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I'm going to try and break it down so it is easier to read. =================================================================================================== Ok I have been holding on hopelessly for a long time now for some sort of story expansion for GTAV and i have just about given up. There has been nothing that has impressed me or held my interest on the market for the last few years. I felt at a low point in my videogame life. Then i saw this!! This trailer gave me a buzz i haven't had about a game since the V trailers. It has a real raw cool vibe to it. But it got me thinking (and worrying)about the future of the GTA series. I loved mafia 2, cool time period, great graphics, great characters, brilliant storytelling, and a badass hollywood-esque attitude. Sure it didn't have the same sort of free open world, ripe with activities as its at the time competitor (GTA IV) but that was one of the many things they could improve on next time around. This trailer amongst the others shows better graphics, a bigger world, somehow a better more intriguing story, more in depth characters, and the move to shake things up with a new orleans styled backdrop with a black protagonist yet still tell a mafia based story is just genius. BUT it is relatively easy for them to do! They have one set of rules to follow, one genre...serious crime drama! They can change the setting and characters and improve the worlds etc a hundred times over and still have a winning formula! What does this have to do with GTA your thinking? Well i just can't see where they can go next! How they can go bigger and better without upsetting one side of their fanbase? The older GTA's on the older systems were perfect for their generation. The mix of a semi-serious story, hollywood action movie throwback missions, and over the top silly side missions were acceptable when games were just games and a bit of off the cuff craziness was expected, and it never felt out of place because the story had the same amount of reslism as every other aspect of the game world. But in this generation of consoles, where the graphics are so realistic, the characters are so detailed, the stories are ever more adult and engaging the sillyness just throws you off your game and you don't know how your supposed to be feeling while your playing. For example, how atmospheric and awesome was the (spoiler) Ludendorf mission where Trevor and Micheal finally come head to head and dig up Brad!? The pinnacle of the story, real emotion, best friends, betrayal and a antihero heavily outnumbered in a shootout in a dimly lit graveyard. Then you fly back to Los Santos and have a silly pshyco rampage mission with Trevors superpowers ability and then switch to Franklin and have a jet ski race cause your nesr the beach....and the graveyard is forgot about, and the story, and hence the IMMERSION! Which IMO is the ultimate goal of any video game. I think Rockstar realised this struggle way back and took the first steps to rectify the problems with GTA IV. If you ask me it was a huge step forward, everything about it was dark, grimy, serious yet still GTAat the core. I think this is the direction Rockstar wanted to take the series, something they could continue with and improve upon in the successing years. But (excuse me those of you i am about to diss) the 6 year old's didn't like it. "It's not GTA, it doesn't feel the same, theres no crazy crazy rampages, its no fun, i cant just run around blowing everything up with a bazooka just for the hell of it, blablabla. So naturally you've ruined it. With V Rockstar have gone out of their way to try to appease everybody, theres the story which i do love but with all it's directions and craziness just lands short of what they would really like to do, there's the good side missions i.e the off road races and parachuting and the customization options, the bad side missions like the property missions and the mother of all things that spells doom for our beloved GTA...... "We want to run around in clown suits, and christmas socks, and shoot fireworks, and have sumo races on skyscrapers". Well you've got it...it's called GTA ONLINE and it smells of death. Just look what you've done, crazy stunt loop races, 20,000ft in the air, kids begging their moms for money for shark cards so they can but this weeks supercar, 3 new items of clothing a day, zombie slasher missions, teen wolf. What was it you said about GTAIV? Doesn't feel like GTA? Well WTF is this s**t? Cos it sure don't feel like GTA to me. Anyway you've got your long time grown up fans who like s serious story with just a bit of foolery, and you've got the others, who should just go and mod saints row to include mario bros maps and be on their way. Point is i just dont know how they are going to go bigger and better without making a big crazy mess of a game. V just about got away with it, but as you know there are a lot of haters, probably the same ones who hated Iv but hey. Larger worlds mean longer stories, more crazy side missions, less time spent on what matters and more time spent on exploiting the wishes of the immature millions who'd be happy in a virtual earth sized gameworld with no story at all. Grand Theft Auto needs to mature with the rest of the gaming world and choose which path it is going to go down. Because the direction it is heading is not good for a franchise considered by many the greatest series of all time. I hope i'm wrong. Please Rockstar follow the likes of the mafia franchise and tell the stories that have gripped the fans since GTA.

why is there a saints row building? ruined.

