What if GTAV sucks?

[RedDeadFred]

Rockstar has not made a bad game in the last 2 generations (for me anyway).

Manhunt 2?!

Anyway, I won't care. I'm not really hyped for this game. If it ends up being good, I'll probably get it, just like the last one (which I actually liked a lot). Personally, I hope they keep with the general tone of IV. Okay, they can lighten up a bit but TBH, it told a really awesome crime story that had many emotional choices and some truly amazing missions. Leave the silliness to Saints Row, we don't need two games trying to make the same thing.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Suck? No, it won't suck.

Say what you want about Rockstar's narratives (looking at you Max Payne 3), their games are always stellar in the gameplay department. So in that regard alone, it'll still get rave reviews.

But even ignoring all of that, GTA has built up such a colossal following that even if it's underwhelming, it will still sell more than enough to make a sizeable profit and have rabid fanboys defending its grandeur.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

GTA 4 wasn't very good, but we're all still here. Eh? Eh?

BAH-DUM, tss

Seriously though, 5 looks great. And even though I didn't care much for 4 I still played the hell out of it. Saw it through to completion and that clocked in about 130 hours of game time. No small feat in the industry as it stands today. Only other GTA games and maybe Saints Row 2 can boast 100+ hours of gameplay for me. Well and Fallout 3, maybe the first Halo.

It's rare in other words.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Well, GTA IV was one of the most boring games I think I've played in my life.
I certainly won't be bothering with V.

IMO: Boring is worse than bad. At least bad is funny. At least bad you can enjoy with a perverted enjoyment of what a train wreck everything is.

GTA IV was far from boring, granted the world wasnt as engaging as previous GTAs and there wasnt much to do outside missions but it was still far from a "bad" or "boring" game. It was poor by GTA standards but overall it was a good game

It's good to know my subjective opinion on what bores me is completely invalidated because someone says so.
I wasn't claiming the game was boring for everyone, but it was boring for me.

You're subjective opinion was presented with absolutely no explanation, leaving it hard for people who've actually played the game to understand where you're coming from.

 

[The_Echo]

So my question is, what if it sucks?

Not like is 6/10 meh, like 2/10, this game is horrible, glitchy, boring, ugly, the whole shebang.

If it sucks, then it sucks.

What else would happen? I mean, honestly. Games that suck... suck. And that's the end of it. You know what happened to Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines?

That's what would happen.

 

[Jandau]

It won't be 2/10 bad. There is literally no chance of that happening. There's too much money being thrown at it and its being done by a studio that's been doing it for a VERY long time. What MIGHT happen is something like Total War: Rome 2 - despite an experienced team and a big budget, the game is rushed out the door half-finished and in a terrible state, coasting on fanboys and promises of patches.

That being said, I don't care either way personally. I never was into the whole GTA thing, beyond the first game. The more "realistic" they tried to make it, the less interesting I found it. Likely the reason why I started liking Saint's Row with the third game and loved the fourth...

 

[Lictor Face]

It won't be 2/10 bad. There is literally no chance of that happening. There's too much money being thrown at it and its being done by a studio that's been doing it for a VERY long time. What MIGHT happen is something like Total War: Rome 2 - despite an experienced team and a big budget, the game is rushed out the door half-finished and in a terrible state, coasting on fanboys and promises of patches.

Literally took the post right out of my fingers.

GTA V is in GREAT danger of pulling a Rome 2. Releasing a game that feels or plays like an unfinished copy is bad decorum, regardless of any previous hall of fame ( Poor Creative Assembly must be deep in their drink at seeing Rome 2 getting a 4.2 user metascore. )

But HOPEFULLY, the sheer amount of money being poured into the game will stop a "Rome 2" event so to speak. And if not, its time to start wondering where that frankly obscene amount of money went.

 

[Lieju]

I wouldn't much care.

The only Rockstar-game I have had interest in was Red Dead Redemption and even that I stopped playing at some point.

If I hear good things about GTA V that make it sound interesting to me, I might check it out.

My problem with GTA IV was that it was somewhere between wacky fantasy and grim realism and the latter just made me sad when the game wanted me to feel former and distracted when it wanted me to care about the realism.

 

[Jandau]

It won't be 2/10 bad. There is literally no chance of that happening. There's too much money being thrown at it and its being done by a studio that's been doing it for a VERY long time. What MIGHT happen is something like Total War: Rome 2 - despite an experienced team and a big budget, the game is rushed out the door half-finished and in a terrible state, coasting on fanboys and promises of patches.

