Hardware & Map Size

[E-lasto]

Now let's just say GTA V's rendition of San Andreas only takes place in Los Santos. Now, obviously, the masses are gonna' feel cheated about the lack of LS and LV.. And rightfully so, in my opinion (Because let's be honest. In GTA III's SA, we had 3 full cities. So why, on new hardware and the franchise's fifth major installment, is GTA V's SA taking a step back?) It really doesn't make sense, and I believe Rockstar is smarter then that. Especially if this is supposed to be their most ambitious title yet..

 

So, 

 

Let's just get crazy and use our imagination for a minute.. What if V takes place in Los Santos, and Vice City? It'd certainly be a terrific way to wrap up this generation of GTA; Seeing as how most people wanted either SA or VC. 

 

Now, the power of our current hardware has been pushed damn well near its limits, there's no doubt there.. So it's fully understandable if creating SA in all it's glory is maybe a little impossible at this time. Well, at least in one seamless map.

 

So here's my suggestion, seeing as developers are utilizing multiple discs and HDD installs to stream information to the system while running games (IE- Dice with Battlefield 3) 

 

GTA V releases on two discs!

 

- Disc one, (Main Disc) runs the game, and Los Santos.  

- Disc two installs Vice City's assets to your HDD.

 

Now, this is how I'd imagine it to work in-game:

 

The two cities would be separate islands, divided by a large body of water accessible by either boat or plane. Now, when you get far enough out, the game isn't going to have to worry about much other then water.. So it could remove the previously loaded city from its memory. Next, as you get closer to your destination, the game could then pull all the next cities data from the disc/HDD and load it up before you arrive, and hopefully without any need for a load screen!

 

What do you lads think? 

[Gomack]

I suppose it's possible.

 

I still don't understand why people are not satisfied though. V's Los Santos is going to be much bigger than all 3 SA cities rolled into 1. Add to that the surrounding areas of so-cal (mountains, beaches, forests, small towns) and we're already looking at an epically large map.

[ccrogers15]

my idea for hard ware:

 

ps3: its fine. It uses high end 50GB blu rays.

360: 2 disks and requires a hard drive to play. Everything needs to install.

PC: 2 disks.

 

-----------

Downloadable content:

 

2 Episodes. 1 that possibly brings you over to san fierro and 1 that brings you to las venturas.

 

---------------

Cool content:

 

If you own gta iv and have the game on your hard drive for ps3,360 or pc, you can go to the airport in gta 5 and you can pick LC. It will detect if you have the gta IV game on the hard disk and load the LC map and let you visit LC. Love that idea.

[Ryan4Twenty]

my idea for hard ware:

 

ps3: its fine. It uses high end 50GB blu rays.

360: 2 disks and requires a hard drive to play. Everything needs to install.

PC: 2 disks.

 

-----------

Downloadable content:

 

2 Episodes. 1 that possibly brings you over to san fierro and 1 that brings you to las venturas.

 

---------------

Cool content:

 

If you own gta iv and have the game on your hard drive for ps3,360 or pc, you can go to the airport in gta 5 and you can pick LC. It will detect if you have the gta IV game on the hard disk and load the LC map and let you visit LC. Love that idea.

Purchasing it through steam wouldn't require 2 disks. Just one bigass download.

[sgn12345]

[sabbathfan]

I suppose it's possible.

 

I still don't understand why people are not satisfied though. V's Los Santos is going to be much bigger than all 3 SA cities rolled into 1. Add to that the surrounding areas of so-cal (mountains, beaches, forests, small towns) and we're already looking at an epically large map.

Put simply, I really hope Los Santos is not that big. What are they going to put in the city to make it fun that they couldn't put in a smaller one? At the end of the day we'll be driving around getting lost like it's LA Noire all over again if it's that big. Scale is important in a game like GTA, but so is variety. Cities should never be too big in games. There's not an infinite amount of sh*t to fill them with so you end up with thousands of unenterable buildings that serve no purpose whatsoever.

[archey]

My thoughts exactly.

 

Just because its a new generation of consoles (THAT ARE 5 YEARS OLD?) does not mean if can be bigger than the San Andreas that was released in 2004, there are many factors, not just disc space.

 

1. Memory with such a big map, on such old systems is a problem.

 

A. The older systems can't handle such a big map(with all the vehicles, peds, graphics, etc) going on all at once, on a newer engine. Sure they'll cache lots of it, but enough for it to still look good, but that doesn't fix the problem of 5 year old consoles vs. a pretty new engine. Now PCs could run the newer engine fine on an updated San Andreas map(if you have a beast system).

 

tl;dr: consoles don't have enough memory for an updated 2004 San Andreas map