Ok So This is not Really a contest but it's good to have this up here to have a good laugh , I know a lot of you people remember making your favorite famous celebrities on saints row 2, but wouldn't you like to see how creative people can get on gta online? I would like to see people try to create Donald trump, Michael Jackson, scarface al pacino, Mr Roger's, 50 cent and more important people , post yours today

Same. I guess we might have gone a bit overboard with the post length but not everything can be said in 3 words. It's certainly doable. Look at Sleeping Dogs. The story may not be that great, but it serves as a good enough example of a serious crime thriller. But the gameplay is just insane. Jumping from car to car and throwing drivers out never gets old. Neither does seeing cars and bikes flip over after you shoot the tires in high speed. It's crazy and hilarious and I love it. So much in fact that SD was the first game ever for which I've bought a couple of DLC packs without waiting for sales, because even after 100%/platinum-ing the game I still wanted more of that crazy action. One of the DLCs is a hypercar with machineguns btw. And while there are no planes or parachutes, there's well done hand to hand combat where you can grab cleavers and throw them at people so it's got enough variety too. And other missions are grounded enough; there's a shootout during a funeral after all. The game has its problems but a serious lack of consistency wasn't really one of them, just like SA, despite being all over the place. So yea I'll take some crazy action if it's that kind of game and it's done well. No need to sacrifice the coherence for that. Sure, I mean if a game is able to gel its story and gameplay well, it's a plus, but obviously it's not possible most of the time. So unless we'd like to ditch the majority of current genres, we kinda need to live with games which are a mixed bag. But there are still better and worse (or at least different) ways to go about it. Besides, it's not just games... Take John Woo's movies. The shootouts are legendarily 'not serious', while the stories tend to be. I'm personally not a fan of the Saints Row games which are somewhat more twisted, more in the GTA V style of meshing everything together, but I've not played them enough to say for sure. Just Cause 2, ironically enough felt like a repetitive grind to me, it's fun for a few hours but then seemed like it's always the same. I got bored quite quickly. I guess when it comes to open worlds in games, nothing beats the feeling I had in the original Far Cry when I was looking for ways to go around some guards and stumbled upon a hang glider, allowing me to bypass the whole section and glide to the other side of the river. No GTA comes even close to that.

RogerWho, first of all THANK YOU for an awesome discussion. You and I may never completely agree, but I thoroughly enjoy reading in detail the reasons why you have issues with V and prefer the storytelling mechanics and direction in IV. Truth be told, if everyone who took issues with V or preferred IV took the time out of their day AND controlled their tempers enough to actually have a civil debate like this, the forum would be a much better place to discuss the game. I will reiterate that while we don't agree, in no way do I think you are wrong. But your posts have the virtue of both calling your opinions opinions AND being expressed with enough humility to understand that tastes and preferences play a far more central role in why a player might enjoy one over the other. I like how you are one of the first people on your side of this debate to articulate all your ideas without a single condescending and disparaging comment, and without any need to call your opposition posters "fanboys" or "feverish defenders." Just a point I want to reiterate, since you mentioned you are a writer. I am a novelist and so I understand where you are coming from with regard to different ways of telling a story and I really enjoy discussing this with you! By the way, I particularly liked a point you made above about how Rockstar could create a more streamlined, focused storyline while maintaining the same batsh*t-crazy gameplay and immense variety in the landscape and gameplay motifs that we find in both V and (to an even greater degree in some ways) San Andreas. While this is nowhere near as important to me since I am not willing to hold game developer writers to the same stringent rules as I would a novelist, screenwriter, or TV writer, it wouldn't bother me if Rockstar went your way. Now if you and I were kings of Rockstar, this may happen. The problem is that the Houser's, for whatever reasons probably having to do with some sense of authenticity, always needs to inextricably marry the gameplay to the story. Look at San Andreas. I know you see that as cohesive, but that story is freaking insane. Alien technology, Black Ops missions with Toreno, combined with hood rat gang-banging and drug deliveries, with Casino ownership, and CJ even buys an air strip, sneaks into a military ship to steal a Hydra, works for the Triads, screws the Mafia, and manages to abscond a jet pack in the story? Don't get me wrong, I love it. And if you want Rockstar to compartmentalize the story in such a way that the more serious missions are more serious, and the bat-sh*t crazy ones are over the top, then fine. To me, however, either way isn't a deal breaker. I am kind of whatever about that, so long as the bat-sh*t crazy is still there, like it is in both V and SA. If you need the missions and story more compartmentalized, then lol Godspeed to you, Sir. I could honestly give a rat's ass either way. Yes, but I believe the point that Tonesta is bringing up is that Rockstar served up the wild and crazy with a very well-grounded set of physics. Just Cause 2 admittedly tries to do crazy in the gameplay with a little more realism, but Saints Row is just off the hook nuts! I should make clear that I am a HUGE fan of all the Saints Row games, and have been since 2006 when the game launched exclusively on the 360. Just Cause 2 remains one of my all time favorite games to this day, by the way. But for a sense of incredible attention to detail, coupled with a real down to Earth realism that seems to be very aptly juxtaposed to the over the top elements in a game like V, nobody does that amalgamation anywhere near as good as Rockstar. I think that's what Tonesta was alluding to in his posts. And his point is well taken. Actually, I had no idea about this. I honestly thought that GTA IV was the biggest selling GTA in the franchise history, until V came along and blew the doors off of all sales numbers. Thanks for the info! I agree with your analysis of IV, by the way, Osho.