Literally took the post right out of my fingers.

GTA V is in GREAT danger of pulling a Rome 2. Releasing a game that feels or plays like an unfinished copy is bad decorum, regardless of any previous hall of fame ( Poor Creative Assembly must be deep in their drink at seeing Rome 2 getting a 4.2 user metascore. )

But HOPEFULLY, the sheer amount of money being poured into the game will stop a "Rome 2" event so to speak. And if not, its time to start wondering where that frankly obscene amount of money went.

The one thing in favor of GTA5 is that Rockstar is both the developer and the publisher (as far as I know), while Rome 2 likely suffered from SEGA dictating unrealistic deadlines on Creative Assembly, as well as forcing them into the DLC bullshit that they seem to be going for...

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I can't see GTA V sucking to be honest, maybe to the PC only people because they are impatient and even if the game comes to them they will most likely call it a bad port as always.

 

[irok]

meh it will always suck to me, Im not interested in its gangsta crap in the slightest so for me the world keeps turning and I get a few less pointless conversations in the years to come.

 

[beez]

If R* took the time to optimize adequately for both platforms (since they told us the screenshots came from the PS3, I guess they did?), I don't think they are going to fail. While I don't like the 3-characters-in-one aspect, I do think the writing will be top notch, as it's been since GTA3. The few lines in the trailer pointed to good writing so they have to just keep it up. I know everybody's excited, but don't over-complicate things.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

A few people will reconsider preordering and buying without thinking. The rest of us will look on with amusement. A largish audience will enjoy and defend it anyway. Review sites will be split between reviews that were written previously to beat the other sites to the punch or in optimism or with incentive, and reviews that tell it how it is. Rockstar would take some damage, but would be redeemed with patches or if the next game is better. Their catalogue is pretty good.

No experience went into this post.

 

[VladG]

Just on record, I don't think it will be bad. And by no means catastrophically bad. Too much money has been sunk in it by a company that, has so far, never really produced a bad game. Quite the contrary.

But this is a hypothetical discussion, so here goes:


For one thing, I don't think it would be big enough to significantly shake the foundations of the industry. It probably won't even hurt Rockstar all that much in the short term, since it seems the pre-order numbers alone are insane, probably more than enough to cover the development expenses, or at least significantly blunt the blow.

However, more importantly, I think they would lose a bunch of popularity and gamer good will. People have pre-ordered the game en-masse partly because of the massive marketing budget the game mush have had, but mostly because of Rockstar's and the franchise's reputation. Let's face it, all of the GTA games have been very good. Even GTA IV, flawed and weaker than it's predecessors as it was, was still a very good game.

This loss of popularity will probably be decisive in killing off a potential next super-high budget game from Rockstar. People just won't trust them enough to pre-order again in such numbers, and Rockstar probably won't be able to take the risk of another flop.

As for the industry overall, I think it would be detrimental. Oh, it won't cause a crash, or anything like that, but it will most likely discourage other big developers and publishers from investing massive sums. It probably won't have the positive effect of developers and publishers trying to realistically figure out WHY it failed, and work on avoiding such mistakes. They'll just say "oh noes, big budget no sale, big budget baaad"

And while it's true that a lot of games have over-blown budgets and that there needs to be a change, I still want to see a big, ridiculous budget game now and again, because a very large budget COULD produce an amazing game IF the game is well designed, if the money is well spent, IF there's no stupid interference from publishers, and so on. I really believe that the reason Tomb Raider, Hitman and other such games were big sellers but financial flops is due to the fact that the budget was poorly spent, not because it was too large.

 

[VladG]

So my question is, what if it sucks?

Not like is 6/10 meh, like 2/10, this game is horrible, glitchy, boring, ugly, the whole shebang.

If it sucks, then it sucks.

What else would happen? I mean, honestly. Games that suck... suck. And that's the end of it. You know what happened to Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines?

That's what would happen.

Well, neither DNF nor A:CM had insane, record setting budgets. And even so their failures had some reverberation in the industry. Nobody talks about a bad game that came from nowhere, had no expectations and amounted to nothing. Both DNF and A:CM made news for quite a while, sparked a ton of controversy and discussion. Imagine what would happen if a game with a budget so insanely high and such a well liked franchise.

One thing that won't happen is people going "meh, just another crappy title" and move on.

