The radical jump in tone from San Andreas to GTA IV (Or lack thereof)

[KissofKetchup]

I was reading the article about how THQ isn't worried by GTA V's trailer and in the article it talks about GTA's radical shift in tone from San Andreas to IV. And that made me think that the shift in tone wasn't all that radical as everyone really made it out to be in my opinion. The dark humor was still there, the scathing social commentary intact, and the deep storyline filled with compelling characters was kept. The only radical difference in tone was in the visual department with the darker, gritty graphics.

Anyway that's just my opinion anyway.

 

[brumley53]

I think the main change was the main character. CJ had lived his whole life with gang violence and was just pushed back into it because of his history. Niko on the other hand moved to a whole new country to start a new life and leave his old life behind but ended up joining in with gangs because he didn't want to get a normal job. Seemed like his only problem was that he was an impatient douche. I know there was a thing about immigrants being treated badly in GTA4 and that could explain why but it didn't seem consistent enough.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I think the main change was the main character. CJ had lived his whole life with gang violence and was just pushed back into it because of his history. Niko on the other hand moved to a whole new country to start a new life and leave his old life behind but ended up joining in with gangs because he didn't want to get a normal job. Seemed like his only problem was that he was an impatient douche. I know there was a thing about immigrants being treated badly in GTA4 and that could explain why but it didn't seem consistent enough.

Thats a .. strange way of seeing it, Niko was pushed into crime because of a sense to help his cousin, by trying to save his cousins life he unknowingly delved into a criminal underworld. Not to mention one of the main points of the game is that Niko really doesnt know how to do anything else, he didnt recieve a proper education and he spent a lot of his life fighting in a war, not too much opportunity for a guy like him. Once he gets started on the path of a criminal he repeatedly tries to get out, but he couldnt mainly due to other criminals threatening his life, or the lives of his loved ones.

 

[m72_ar]

I find GTA IV to be much worse than San Andreas.

I don't remember half the funny lines from IV while I remember a lot from San Andreas.
The shift in tone killed GTA IV for me, they crammed to much serious to GTA IV

 

[Amnestic]

I think the main change was the main character. CJ had lived his whole life with gang violence and was just pushed back into it because of his history. Niko on the other hand moved to a whole new country to start a new life and leave his old life behind but ended up joining in with gangs because he didn't want to get a normal job. Seemed like his only problem was that he was an impatient douche. I know there was a thing about immigrants being treated badly in GTA4 and that could explain why but it didn't seem consistent enough.

Thats a .. strange way of seeing it, Niko was pushed into crime because of a sense to help his cousin, by trying to save his cousins life he unknowingly delved into a criminal underworld. Not to mention one of the main points of the game is that Niko really doesnt know how to do anything else, he didnt recieve a proper education and he spent a lot of his life fighting in a war, not too much opportunity for a guy like him. Once he gets started on the path of a criminal he repeatedly tries to get out, but he couldnt mainly due to other criminals threatening his life, or the lives of his loved ones.

I think a major problem is that Niko's character doesn't really gel with his actions as dictated by player input.

You're Niko Bellic. You escaped your old country to come to America and hopefully put a life of crime and death behind you, take up some real, honest work and carve out a small but respectable (and perhaps more importantly, legal) part of Liberty City for yourself. You find yourself on a pavement and need to get from point A to point B.

Does the player:
A) Flag down a taxi (or call one up).
B) Walk to the nearest train station and catch a train, before walking the rest of the way.
C) Run into the middle of the road, blow the face off someone in a car, steal said car and then make a high speed getaway from the one police officer who chose to follow you, likely mowing down a dozen pedestrians at least in the process.

The sort of crazy crime spree gameplay...it didn't really 'fit' with Niko's reluctant character, but it was how (and I'm assuming here) the majority played it, which gives you a certain jarring issue when trying to reconcile his actions and his character arc.

It fit with Tommy Vercetti. It mostly fit with CJ. It fits extremely well with the sociopath that is the protagonist of the Saints Row series. GTAIV...not so much.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

snip

I agree with that, really, its just when I play GTAIV I try make a distinction between the story (what Niko actually does), and me fucking around.
I find the story more rewarding when I can look at Niko's character, and see him as a tragic protagonist that he is, and not the crazy motherf***er I am.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

I was reading the article about how THQ isn't worried by GTA V's trailer and in the article it talks about GTA's radical shift in tone from San Andreas to IV. And that made me think that the shift in tone wasn't all that radical as everyone really made it out to be in my opinion. The dark humor was still there, the scathing social commentary intact, and the deep storyline filled with compelling characters was kept. The only radical difference in tone was in the visual department with the darker, gritty graphics.