No, I don't mean the games are similar in any way (they sure as hell aren't), just that both serve as different examples how having a specific, narrow design focus helps the overall result. We have a children story in our country about a dog and a cat baking a cake. They threw in all the stuff either considered good, from candy to bones and who knows what else. Of course at the end it wasn't edible. That's my biggest gripe with V really, how inconsistent it is when it comes to narrative and the mission structure. Another game that I feel had the same issue is Half-Life 2. So what it is, a physics playground, a platformer, a shooter, then a horror level is thrown in...? Just decide on one or a few things and streamline it. Sure there's an argument that if a game has a bit of everything, almost everyone can find something appealing, while if it's focused, it can only cater to a certain audience. Which I don't agree with; no artist worth their salt works by throwing in everything and a kitchen sink. Imagine if painters and sculptors worked that way. In fact I'll honestly rather try a game that I know is good in its own way (even though I generally like 'that way', e.g. the genre or setting) rather than the game trying to reach out to everyone. I meant expensive but yea, it can work with both terms. Now sure, the money doesn't come directly into the equation, but then I see games like say, Destiny, one of the most expensive games to make and... the result is this? It's just that if a tiny indie game studio can tell a coherent story and go through a whole character arch in a few hours with minimum resources, why can't a lot of those with $200 million budgets achieve something similar? And it's not about the money really, it's about the achievement. When I played GTA V, every once in a while I felt how the game was reaching for true excellence in something, be it drama, or comedy, or something else. I felt like I'm beginning to love this or that scene - and then, it always got killed by going into a completely different direction. Like the Trevor video I posted earlier. Okay fine, let's say the character is designed as everything he already is: a psycho, a comic relief, a broken figure and all that other stuff (that's already a lot of stuff for one character but let's run with it). But don't change the direction every couple of seconds. Give me an excellent dramatic scene with him; then maybe give me a hilarious comedy scene with him another few hours later; and if he's to talk about his childhood to make me sympathise with him, well make that yet another scene, one that will fit the narrative or mission which the game is on at the time. Don't put all of those things into one cutscene. The same goes for anything that Franklin does, same goes for Michael's family. It's all jumbled together. This is a culmination of both the 'expensive' and 'inconsistency' gripes: I'd expect that a game with such vast resources would try to reach for excellence. If it's not possible to achieve it in everything (and of course it's not), well then pick a few things that are the most important and polish those. Here we are also coming back to the mission count. Obviously, if it was made in a way I'm suggesting, then the game would need to be a lot longer. I mean, Trevor alone would need to have multiple story/mission arcs just for himself. Michael too, as his family stuff would need to change gradually. Franklin as well, instead of Stretch popping out and then back in, you'd get to know him as the antagonist, same going for a lot of other side characters around Franklin. You might not feel cheated of the development such as it is, but I certainly do. And again here comes to focus: if there are too many characters to flesh out each one, then pick just a few and concentrate on those, give each one a good introduction, some scenes to know them and then a proper send off. Apart from the narrative, I also have a similar gripe with the environment. If I just stand in one spot, I see the potential greatness: it looks amazing, regardless whether it's in the city or in the country. I can almost smell the atmosphere. But, drive just for a few seconds and the illusion disappears. Suddenly I'm in a completely different area of the city because each one consists only of a few blocks. The desert suddenly ends because it's not really a desert, it's just a few hundred meters wide. Again, if you can't make everything justice, then focus on one thing and reach for excellence. Don't make a tiny playground of LA and a tiny desert. Pick one and stick with it. Make it fit the narrative you want to tell. Don't stop half-way and go in a completely different direction. I mean I still like bits and pieces of GTA V. Sure, the production values are amazing, but as a whole package, it wasn't reaching for the stars the same way like almost every other R* game. It wasn't that unreasonable to expect some more. Saints Row 2, which I don't enjoy that much due to all the crazyness, I still respect because they were aiming for one thing and achieved that. Similarly even if you dislike IV, you gotta (or should, I think) respect that it achieved what it was aiming for. Similarly if GTA V went in a completely different direction, but was focused, I might not have liked it, but at least I'd respect it. So coming around to your question... In fact I can't agree that GTA V excelled what it was aiming for... Because I honestly can't tell what it was. Not sure if you mean me but absolutely it's all subjective, all the time. This is my take. It's completely fine if GTA V exactly fit your style or your expectations or otherwise gave you just the right amount of everything. Just explaining my side here. Essentially I'm trying to figure out whether a discussion about subjective stuff is even possible. I'm pretty sure it is even though it's certainly not perfect at this stage. I mean, we can either say 'I like X, I dislike Y' and be done with it, or we can at least try to elaborate.

