Formulaic Mission structures

[Guanxi]

One thing that really bugged me, that I've heard a lot of other people complaining about in GTA IV is the turn of some of the most formulaic and pedestrian attempts at missions, that I think we've ever seen in the history of the series - and it only seems to be getting more pronounced as the series is aging. Considering the potential of new hardware, I felt a little disinfatuated with the mission design in Grand Theft Auto IV at times. It was certainly not all bad. There were some very well designed, thought-provoking and original missions scattered throughout that that made very great use of the combat enhancements, but half the time it was like my copy of GTA IV was running on auto-pilot.

 

You know the type:

 

1. Drive to X

2. Chase X

3. Kill X (when they become magically uninvincible)

4. Escape from the cops

 

Repeat (sometimes with a slight twist)

 

I understand that we're dealing with "reality" now and that's what some criminals might *like* to do all day. I'm absolutely fine with no tanks, VTOLs or green goo but you can't just take all that stuff away and then add sometimes next to nothing to the "formula" in a lot of cases, except fixing that which shouldn't have been broken in the first place.

 

Despite the overblown nature of III-SA, when you discount the ridiculous and scratch beneath the surface *most* missions managed to hide the "formula" very well, GTA IV not so much. Anybody disagree? Is this intentional on R*'s part or is it this simply a byproduct of development time constraints unique to the development of GTA IV? and if so should we expect Rockstar to up the ante next time around and in what way?

 

Overall for mission design I'd say:

 

GTA III - B+

GTA: VC - A

GTA: SA - A+

GTA IV - C+/B

[Bul1etSp0nge]

Yeah san andreas had better missions. What happened to the crazy car chases were you would have to shoot while someone elese drived. Or where you buried a man alive while he was in a porta potty.

[El Zilcho]

I have to say I agree with you there. Although there are some really badass missions The Final Missions (Out of Comission, A Revernger's Tragedy) Truck Hustle, If the Price is Right, A Dish Served Cold, Deconstruction for Begginers, and most of all Three Leaf Clover But there are many better missions that I could think of out of my own head, and many featured in prveious GTA's that were genius.