Bluring the lines

[freshlaundryX]

It has been stated that GTA IV will blur the lines between what would be considered a "mission" and what isn't a mission. So previously, when accepting a 'job' for someone the game world would then reduce itself to a similar but limited-version of the world where mission-related pieces were moved into place for you (i.e. attackers now cover a mansion that was previously empty), your HUD guides you to where you are needed to participate, and pieces related to starting other non-related missions would be removed or disabled so that you couldn't get distracted along the way. These are the sleight-of-hand tricks that R* uses to make a seemingly free-flowing game in a pony farming sandbox environment and we are all familiar with the tricks.

 

Types of "Standard" Missions:

* Timed - Race from Point A to Point B (car, boat, heli, etc.)

* Catch - Catch up with Person A who is running away

* Escort - Keep VIP alive from Point A to Point B

* Fetch - Go get Objects A, B, and/or C

* Slayer - Kill Person A or Group A

* Sabotage - Arm a car with a bomb and place it somewhere without it going off prematurely

* Survivor - Either protect yourself or a vehicle from wave after wave of attackers or police

* Girlfriend - OBEY, escort gf, find a restaurant

* Territories - Protect a certain area or take over a certain area

* Dolphin - A potpourri of activities; jump through various hoops in various locations

* Gauntlet - Make it through a linear pathway (building layout, etc.) to the end whilst being attacked from all sides

* RC Mission - Do something annoying over and over again until you start losing your hair

* Boss Battle - Fight one particularly powerful dude, sometimes by analyzing for an obvious environmental weakness and exploiting it

 

(Can you think of any more?)

 

With the new mission-blurred GTA IV I assume that we will be able to mix and match missions such as these; for instance, in the middle of a race I may pass by a man in a banana costume that I was hired to kill and I may choose to drive off and kill him, forfeiting the race. I could be escorting someone to safety, but I might pick up a parcel of weapons on the way if they were near-by, thus completing two missions with one trip. That sort of thing.

 

For instance, we've already heard about one mission (assassinating the lawyer) being put on hold whilst the application is processed and allowing Nico to pursue another mission (killing memory stick guy) during the down-time. To me, this is not a clear-cut case of open-ended missions. It could be that missions now have several steps (Step 1. Submit Resume, Step 2. Get Suit, etc.) and that a player can flit back and forth between the inner steps of missions.

 

For really open-ended you need to think about gaming in a different way and I'm pretty sure R* has done this to give us a totally new experience.

 

Here are some truly open-ended mission ideas that I can come up with. Feel free to add your own:

 

* A friend of yours has a money-making scheme, but he needs a $3000 investment to pull it off. If he makes any money he intends to give you your investment back + half (if he f*cks up, you get nothing obviously). You can choose to get him the money or not. Once given the money he will attempt to pull off the scheme -- if you intervene and push the odds in your favor (i.e. killing a potential competitor) then so be it. Or you could just sit back and see what happens -- all the better if the results of his plan were not set in stone and were determined randomly by the game. Adding an element of randomness would take balls as a developer to do. R* sized balls.

 

* There is a serial killer loose and Roman's sister is absolutely terrified. You keep hearing reports on the news and sometimes when you *cough* borrow police cars you hear it on the radio. The killer has been sighted stalking the area around central park in the middle of the night. Find him and kill him or leave him alone -- up to you. You can basically ignore this "mission" until you find a seedy character stalking around, or you can actively search for the guy.

 

* You hear about a cargo ship carrying illegal prostitutes (slaves) from Thailand being shipped into the docks on October 15th, 2007 at 3am. There are going to be about 25 guys protecting the shipment so this is not something you should do alone or without a plan. If you are there on-time you can witness the event, stop the event, get a group together and kill all the bad guys and free the girls. If you are busy that night or doing something else, the event takes place without you even knowing or caring. There may be consequences down the line, but the mission itself is 'optional' and requires you knowing where and when to be. You can choose to intervene as they are awaiting the ship, as they are making the transaction, or after they receive the shipment of girls -- or you could watch it take place through binoculars, but never jump out of your hiding spot. Up to you.