V does abuse it's cussing privileges way to much, compared to even San Andreas. Cussing looses it's impact after it's been used 38 times in one cutscene when the average cutscene lasts 5 minutes. And there's no need for that much cussing either, half the time characters are just having a normal discussion yet add in 16 expletives just because. Saints Row 1-4 didn't need to drop F-bombs every five words, and they're also criminal central stories, why does GTA need it? Even more egregious since SR is about a street gang (or at least was) so you'd think they'd cuss non stop. Nope, they cuss only when it sounds appropriate, not V's cluster F-bomb fest. By this point, I'd find a new Mario game funner by now compared to V. Not necessarily compared to Online, but definitely V. If only because Mario games have a ton of replayability and creativity in them, not this "create your own heist, providing it's option A or option B" nonsense. Highlighted a major flaw in this argument, people keep saying GTA is about freedom and creativity, something V gets tons of praise for. Yet IV gets criticized here for... allowing the player to kill Goldberg with a baseball bat. You're not ordered to do it, the mission won't fail if you don't kill him with a bat. It's an option, like if you were trying to escape from the LSPD with a golf cart, the option is there if you want it. Is killing Goldberg with a bat stupid? Sure. Is it any less stupid than trying to complete Monkey Business with a baseball bat? No. I'm not going to try and justify IV's mission creativity here since it is a lot of Go A/Do B stuff. But at least IV's missions give you the option to do stuff like you mentioned, like aforementioned "killing the target before he gets in his car", whereas V instantly puts any and all car chases in motion instantly eliminating that option.

But I would argue that none of those came close to offering the variety of GTAV. To pick the two I know best.....Watch Dogs had a beautifully realized and detailed version of Chicago, but relatively repetitive gameplay (missions and side missions were generally either drive + shootout/chase, or hacking puzzles) and a consistently somber tone. I very much enjoyed it, but I didn't find it had the replay value of GTAV (and I'm just talking about the SP game here). Certainly curious about Watch Dogs 2, mind you. The Saints Row series, meanwhile, had all the bat**** crazy gameplay you could look for - but fell down on the map. It throws as much randomness in gameplay at you as you could handle, but did it in a fairly bland setting that didn't really merit much exploration. Again, it's all down to each individual's preference - but I personally find GTAV to be overall the biggest, most interesting sandbox with the largest variety of things to do in it (on mission and off mission), of any game I've played. And I'm happy to forgive some narrative inconsistencies or lapses in storytelling logic for the chance to enjoy such a world.

I'd say there are a lot of sandbox playgrounds... The Just Cause series, a few Far Cry games, a couple of Saints Row games, Watch Dogs, Sleeping Dogs, Prototype series, InFamous series... Not using that as an argument, just throwing the alternatives out there. There are no online alternatives unfortunately however. Shame. I'd clobber a kitten for proper Watch Dogs Online

That's 2 videos in a row now that I've done that YouTube has decided to block from being viewed on non-desktop devices just because I used a certain song (just that one track). I expected demonetization but to block it like this? What's the point? Looking at analytics, non-desktop devices (mobile, console, tablets) are where I get most of my views. They can still be viewed on these devices by switching to desktop mode but who would think to do that when a message pops up saying 'video not available'? The worst thing is I don't know what songs trigger this block and what ones don't, I've used other licensed songs in the past with no problems. From now on I guess I'll just have to stick with the royalty free sites.