Anyway that's just my opinion anyway.

What game were you playing? The GTA IV I played had no 'dark humour'. It had dark elements, and it had humorous elements. But they did not blend, ever. You were forced to sit through cutscene after cutscene of dark philosophy and boring angst before hopping into your car hearing the radio play an ad that lampoons Lord of the Rings. That's not dark humour, that's making an awkward tonal shift. In San Andreas this never happened because the number of straight-faced cutscenes were kept to a minimum, and even then they were livened up by the Tarantino-esque absurdity that formed the morals of each character.

The problem with GTA IV's tone is really an issue with the fact that so many of the characters are Russian or otherwise Eastern European. The thing is, Rockstar have characterised their humour brilliantly: if you ever read say any plays by Chekov, they seem innately tragic but were considered by their author to be a comedy. But this doesn't fit at all with Rockstar's usual sense of humour that is derived from over-the-top parody and absurdism, and so to try and have both elements in the game leaves it feeling disjointed.

 

[ResonanceSD]

I find GTA IV to be much worse than San Andreas.

I don't remember half the funny lines from IV while I remember a lot from San Andreas.
The shift in tone killed GTA IV for me, they crammed to much serious to GTA IV

All of this. San Andreas was by far the better game.

 

[Voulan]

I think I preferred San Andreas because I like CJ better than Niko. Besides that, the game was unrealistic enough for me and itself to not take anything so seriously, which made everything funnier.

GTA IV became so realistic that it became somewhat depressing. I couldn't really laugh at it because it was just so dark in tone. Well, that and the controls are so diverse that if I put it down and played something else for a few weeks I'd have to replay a whole half of the game to remember them all.

 

[Therumancer]

I was reading the article about how THQ isn't worried by GTA V's trailer and in the article it talks about GTA's radical shift in tone from San Andreas to IV. And that made me think that the shift in tone wasn't all that radical as everyone really made it out to be in my opinion. The dark humor was still there, the scathing social commentary intact, and the deep storyline filled with compelling characters was kept. The only radical difference in tone was in the visual department with the darker, gritty graphics.

Anyway that's just my opinion anyway.

Well the thing is that GTA IV didn't have things like the conspiricy nut, skydiving, running around in a gimp suit, jet packs, and other assorted wild things that were part of San Andreas. In comparison GTA IV was very much a "back to the basics" game.

What's more there is the issue of the game industry being cowards. Games like this that thrive on being depraved adult entertainment, need to keep pushing the envelop. When Rockstar got hit by the whole "Hot Coffee" thing they kind of backed down, instead of moving games of tgus sirt forward to have more graphic violence, sex, and depravity (I think "Hot Coffee" itself was probably them playing around with an idea for future games, but it was cut out because it wasn't really finished or fit in with the current plans) they decided to backpedal majorly. They went with more of a serious crime story, with most of the paticularly naughty bits cut out, glossed over, or danced around. While some of the expansion packs showed a glimmer of progress, the game itself really did not. I mean GTA IV's attempt at sexual entertainment was pretty much those lame bits in the strip clubs.

Of course due to the liberal witch hunting it should be noted that companies like Bethesda also were freaking out in the same general time frame. Bethesda was all upset over nude patches being made by the modding community for example, when these were the guys that used to put child filters into some of their earliest games so they could be as mature as possible for the time.

To be honest Grand Theft Auto V seems to me to be a case of Rockstar playing it very safe. Indeed the protaganist we hear about seems to be being carefully set up to be an anti-hero and to justify him dancing around most extreme content. After all if this is a guy with a family, or mourning after one, they have an excuse for him to say not go around having wild sex, and can call it storytelling. Likewise by being humanized, they can do the same thing with the violence, and thus work around issues like not having equivilents to chasing a mostly naked fat man through the streets of Vice City with a chainsaw.

 

[gphjr14]

I find GTA IV to be much worse than San Andreas.

