, that happened, and then time repeated itself because you're now having the exact same conversations and situations occur as before. It doesn't need to be there in the story mission. I'm optimistic though, because Red Dead nailed this. You died in the wilderness, whoops, back to last (quick)save - in GTA this would still be handled as a continuous thing, time passes and you respawn at hospital; fitting for both games. BUT the difference being, in RDR, once on a mission you don't die, you fail and retry from a mid-mission checkpoint with your inventory intact. This makes way more sense to me, because while continuity thing works in GTA, in missions you are straight up reliving a moment and it should just acknowledge that it's a game for sake of efficiency. Right?

TL;DR: Checkpoints! They're welcome!

@tooPrime said:

What epistemological or ontological concepts were explored in GTA IV?

Bowling.

@BBQBram: Deja Vu. Or, OR. Time travel. Mind = blown.

@DxBecks said:

@artgarcrunkle said:

@BBQBram: Same. The two things Rockstar always seems to nail is making immersive worlds and impossible to like antagonists who you can't wait to ice. I'm even a little conflicted about the mechanics because the random bullshit that can make accomplishing objectives super painful can make dicking between missions pretty fun. Stuff like careening into a hot dog cart and being blown up is pretty great so long as it doesn't mean you have replay a tedious mission. I almost never finished the game because of the bad luck I had with the final mission, forcing me to replay that long boring car chase over and over.

The checkpoint system in Grand Theft Auto needs to be fixed. I find it moronic how if I fail a mission, I cannot just start the mission over with the same health, armor, weapons, and ammo that I started it with. Instead I have to go drive around the city, repurchase everything, and then restart the mission, or load my last save and drive to the mission start which is a lot faster and less tedious. Even more problematic were car chase sequences, the vehicles controlled decently but they had a significant amount of weight to them, and driving as fast as target vehicles, and maneuvering like they could wasn't possible in most cases without crash, causing one to fail the mission. I remember one of the missions with Florian where I had to drive him to an island for Fun Day, and the first segment of the mission was just driving a boat without anything else going on, I failed the mission later down the road and then had to do the entire mission over, why not checkpoint me throughout the mission so I do not have to repeat thirty-plus minutes of gameplay, half of which is driving tediously somewhere before any action starts? So obnoxious.

I'm always curious about how a company who has been making pretty decent games for over a decade can make bad design decisions like that.

@Chavtheworld said:

GTA IV was boring as fuck.

What?

@S0ndor said:

I sincerely hope they go for a lighter tone this time around.

No.

@DeeGee said:

Niko was a terrible character

Just...no.

@mandude said:

It seemed to have a lot going for it, aye, but gameplay wasn't one of them.

Huh?

Who are you people? I'd try to figure out where you are coming from but...how to care?

@plaintomato: It's even harder for us to care, since you gave absolutely no explanation at all, LOL! Oops! ROFLMAO, thanks for your input, though. Much apprecieee

I played through every other GTA game multiple times, I had to force myself to finish IV. I'm sure I'm not the only one.