It spawns driving around the Mission Row police station.

That's funny OP, I feel like that, except about GTAV. Especially after playing Saints Row 2.

I don't think it's ruined open world games for me, as I still enjoy other open world titles. But it has set the gold standard for driving in an open world game for me. I can't stand driving in any other game like GTA. Watch Dogs, Saints Row, etc. all have really lousy driving in comparison.

Sans row 2 did it better. It was a quick interactive minigame, and if you had a female character, the "sounds" were from a male "partner" Prostitutes and prostitution are a real thing so I don't think they should be removed... just revamped and made usefull

"You're f**kin' dead! DEAD DEAAAAAD" - Random hillbilly. I literally heard this three times in a row when I was playing a mission. Here's a vid I found of it

No doubt Michael. Trevor is way too crazy and Franklin lacks personality & would suck as the only protagonist. The story of GTA V was about Michael anyway, the other two were side characters turned into protagonists. Thats the last thing we need. Franklin and Luis were already too blank slate for me, I like GTA protagonists having personality and actual character. This isn't Saints Row or an RPG.

Thats the last thing we need. Franklin and Luis were already too blank slate for me, I like GTA protagonists having personality and actual character. This isn't Saints Row or an RPG. So what is character to you? Is it wanting to escape a criminal life, but goes around killing people anyway and then trying to justify their actions? That's not character. That's hypocrisy. If the character is going to commit criminal activities then they need to accept that they're the bad guy and not try to justify their actions with a bunch of "I'm this way because xxx did xxx and made xxx happen that forced me to xxx because xxx, but deep down I'm really the good guy and didn't deserve it despite killing and robbing a bunch of people!" And that character template of put all the blame on someone/something else passive-aggressive victim card is all Rockstar has given us since San Andreas. It's a tired repetitive formula of whiny versus whimsy and usually whiny wins. A character creation system allows players to create their own story and cater their game-play experience to their own preferences allowing for a more personal connection with the cast. This is not in any way a negative thing. Options and customization is something to embrace as a new standard for open world games as it only serves to benefit us.

When trevor does the strangers and freaks mission with mr and miss thornhill he drives a car through the front door of the mission row hospital it becomes enterable for a short amount of time and is pretty cool, i don't remember the name of the mission though.

Saints Row? You cannot be serious!