I don't remember half the funny lines from IV while I remember a lot from San Andreas.
The shift in tone killed GTA IV for me, they crammed to much serious to GTA IV

This plus as Yahtzee put it the cars drive like they have another car strapped on top. I can appreciate a serious tone but IV didn't feel like previous GTAs and I mean that in a bad way. Right now I can't really remember any memorable or funny lines from IV and I've played/beat it about 5 times. Where as I've beaten played SA dozens of times. Saints Row gave me the wackiness that I wanted in a sand box game. I can appreciate a dark tone and realism but that's not made the franchise popular and that's not what I was looking for in GTA.

 

[GiantRaven]

I never got the complaints about the lack of fun in GTA IV. With the physics engine that it had, I got way more entertainment out of it than I ever did with the other games in the series.

 

[])rStrangelove]

GTA SA never really took off for me on PC because of the horrible controls (controllers do not go in line with mouse & KB at the same time). So in terms of accessability GTA4 wins big time on PC.
Secondly, all this SA Gangsta environment, style, speech became boring very fast.

GTA4's car physx were another thing that fascinated my from day 1. After playing it for 2 weeks at my brother's home on 360, i went to a shop and bought one myself - and i used to hate consoles. GTA4 is the best driver game ever done, all the fun i had with online races is worth its price alone.
The story of GTA4, LC's traffic system and the intelligent behaviour of pedestrian AI is far better than anything i noticed in GTA SA.

I think a lot of ppl think of the 'good ol' PS2 times' factor when praising GTA SA.

 

[Svenparty]

GTA: San Andreas and all previous incarnations were simply better in the humour department. Okay it's not always very sophisticated but neither is an internet cafe called Tw@t. Nothing was memorable about IV and the characters mostly unlikeable(Who ever WANTED to bowl with Roman?) So I like that GTA:V seems like it'll be a change of pace.

 

[Something Amyss]

and the deep storyline filled with compelling characters was kept.

ARRRRG!

GTAIV was about on-level with Twilight in terms of character and storytelling. There's porn with deeper plots.

 

[valleyshrew]

GTAIV is the single greatest piece of media humanity has yet produced. People don't appreciate it on the level it deserves, they compare it with culturally vacuous games that do nothing more than emulate the hollow experiences of toys and action movies. No other game encapsulates the depth of human culture the way GTA does. The in-game internet alone has more cultural depth than any other game. If you want to play an open world game that's mindless fun you've got Infamous, Prototype, Mercenaries 2, Crackdown, Saint's Row, Red Faction Guerrilla, Just Cause 2, Assassin's Creed, Dead Island, Alone in the Dark, Wheelman, Batman: Arkham City, The Saboteur & Rage. There's only one game for people who want a deep mature experience. RDR & LA Noire are much shallower because of the lack of technology in their world, you're left with newspapers and 2 primitive cinema clips in RDR and nothing at all in LA Noire.

the characters mostly unlikeable

Not a single one of the characters in the wire or the sopranas is likeable either. So what? Yusuf & brucie are 2 of the all time funniest video game characters. No other game series is as bold as GTA. You've got a strong muslim character, you've got full frontal male nudity and all sorts of other things. You've got parodies of cash4gold, alternative medicines, conspiracy sites, mail order brides, reality tv, celebrity stalking culture, sex tapes, the slave trade, anorexia, feminism, steroids, mmorpg's, diet pills, the ipad, chiropractic, fantasy sports leagues, poker shows, art industry, apple, online banking, car manufacturers, ringtones, protest sites, theme parks, homework helpers, animal cams, fantasy movies, old fashioned anti-technology sites, meat loving, vegetarian, eugenics, mysogynistic, hilarious cartoons, pregnancy sites, range of newspapers, fox news, outsourcing and immigration, lots of different conspiracies, politicians, the snuggie, drugs, photosharing, adoption, prostitution, all sorts of scams/spam, blogs (really in depth character parodies with goths, serial killers, jocks, sluts, etc.), skype, silly instruments, real estate, pornography, alternative medicine, paedophilia, cigarettes, beer, mexican doctors, police, modification of a variety of items (cars/toilets/appliances), radio, cults, farming, robots, gossip sites, lawyers, clubs, baby names, twitter, myspace, facebook, etc. These are detailed websites, not just single sentence jokes and it's a truly underappreciated gem.

