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Has Grand Theft Auto lost its edge?

Posted by Adam Hartley on Fri 21 Nov 2008

Surely everyone's a bit sick of hiring hookers and stealing cars by now? No?

Many of us have spent a good slice of the last seven months caning Rockstar’s magnum opus, Grand Theft Auto IV. But, eleven years on from the release of the first title and following this week’s news that GTA: Chinatown Wars on DS is going to be based on most of IV’s maps, T3 wondered whether or not the series might be losing its edge. Is GTA becoming (*whisper it*) slightly predictable?

 

Guy Cocker, features editor on Gamespot.co.uk, vehemently disagrees, telling T3: “There have been some superb titles from British studios in 2008 – LittleBigPlanet, Burnout Paradise, Geometry Wars 2 - but I still think that GTA IV is the best game I've played this year. In terms of artistic and technical quality, GTA IV will be seen as the great achievement in 2008 in videogames.”

 

Mildly less enthusiastic was NGamer editor Nick Ellis, who thought GTA IV was, at times, predictable and not really that edgy. “Of course, it was always going to be about shooting up rivals and driving very fast around a large city… There was nothing overtly controversial in the main game, and running over pedestrians rapidly gets boring, especially when you’re busted for the umpteenth time.” Though reassuringly (for DS fans) Ellis adds, “from what we’ve seen of Chinatown Wars, it appears to be technically outstanding and visually excellent… there does seem to be plenty of variety on offer.”

 

SPOnG.com’s editor Tim Smith thinks that Rockstar’s problem was one of over-promising, noting that: “Take-Two’s hype machine, fuelled brilliantly with hot air from the mainstream media [and] the collusion of the gaming press, lead to expectations far outstretching the reality.” Though he adds, sagely, that for every griping forumite, “there are several hundred thousand more playing quite happily and looking forward to the next instalments.”

 

CVG.com's PlayStation channel editor, Mike Jackson is also quick to remind us that GTA IV was “one of the biggest-earning entertainment properties of the last year… and the new DLC is certainly big news for fans of the series early next year."

 

But…but…but…what of originality? Could the Housers be accused of treading the same old ground?

 

“Just because the Housers have indeed struck upon a narrative formula that works doesn't necessarily indicate a bad thing. James Bond has done it; Harry Potter has done it; Conan Doyle made an entire career out of it,” says Smith. “Frankly, it's not as if the rest of the industry is exactly bursting with original ideas that cast GTA into a miserable shade of dull.”

 

“'Losing its edge' is too harsh,” reckons game designer, Daniel Boutros. “Losing its stand-out qualities and lead in innovating design, possibly. When GTA 3 came out it was bleeding edge design by a very long shot indeed. Everyone was playing catch up for years and years after that…but now everyone's caught up. And sadly (or not, as most who've played it have not been disappointed), GTA 4 hasn't evolved game design as hugely as GTA 3 did.”

Boutros adds: “If GTA 4 executed narrative AI; arguably the next major industry design innovation to come, that would've been the design leap proportional to that which GTA 3 achieved with the open-world structure that pretty much changed the entire business, much like Streetfighter 2 did way, way back in the day.”

 

Where next for GTA?

 

This week’s announcement of a new lead character and new multiplayer gameplay elements in Rockstar’s first downloadable episode for GTA IV (out Feb) has gamers wondering where GTA could possibly go next.

 

“In all likelihood, they’ll mimic the Vice City to San Andreas leap of last-generation,” thinks PSM3 editor Dan Dawkins, “since PS3 offers huge scope to ‘reinvent’ both locations.”

 

Though Dawkins would rather see Rockstar take the game to London, “with out-of-city countryside sections where you speed through country lanes in a mini metro poking an Uzi out of the driver’s seat…make a decent post-modern Guy Ritchie style gangster game, without the hammy east-end feel of Sony’s OK’ish, but flawed, Getaway games.”

 

Now you’re talking! Clearly on a roll, Dawkins adds: “Or flip the concept on its head, and play a policeman or law keeper trying to do the right thing in a city terrorised by equally-troubled ‘gangsters’. Think ‘The Wire’ – make it an even handed, both-sides, piece, or go ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ – ageing righteous hard nut cleans up the filth, in times where he’s an anachronistic throwback.”

 

Also on a Brit tip, NGamer’s Nick Ellis wants the next GTA set in a Victorian-era London and thinks the game should abandon “all that laboured playing pool/getting drunk/going bowling with your mates stuff… It would be nice to see the series move away from the States for its next instalment – Tokyo or London, perhaps.”

 

For many, GTA IV’s biggest success was it’s relatively ‘grey’ morality. Here was a game designed to make you feel regret about your actions.

 

“Maturity was GTA IV’s greatest surprise, and the storytelling needs to continue on this tangent,” says Dawkins, “rather than focus on daft, superfluous distractions, which Saint’s Row 2 takes to its illogical extreme.”

 

GTA IV has clearly become, in typically British fashion, a victim of its own success. In the immortal words of UK: Resistance’s Gary Cutlack: “Enthusiasm is another great British no-no… The only way to tell we like something is if we're not slagging it off on the Internet 30 seconds after seeing it.”

 

Okay, hands up, who’s slagged GTA IV off on the internet?

Related links:

• GTA strip club stays open
• 25 games to buy before Christmas