Okay, two things: 1. I find it a little offensive that you are subtly hinting at a little gay bashing here. Why should Trevor's sexuality (bisexual, cross dressing) expressed in a lighthearted way offend you? Why should it even be a factor one way or the other? As a heterosexual male, I will admit that the first couple of times playing the game that I switched to Trevor and he was in a dress or spooning with Wade, it made me a little uncomfortable. In the same way that I have gay friends, and the first time I was hanging out with them in Greenwich Village and saw one of them run into a friend and kiss him on the lips made me initially uncomfortable. But I guess living in the Big Apple, I have become desensitized to gays. My point is that Trevor's sexuality should be no more or less offensive or in any way detract from his viability as a protagonist than Michael or Franklin going to the strip club and getting a lap dance. 2. There is no cannibalism in GTA V. Trevor's ONLY hints at it were threats, nothing more. I know you said "hint of cannibalism" but there really isn't even that. Threatening to "eat someone's sweet meat" is not the same as actual cannibalism anymore than the lady I saw saying to an unruly child, "Ah, I am going to kill you if you don't calm down!" was actually threatening the child's life. No offense, but you're reaching a little here. If you don't like Trevor, you don't like Trevor. That's fine. But let's not be homophobic about it, and let's not manufacture any cannibalism. Although, and not that this is relevant, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs is an AMAZING antagonist and he does a great deal more than hint at cannibalism! lol But that is very much beside the point. I agree about Trevor being in tune with himself and no feeling guilt or remorse about his actions. But I wouldn't say that he is the most honestly portrayed protagonist in the series. Rockstar still went extreme lenghts to whitewash his behavior and make him relatable and symphatetic. His brutal, unapologetic violence is dulled by wacky comedy. His real, sad, mental instability is either spun for laughs or for cheap sympathy ("Oh, he just wants love!"). His craziness and deviations are turned up to such absurd levels that believability goes right out of the window. There is a compelling character deep inside Trevor. But for 90% of the game, he is just an over-the-top cartoon. I wouldn't call that portrayal "honest". Not in a game that also gave us complex, morally ambiguous, wreck of a man that was Michael. He was just given to us and Houser told us "Make up your own mind about him." With Trevor, I feel as if the text guided me to feel for him and like him. Instead of challenging the player's perception of the character, with a cold, uncompromising description of a person with deep emotional and mental issues, we were given even wackier version of SR2's Boss, which does make for an entertaining spectacle, but at the cost of potentionally great character writing. I wasn't saying he was the most honestly written in any global sense of the word, meaning the most honest across the board. I was saying that his complete and flagrant lack of any and all restraint is sort of the culmination of what Rockstar has always done with GTA characters, but, again, taken several steps further, and ratcheted up a good deal. Also, where do you get the idea that Rockstar was trying to whitewash his behavior and make him more "relatable" and sympathetic? I don't get that at all. When I play V as Trevor, I am not feeling ANY sense of sympathy or empathy with any emotional depth or human frailty of the man. Trevor is what Trevor is, which is to say pure, unadulterated, unrestrained, unapologetic, hedonistic insanity, nothing more, nothing less. I don't think that Rockstar was genuinely trying to make him more sympathetic. If anything, their seemingly attempting to do so was part of the parody of Trevor as a protagonist. Kind of like his exaggerated emotional reaction to his mother and to Patricia Medrazo. This wasn't meant to make him relatable or to give him true emotional depth, but to add more comedy to him! I don't think there is an intelligent person alive who would, at least in any meaningful way, sympathize with or relate to Trevor's humanity, nor do I think that ROckstar was making a bonafide effort to insult our collective intelligence by passing him off as a character that anyone but a sociopath would truly relate to. There is one exception: We all have anger and have all experienced some form of rage in our lives at one time or another. If, and only if, we are isolating Trevor's rage, then the relatable or sympathetic response to that facet of our own personalities in Trevor would be both fun as well as one dimensional, but still a lot of fun. Look, Trevor is what Trevor is. He is a one-dimensional character whose sole value is that he is free from ALL inhibitions and real human frailty, thus he is not bound by the normal restrictions of society's limitations. This, by the way, is one of the MANY reasons why the three protagonist system works so well! Because if Trevor was the only progtagonist in an entire game, I think most people would tire of him very fast, even people like me who relish his presence in the game. This is why Trevor could not hold down an entire story by himself. He is effectively balanced by Michael and Franklin, who very often play off of his over the top insanity. Saints Row seems to be the only game that can pull off a truly psychotic and sociopathic protagonist and actually make him or her sympathetic. But then NONE of the Saint's Row protagonists have ever been as completely batsh*t crazy as Trevor, which is probably why. I love Trevor as a playable character, and when I want to get my rage on, he is the guy I turn to when playing V. But if I want balance and more humanity and human frailty, then Michael or Franklin are better for that. Or I can just boot up GTA III, VC, or SA to get more well rounded characters to relate to on a broader level. I honestly DO NOT think that "deep inside Trevor is a more compelling character," because he is NOT written in any way well rounded enough to be more than the GTA version of a psychotic's id, nothing more. Trevor is the videogame version of the id, only with bisexual insanity on top of it. lol Not saying that anyone here wants to cross dress or spoon with guys.