 

* The mayor is known to have a girlfriend on the side. A reporter you know will give you $300 bucks for a quality photo, $500 if they are doing cocaine in the picture. He's known to use the Hownow Johnson's on J street as a secret rendezvous location, sometimes they use the penthouse in the Coif Towers on M street. Take it or leave it.

 

* There is a paranoid geezer named Avery Fontane who has holed himself up in an office building and surrounded himself with security guards, bullet-proof glass, and any other protective measures he can think of. He has absolutely locked himself down because he is terrified of getting assassinated. He should be - many people want him dead. If you can find a way to get rid of him there will be people lining up to give you future contracts.

 

* Uncle Eddie has a cousin locked up in the prison in Jersey. If you could bust the guy out he'd give you a huge discount on future merchandise. How you do it is up to you, just make sure you don't have police tailing you when you return to Eddie's hideout.

 

 

In my mind, 'take it or leave it' missions are pretty open ended. Specific-time missions (be here at a particular place and time) would also be pretty open ended. It would be better if the results of these things actually had in-game consequences and if the conclusion could go either way regardless whether you participate or not (though your participation could influence the odds.) If the game knows you've encountered a particular mission set-up, then it could feed you more information when you talk to people ("So I hear you are trying to break someone out of San Turdadino? Well I know where you can get some guard uniforms...")

 

The question I do have will be if the phone will have the "checklist" -- the list of missions we've seen in WoW, Mass Effect, and other games that we obsessive compulsive types just have to follow to the letter, checking off every one. The checklist is certainly helpful to people that may be so stoned they forget what to do, or so ADHD they skip cutscenes, or so dumb that they have no ability to infer gameplay hints from player dialog. But, I can also see checklists limiting the kind of open-ended, is-it-a-mission-or-isn't-it type of missions I'm talking about. Do you really want a checklist item for the example above "investigate serial-killer" -- it isn't your job, it has little to do with you unless you want it to, you certainly don't need to have anything to do with it and it may get resolved without your participation -- so should it really be on your checklist?

 

This is the kind of stuff I'd be thinking about if I was at R*.

 

People are ready for open-ended gameplay and R* can truly change the world of gaming with GTA IV if they stay as far away as possible from the tedious jumping-through-hoops style missions as possible. Assassin's Creed proved very well, you can't just give someone a huge open-ended sandbox, put cat turds in it (that all have the same lines), and call it a complete pony-farming game -- we need the shovels and buckets and tools to shape our world. And we want our decisions to change the world around us in a deep and meaningful way, not just affecting cut scene Dialog Line 231-A to 231-B.

 

Thanks.

Edited January 16, 2008 by freshlaundryX

[Norway's_GTA_ambassador]

You have some good ideas there

[Jobbie]

ZOMG

 

word count on that bad boy!!

 

You should have published a book instead of using the forums

[Co3y]

Ha Ha i agree, Good ideas

 

[Jimmarn]

cool, i think the missions in GTA IV will be awsome compared to the old ones... just reading about that u Track down a guy, call him to see who answers and just shoot him.

That sound's awsome..

[CookPassBabtridge]

It does sound a nice step upwards for missions. I wonder how much instruction there is this time around? If there were tasks like the one just mentioned, but without so much prompting as previously, it could really bump up the replay value, finding out different solutions

[freshlaundryX]

(Sorry about the length. I take the future of gameplay very seriously.)

 

Exactly! Replayability.

 

Also, if there are timed missions (be there at 12am) and you don't show up -- then in a replay you could also be sure to check that one out to see what's up. I would also like the ability to FAIL missions and have that be taken into consideration. What if, instead of try-die-try-die-try-die-pass, you might try-fail and that's it -- consequences would happen because you failed and you would not be able to replay that particular mission again. Next time you play a new game you might win that mission, but this time you did not and you have to live with the consequences of that (unless you load an old game).