People don't get that GTA is not a game about gangsters, it's a complete satire of society. I think a lot of the people who hate it are probably offended by some of these parody elements and have political/religious/whatever objections so dismiss them and focus on the other aspects of the game which are below par (mission structure & competitive gameplay).

The idea that games could be made that were as culturally relevant as films or anything else. That there was this huge audience of people who ... were very culturally savvy and culturally aware, but who were being fed content when playing games they found slightly demeaning. Dan Houser

 

[Zeriu]

Serious? GTA IV had a great sense of humor. it still maintained the same childish humor San Andreas had.ex: Tw@ Internet Cafes. The difference between them was the setting. San Andreas had sunny L.A. and GTA IV had foggy N.Y. That's all there is to it. A small but great difference.GTA IV also had serious moments, but that only added to the experience. That doesn't mean the funny is over.

 

[GonzoGamer]

and the deep storyline filled with compelling characters was kept.

ARRRRG!

GTAIV was about on-level with Twilight in terms of character and storytelling. There's porn with deeper plots.

Yea, I can't say I was too impressed with what many called the "Mature" theme of the game either. Many say that the story was deep and had many layers but to me it just seemed eye rollingly pretentious. Like with Twilight, you get the sense that they want you to get emotional about the climactic points but there was no buildup for it that the player could keep with him through the craziness you want to do in between the plot points. And they did their best to dampen down the craziness you could take part in between plot points.

But overall, it reminded me less of Twilight and more like your average primetime network crime drama.

I wasn't expecting 4 to be as big as San Andreas but I thought we would have at least as many weird side activities/missions as gta3. And what few they kept in the game were drained of any interesting rewards. Doing the car list just got you money, doing the vigilante missions just got you money, and those pigeons only got you the crappiest attack chopper ever committed to pixels...and it didn't even spawn most of the time...and the spawnpoint wasn't anywhere near a safehouse.
The pretentious tone wouldn't have bothered me so much if we had gotten some cool in game rewards like with the old gtas.

 

[Something Amyss]

But overall, it reminded me less of Twilight and more like your average primetime network crime drama.

Mostly, my use of twilight was because of the one-note lead who people seem to only like because, like Bella Swan, they imprint their self upon.

EDIT: most of the supporting cast is similarly shallow. I was just singling Niko out as our protagonist, the guy we spend all our time with.

The plot itself is very "Crime drama du jour," though I still think more plot considerations go into your average crime drama than they did in this.

 

[Vrach]

I was reading the article about how THQ isn't worried by GTA V's trailer and in the article it talks about GTA's radical shift in tone from San Andreas to IV. And that made me think that the shift in tone wasn't all that radical as everyone really made it out to be in my opinion. The dark humor was still there, the scathing social commentary intact, and the deep storyline filled with compelling characters was kept. The only radical difference in tone was in the visual department with the darker, gritty graphics.

Anyway that's just my opinion anyway.

First off, I'd like to point out that graphics here isn't a matter of quality and therefore doesn't fall under the usual scoffing of "graphics aren't important" (even though that line of thought is mostly bull anyway). We're talking about the environmental setting and furthermore, it spreads itself to more than just the graphics.

Look at the music. Compare the music of GTA IV to the one of San Andreas. Now, aside the fact that the SA soundtrack is pretty much one of the best music compilations ever made and that the GTA IV one is "meh" at best, the tone is remarkably different and in line with the graphical setting - dark and grey.

The storyline is that way too - though that's actually the best part as it uses that setting to create the right environment for the story they're telling (even though as a Serb myself, I am really sick and tired of the whole "Balkan war veteran" angle). But it's still very much uncharacteristic for the GTA series. Not bad - but uncharacteristic.

A lot of fun got thrown out of GTA IV too. It's not any one thing. It's a combination of graphics, music, the added realistic gameplay (which, while awesome, does intrude on the fun a bit) and partly it's your fucking cellphone. Mostly it's the fact that there's not a whole lot to do outside the main storyline - which, for an open world game, is one one of the biggest transgressions you can make. This is in fact the same (main) reason Mafia II sucked balls.

So yeah, I'd have to agree with them, there was a radical change from SA to IV. And if you don't think so, maybe you should go back and play the games from GTA III, across Vice City and San Andreas and then try GTA IV again. If you don't think the jump from SA to IV is any different than the previous jumps from III to VC to SA... well, I'd say you must be overlooking something.