Thanks man Glad you're enjoying them! As it was 17 mins, I made time to sit down and watch this without distraction. In 2 words - f*cking ace! I really think both you and Duggy are pushing the rockstar Editor / mods hard to make really interesting stuff. There are others too ofcourse but the level of work and attention to every aspect comes through and sets the bar imo, even down to the use of dialog snippets. This is what I dream of making in the editor someday. Orazinho said on here about watching it then going back to his "sh*tty Zentorno" project (his words). I know how he feels haha. Honestly, inspiring stuff. Think I spotted some sicario influence there, or atleast the highway / swat sequences. Kinda what i'm imagining mine to be but still planning. Random obervations... I liked the shift in tone from stripclub with the music, to a more tense mood. Shot at 5.58 for a moment looked sort of real. GTA V can sometimes do this depending on lighting, camera and movement. Shots at 11.17 Wow! There are loads of things I could list, but mainly the use of animations in a way that just seems natural and like an animated film / Rockstar cutscene is what stands out to me, and the way it all comes together. Looking forward to next episode. I can't imagine the hours that must have taken! I always have questions which might grate on people (sorry). So you use Scene Director for animations on your actors right. Do you input a single animation code and trigger it via controller when recording, then playback that recording and record another actors animation? Do you chain your animations i.e typing in more than one code in the input, so they play one after another seemlessly? I'm still looping single animations with Actor Manager animation preview as my projects are never that advanced, and i'm used to doing that quickly. but I really need to get to grips with Scene Director workflow. Basically what's your animation workflow if you don't mind me asking? I'm hoping scene director adds the ability to loop animations without typing in the same code into input hundreds of times. Are those Swat / tactical specific animations at the end? Looked wicked. Again Sicario came to my mind (I will shut up about that film one day :-) I have several projects, one that is 3/4 done where Swat come in to raid, but I am planning to redo these scenes as not happy with them. Any pointers on Swat / tactical animations? Are you triggering speech in a mod rather than using lip movement mod and overlaying dialog audio in editor? One observation I made which I wasn't sure whether to post, but I sometimes notice a brightness flicker in scenes, in both yours and Dugglys video, and it happened in a few of mine whenever I've used Smooth instead of Linear camera. It doesn't ruin it by any means, just a quirk i noticed with rockstar editor. Linear doesn't seem to do it which is strange. Smooth camera has some great advantages though. Do you happen to know if you can effectly disable of make an object / ped model / player invisible using OpenIV (going back to what I asked Duggly earlier). Keep thinking about green screen possibilities and reloading a rockstar editor clip after manipulating assets in OpenIV. Cheers man Happy that you enjoyed it so much, and as always thanks for showing the interest in how I made it ^^ I could discuss anything machinima for hours, which I tend to do then as well lol. Scene Director at the moment holds up to 10 slots for animations. Can be just 1 single animation (as in one 5-digit code), or a series (multiple 5-digit codes in a row). The 10 slots refer to the 10 available numeric keys, which you can use with the combination of alt to let an actor perform the animation or animations saved to that slot. So alt + num 1 would perform any animations saved in slot 1. I'm not sure if there is a maximum to the length of the string of codes you can put in one slot....I think it was 9, but I'm not sure about that at all. Then again, I've never needed more than 9 animations in a row anyway. When selecting an actor, and choosing record setup or record active (you know the option where it will record the movement of the actor, for later use when you shout "action!" and the scene will start playing so you can record it), I press alt+num "number x" to have the actor perform whichever animation I need. "X" ofc refering to the number corresponding with the slot in which said animation(s) happens to be saved. I do that for each actor that needs to perform an animation, and then hit activate scene, et voila! It's not looped, but when you stop the scene, and reactivate it, they will all do it over again, starting at their assigned starting positions. I rarely do animations with Menyoo or other trainers. I do sometimes, but usually for quick scenario options involving items (wathcing through bino's, holding clipboard etc), or idle animations like standing impatiently. If I need an actor to perform a static animation for a long time, for example standing at a door aiming his/her rifle, I use a hold-up animation. That number I then put in Scene Director like 9 times, so it is sort of looped. Some animations work flawlessly like that. Some others "skip" after the actor is finished doing it once. It all depends on whether the animation is meant to be looped, aka if the character pose & position at the start is exactly the same as at the end. Making a sequence of completely different animations, for example first the code for walking down the hall with a rifle aiming, then the code for counter attacking in melee, then the code for a little dance, wouldn't work ofc. They're not meant to be played in a row, so they don't match up. I'm pretty fast with Scene Director's animations, as I write a lot of them down on paper if I use them a lot. So that is quick access. And I got notepad ++, so a quick alt tab, quick search in notepad ++ also is easy for me to find stuff on the go if I didnt write it down. For the actual characters talking (not the radio chatter) I usually use Jedijosh920's pc trainer. You can select voices for your characters there, and then choose some lines to say. They actually say it in game then, move their mouths, and sometimes arms as well. Rockstar Editor remembers this. Although I now figured out how & where to extract voices from the game files. And there is a lot more available there than in the trainer. So in the future I might do lip sync & add in voices later. I believe Menyoo also has voice options.....though it seems more complicated. Im unsure as to how it works exactly. I recognise that brightness flicker. Those I can see happen in the editor as well. I'm fairly sure it is linked to how the camera exposure works for the game/editor. As in where the camera is looking, how much sunlight is shining in. It seems the change in brightness is not always smooth. It's annoying, but like the flickering shadow problem we talked about before, I dont think there is anything to solve that. I also had a couple of "corrupt" frames in my exports here. Only happened during exporting. Usually happens within the first 30-60 frames after cutting from 1 clip to the other. It was only like 4-5 in total, and most of them I was able to remove in premiere pro. Plus like 3 of the 4-5 happened outside the stripclub, front door area. Seems like it is location related. When you look at the individual frame in premiere pro, you can see that it sort of unloads parts of the map......not sure how to describe it. Really is a single frame that is off. As for the SWAT animations you mentioned. Did you mean the whole ending sequence? or some in specific you were interested in? Anyhow, I'll take some time tomorrow to write you down some of the "tactical" animations I used. Should help you with your scene I bet What did you mean at the end? Making things invisible using OpenIV?