 

If I had a shot at making a game I would give myself one objective: make it almost impossible for anyone to write a game-guide about it. If making a strategy guide for your game is easy, then you know you have a formulaic game. The future of gaming is breaking all the formulas.

 

[CookPassBabtridge]

The only thing that bothers me a little is that fact that there are timed missions at all. It could work against the freedom thing. Unless the game is structured so the main story has tons of branches; in the past ive been frustrated with having to wait 12 game hours just to re attempt.

 

If it doesnt matter about failing (which Fresh Laundry touched on) and you can still progress with something, then its ok.

[Jimmarn]

 

(Sorry about the length. I take the future of gameplay very seriously.)

 

Exactly! Replayability.

 

Also, if there are timed missions (be there at 12am) and you don't show up -- then in a replay you could also be sure to check that one out to see what's up. I would also like the ability to FAIL missions and have that be taken into consideration. What if, instead of try-die-try-die-try-die-pass, you might try-fail and that's it -- consequences would happen because you failed and you would not be able to replay that particular mission again. Next time you play a new game you might win that mission, but this time you did not and you have to live with the consequences of that (unless you load an old game).

 

If I had a shot at making a game I would give myself one objective: make it almost impossible for anyone to write a game-guide about it. If making a strategy guide for your game is easy, then you know you have a formulaic game. The future of gaming is breaking all the formulas.

well.. i'm not really into that replay thing of yours... i think that'll make many ppl miss the cool missions...

 

 

The only thing that bothers me a little is that fact that there are timed missions at all. It could work against the freedom thing. Unless the game is structured so the main story has tons of branches; in the past ive been frustrated with having to wait 12 game hours just to re attempt.

 

If it doesnt matter about failing (which Fresh Laundry touched on) and you can still progress with something, then its ok.

hmm well i think that's pretty cool actually... and u can do missions while youre waiting for the exact time to do the other...

[LunaticBrandon]

the missions r not like regular missions. there r no opening scenes to them and you dont have to be stuck to just one at a time. I also beleive there will be little to no scences in the game because in a preview where u kill a lawyer during the meeting it is in game.

 

PS to whoever keeps pming me i dont work for R*

[Coral_City]

(Sorry about the length. I take the future of gameplay very seriously.)

 

Exactly! Replayability.

 

Also, if there are timed missions (be there at 12am) and you don't show up -- then in a replay you could also be sure to check that one out to see what's up. I would also like the ability to FAIL missions and have that be taken into consideration. What if, instead of try-die-try-die-try-die-pass, you might try-fail and that's it -- consequences would happen because you failed and you would not be able to replay that particular mission again. Next time you play a new game you might win that mission, but this time you did not and you have to live with the consequences of that (unless you load an old game).

 

If I had a shot at making a game I would give myself one objective: make it almost impossible for anyone to write a game-guide about it. If making a strategy guide for your game is easy, then you know you have a formulaic game. The future of gaming is breaking all the formulas.

I don't know if you remember in GTAIII... but...

 

SPOILER ALERT:

 

Once you got far into Staunton Island, you'd have two people you get missions from. Kenji and Donald Love. Now, if you hadn't completed ALL the missions for Kenji, then there was the ability to kill him. During, "Wakagashira Wipeout" you're ordered to simply run Kenji over -- and if you still had him as a Boss, well, no 100% there!

 

But it was sorta cool. Totally didn't expect that one.

 

SPOILER DONE.

 

So, I'm hoping GTA4 would be something like this, that way, you're not blazing through missions like that and then bitchin' about "The game's so short!"

[freshlaundryX]

I would love something like that. Complexity!

 

Somebody might ask the forum, "In GTA IV, how do I get the ______ from Mr. ____?"

And the answer won't be as simple as, "You need to shoot the guy with the hat and then run behind the boxes before the car bursts through the wall."