 

[VladG]

snip

Then it would be just like Mass Effect 3.

Oh, how so? As far as I know, ME3 got all it's controversy from having a crappy ending, a lot of it fuelled by the fact that it had EA's stink all over it.

But as far as I know, it was really a matter of people not liking it's creative direction and choice regarding the ending, not so much of the game being actually BAD. And as far as I know, it didn't work with anything close to GTA V's insane budget.


Surely, GTA V being bad in every way (including being a technical mess, as the OP proposed) would raise a very different sort of outcry, and have much more significant and very different repercussions.

 

[MammothBlade]

Well, GTA IV was one of the most boring games I think I've played in my life.
I certainly won't be bothering with V.

IMO: Boring is worse than bad. At least bad is funny. At least bad you can enjoy with a perverted enjoyment of what a train wreck everything is.

GTA IV was far from boring, granted the world wasnt as engaging as previous GTAs and there wasnt much to do outside missions but it was still far from a "bad" or "boring" game. It was poor by GTA standards but overall it was a good game

For me, it didn't have all that much to do. The map felt... desolate despite having all these little details. The lack of more than 4 safehouses felt like a downgrade, you know... and rampaging sadly wasn't much fun on the whole real is brown map.

What can I say, I feel like there will be more to do with a variety of scenery and rural locations. There will be a massive opportunity for dirt-biking, ridge-racing, stunts, and rampaging. The outdoors activities in San Andreas were one of my favourite things. Loved going up Mount Chiliad and then driving right off the top. Yes, from the look of it, will have that sort of impressive scenery.

My biggest concern is not that it's easily technically capable of such things, but that the game will try to do everything at once and end up like a pancake on wheels. This is, by all reckoning, going to be a HUGE game. It has to appease a massive audience just to get a return. Does that mean it will appeal to the lowest common denominator? That has always been a concern with games this big, but even more so with this one. But, with the commitment and integrity that Rockstar North possess, I'm sure it will be a good game on its own merit. There's not an awful lot to dumb down. GTA has never been about skill or gameplay depth, but the player experience in interacting with the world.

 

[Harrowdown]

It won't suck. Lots of people won't like it because it's not their thing, and a bunch of other people will probably tear into it for the sake of being the cool hipster asshole that hated the years biggest hit. By any objective measure, though(glitches, graphics, length etc), I can practically guarantee that it will hold up. Rockstar is too well practiced and well financed to fuck up in that regard. As for subjective opinions, they've earned themselves a very significant, very loyal fanbase over the years, and those people will inevitably support them this time.

I suppose one key way that it could disappoint is if the game makes a mess of the multiple character thing. This being the most unique new feature to the series, it's also the most likely to attract ire from otherwise satisfied fans.

Hypothetically though, if it does suck, I cannot really say. In my uneducated opinion, it could herald the end of the Triple A game, and it might well cripple Rockstar as well. I know that before GTAIV came out, the company was limping by under the weight of money troubles and controversy. I'm not informed enough to really say, but a big loss like this would probably send them back into the shit.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

I get to smugly laugh at GTA fans while I reiterate to people how bad preorders are.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well, GTA IV was one of the most boring games I think I've played in my life.
I certainly won't be bothering with V.

IMO: Boring is worse than bad. At least bad is funny. At least bad you can enjoy with a perverted enjoyment of what a train wreck everything is.

GTA IV was far from boring, granted the world wasnt as engaging as previous GTAs and there wasnt much to do outside missions but it was still far from a "bad" or "boring" game. It was poor by GTA standards but overall it was a good game

It's good to know my subjective opinion on what bores me is completely invalidated because someone says so.
I wasn't claiming the game was boring for everyone, but it was boring for me.

This made me laugh I had no idea we had mindreaders on the Escapist who know you better than you know yourself go home weaver your subjected opinion is invalidated .

Firstly im gonna say I dont like GTA the 3rd game really really really dissapointed me and it hasnt changed from there.

Secondly its very unlikely this game will suck as in 2/10 suck but if it does I wont care now 6/10 suck thats more like it and would put it in line with GTA3 onwards (yeah I went there).

I am more interested to see if the game turns much profit because I frankly havent heard much about this game at all I have seen literally zero hype for it from anybody even my friends who like GTA (or at least used to as I dont know many who enjoyed 4 and none who liked San Andreas).

It will sell well I have no doubt about that but will it sell well enough? I havent heard much about GTA since COD took over from it as the next big thing.