I recall encountering that glitchy long swaying grapevine in a video I made, it is pointing in the direction where a cropduster regularly crashes I was standing next to it... As I spoke of before the Cropduster is related to "jetstream" "a tree in the jet stream" as it is what is used to spray the crops, using a jet stream to push out the chemicals. You will note the cropduster crashes in a little stream, it happens to crash in that area if you wait, but I am not sure if it will happen 100% of the time, it will crash 100% just not sure in that spot but I have seen it about 5 times in a row of testing (along long time ago). That's all I have regarding this I thought I would mention.

Great list! Probably a lot of duplicates and "well-knowns", but here's is a list of what I consider "Super-Gems". Sure you'll find some stuff... 30STM - The Kill A Tribe Called Quest - Award Tour A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation Aaliyah - One In a Million Ace of Base - All That She Wants Aerosmith - Last Child Akon - Locked Up Alanis Morissette - Head Over Feet Aldo Nova - Fantasy Beach Boys - Good Vibrations Bee Gees - Night Fever Chaka Khan - Aint Nobody CKY - Familiar Realm CKY - Frenetic Amnesic Culture Club - Time David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust Def Leppard - Photograph Disturbed - Stricken Dokken - Jaded Heart Duran Duran - Hungry like the Wolf Duran Duran - Rio Eminem - Soldier Flyleaf - All Around Me Foreigner - Hot Blooded Fort Minor - Red To Black Frankie Valli - Grease Garth Brooks - The Dance Gerry Rafferty - Right Down the Line Guano Apes - Break The Line Guano Apes - You Can't Stop Me Guns N Roses - Rocket Queen Guns N Roses - Sweet Child O Mine Gunship - Pink Mist Hall & Oates - Maneater Hall & Oates - Out of Touch Howard Jones - Things Can Only Get Better Iron Maiden - Powerslave Journey - Stone In Love Kavinsky - Odd Look Kid Rock - American Bad Ass KoRn - Narcissistic Can Lady Gaga - Marry the Night Lady Gaga - Sexxx Dreams Lana Del Rey - Born To Die Lana Del Rey - West Coast Mariah Carey - Honey Megadeth - A Tout Le Monde Megadeth - Angry Again Men At Work - Down Under Metallica - Sanitarium Michael J - Human Nature Michael J - P.Y.T. MJ - Rock With You Motley Crue - Too Young to Fall In Love Mötley Crüe - Danger Mötley Crüe - Looks That Kill Mudvayne - Forget To Remember Nelly Furtado - Promiscuous Girl Nirvana - Lounge Act Nothing More - Jenny Oingo Boingo - Just Another Day Olivia Newton John - Magic Ozzy - Believer Ozzy - Diary of a Madman Pantera - A New Level Pantera - Cowboys From Hell Paramore - Decode Pat Benatar - Hell is for Children Ratt - Lay it down Richard Marx - Shouldve Known Better Rihanna - Umbrella Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter Rolling Stones - HeartBreaker Scorpions - Always Somewhere Scorpions - Rock You Like A Hurricane Sebastian Bach - Kicking And Screaming Sia - Chandelier Skid Row - 18 and Life Skid Row - Forever Sleeping With Sirens - Fire Superhumanoids - Come Say Hello Superhumanoids - So Strange Survivor - Burning Heart Sweet - Love Is Like Oxygen Tesla - Cry Tesla - Modern Day Cowboy The Darkness - Love Is Only A Feeling The Prodigy - The Day Is My Enemy

The devs hinted at a new normal balanced Saints Row game which will propobly be a reboot, so we might get that.

It's going to be pretty difficult to rival Rockstar since they used to have such a dedicated work ethic. Even for GTA V's map, you can see just how far they're willing to push the envelope. The detail is very impressive. IMO that's what every other open world game that tries to feed off of GTA lacks, polish. It seems only Rockstar can truly build these amazing universes, with their own brands and everything. I really like Saints Row 2, but my god does the world feel bland. Just copy and paste everywhere. We can only hope some studio out there is ready to work hard as hell because it's going to be tough to take over Rockstar.