 

It might be more like, "Well if you killed ____, then the guy with the hat won't be there. If he is there, you can ____, but if he isn't then you need to _____. Or you can just wait till the meeting is over and cap him on the way to his car."

 

Terrible example, but you get the idea. A complex sequence of events leading up to different ways that something could play out. That shows that a game company has really thought things through and it takes true love and dedication to give the player such a rich experience rather than taking the easy way out and doing a standard A->B mission. R* loves us like that -- I hopes.

 

 

[gamefarter]

I started a topic on this sort of thing a while ago that can be found here: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=294359&hl=

 

Here is a copy of what I wrote to start the topic:

 

 

I created this topic to discuss the different ways that Rockstar might allow us to complete each mission. Since we only know of two missions, I will use these as examples.

 

In the first mission, where we have to call somebody's cell phone to identify them as our target, I can see it a couple scenarios where we could do this differently than described by the magazines.

Suppose, instead we just took a rocket launcher and started killing as many people as possible, hoping to kill him in the process, this would actually probably work.

Or maybe we could call him, to identify him, and wait for him to leave, and then kill him when there are no witnesses. This would work if Rockstar programs him to leave after waiting a certain amount of time, and drive somewhere secluded. I wouldn't put it past Rockstar to think of something like this when considering different ways to allow the player to do missions.

 

 

In the second mission with Goldberg, I can also think of a couple scenarios where we could do this differently than described by the magazines.

In the first scenario, we decide not buy a nice suit, but instead, we show up to the interview is some street clothes. Now, because we still have an appointment for the interview, we can still get into the building, because the secretary will still ring us in the door. But I'd bet we be stopped by security before getting to Goldberg, having to kill them first, making the mission more difficult yet not impossible.

Now for the second scenario, I have to mention that I recall, one of the magazines went through the missions twice and in the second round, escaped out the window onto the fire escape, and made a flee for safety, and avoiding the firefight, which always resulted in Niko’s death. This makes me think it might be possible after setting up an interview time with Goldberg, perhaps Rockstar would allow the possibility to break into the building through this window and kill Goldberg in his office, allowing us to save two-grand on a nice new suit, that we don't really need, and possibly even a wanted level at all.

 

Just some ideas I was thinking about and wanted to share them with the community.

If you have any ideas of your own like this, let me know what you think, post away.

Your comments are appreciated.

 

 

 

Imagine that, after we recieved instructions to kill Goldberg, we decide to case the building, and discover that near the top of the fire escape, there is a window that is breakable, and can be used as an entrance inside. You decide to try to enter this way when you setup an interview (that way you know Goldberg will be there) Also, what if you were just robbed, and don't have enough money to buy a suit? The game's mission would be flexible enough to alow different ways to accomplish the task of killing Goldberg.

And actually the way the mission plays out in the magazine is easy as shooting someone at point-blank range, so to have to play it that same way every time would get borring, at least to me. So, the idea here is not to say that one way is more boring than the other, but to speculate about different possible ways of completing the missions that would make the game immensely more varied in possibilities, giving the player more control over how to accomplish tasks.

 

I also like the sniping idea, provided there was a challenge involved in finding, and getting to a good vantage point.

 

Edited January 17, 2008 by gamefarter

[Ak4tsevEn]

I think we have a certain somone working with Rockstar on this thread *cough, cough*...not me!

[frankie123]

I like the ideas from the first post, but i do have a problem with missions being timed. it wouldnt be such a big deal if you had like a week to prepare for a major story line mission, but i like to do my own thing, if only a few of the main story missions are specific date that would be really cool, having like 2 hours to get as much information about a job, then you gotta do it or miss it and miss a major story point.

 

You know what we need? we need thrills along with open end. I just finished mass effect, for the second time, i played the game completely different, and you know what? no real difference. It was sooooo boring. Yeah, it was different, ya it was big, ya it was epic, but it was boring. GTA needs to be interesting. Mass effect nailed sandbox well, but completely missed the mark on the part.

 

and thats my rambling for the night.