Tell me whats Wrong with just having Southern Cali

[skillz7855]

Also...does anyone remember the first San Andreas trailer?

 

Did you see any of LV or SF in it??

 

Lets not jump to conclusions about what WE DONT KNOW

because we are all talking as if we know the facts and we don't

know sh*t

exact quote from rockstar

 

 

We are very proud to officially announce that Grand Theft Auto V is in full development.

 

Developed by series creator Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto V heads to the city of Los Santos and surrounding hills, countryside and beaches in the largest and most ambitious game Rockstar has yet created.

 

A bold new direction in open-world freedom, storytelling, mission-based gameplay and online multiplayer, Grand Theft Auto V focuses on the pursuit of the almighty dollar in a re-imagined, present day Southern California.

[Killer.Khan]

Nothing's wrong with it. People on here are just stupid.

[chokeslamcena]

I think one of the biggest problems, is that people are just generally fed up of being stuck in a boring old dull and dreary city.

 

Liberty City was fantastic, but the city got boring after a while, and now that we're being given, what is essentially the same thing again, but with an extra bit of mountain to keep us happy, people at least want to have a bit of variety on the map.

 

 

If most of it is just gonna be a load of empty space, then I don't really care how big the map is. The great thing about the three different cities was that each had it's own vibe or feel to it, so being able to move from one to the other kept the game fresh and enjoyable. Another jam packed city isn't at all appealing. It really looks like Rockstar just wanted to make an LA for themselves, and decided to chuck a bit of extra mountain space in there because people were saying they wanted open spaces to roam around.

 

Monotony has set in.

[sabbathfan]

I just don't understand why, of all the cities they could have done, they would choose to do one that everyone associates with a three city game. They could've done Vice (after all it's been longer since they did a main game in Vice City than Los Santos). They could have made a completely new city based on Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, Denver, New Orleans.

 

There are loads of places that have never been, or barely been, utilised in games.

 

But of all the places they could pick, they go for the one that will obviously make people ask "Is the rest of San Andreas there?"

 

It just seems like an odd choice.

[Rede]

 

what if Rock* kept doing NY, MIA, LA, NY, LA... MIA, LA, NY... blah blah blah... DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!!!!!

Now that New York has been "done justice" I'd like to think we won't be going back there again, at least for a very long time.

[Halo_Override]

I just don't understand why, of all the cities they could have done, they would choose to do one that everyone associates with a three city game. They could've done Vice (after all it's been longer since they did a main game in Vice City than Los Santos). They could have made a completely new city based on Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, Denver, New Orleans.

 

There are loads of places that have never been, or barely been, utilised in games.

 

But of all the places they could pick, they go for the one that will obviously make people ask "Is the rest of San Andreas there?"

 

It just seems like an odd choice.

I'm going to indulge myself by quoting my answer to this that I wrote much earlier, rather than retyping/summarizing it yet again...

 

- - - - -

 

Until and unless Rockstar radically changes what the GTA games are about and how they're evolving, there is no new Vice City game to be made.

 

Miami is only relevant from an 80s cocaine-mythology perspective. What are they going to do, have more Miami Vice suits in different colors from before? New Scarface references? More Phil Collins songs? You can only tell the same story so many times.

 

If in the future they decide they want to get even more serious with the storytelling style, and focus less on the mixed slapstick/dirty-words lampooning, but more consistently on their subtler style of satirizing the American Dream, then they have the narrative flexibility to start dealing with deeper and less cartoonish stories in smaller American cities like Miami. But even then, places like San Francisco (60s counterculture), Las Vegas (the Mob and casinos), Houston (oil boom, border issues), Detroit (urban breakdown and renewal), Washington DC (politics of any era), New Orleans (Katrina aftermath), and even regions like the Pacific Northwest have a lot broader potential than Miami, which had exactly one already-used noteworthy historical period.

 

Conversely, if they want to keep going bigger and grander, while still staying in an English environment, they pretty much only have London to move on to, and that means leaving the critiques of American culture behind and taking on some new themes.

 

Think about it -- Rockstar knows there's a big San Andreas fanbase and a big Vice City fanbase, and when it was time to think about V, they chose San Andreas. Los Angeles has resonance in any historical era that also has automobiles. Miami has resonance in the 80s, period. Do people really think Rockstar didn't consider this?

 

I get that some people love Vice City, but Rockstar isn't going to spend years of effort and millions of development dollars on a fanservice project that could completely derail the financial future of their company.

 

I'd love to read some concrete ideas about how they could make a viable new game set in a newly-designed Miami-based setting, rather than another bunch of content-free posts repeating "V Y U NO VICE CITY?" Who knows, since Rockstar almost certainly poke their heads in here from time to time, maybe the Vice fans could actually do something that might spark a new viable game idea rather than just complaining that Rockstar doesn't know how to make a GTA game properly.

 

For anyone still not getting my point, I offer this... the Miami Wikipedia page, unlike the pages for many other cities, has no section discussing contemporary crime or social problems. But they have this:

 

 

In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Miami "America's Cleanest City", for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets and city-wide recycling programs.

 

There aren't enough David Caruso jokes in the world to make a contemporary Vice City game work.

 

I post this not to anger or depress people, but because I'm eager to be proven wrong.

[sabbathfan]

 

I just don't understand why, of all the cities they could have done, they would choose to do one that everyone associates with a three city game. They could've done Vice (after all it's been longer since they did a main game in Vice City than Los Santos). They could have made a completely new city based on Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, Denver, New Orleans.

 

There are loads of places that have never been, or barely been, utilised in games.

 

But of all the places they could pick, they go for the one that will obviously make people ask "Is the rest of San Andreas there?"

 

It just seems like an odd choice.

I'm going to indulge myself by quoting my answer to this that I wrote much earlier, rather than retyping/summarizing it yet again...

 

- - - - -

 

Until and unless Rockstar radically changes what the GTA games are about and how they're evolving, there is no new Vice City game to be made.

 

Miami is only relevant from an 80s cocaine-mythology perspective. What are they going to do, have more Miami Vice suits in different colors from before? New Scarface references? More Phil Collins songs? You can only tell the same story so many times.

 

If in the future they decide they want to get even more serious with the storytelling style, and focus less on the mixed slapstick/dirty-words lampooning, but more consistently on their subtler style of satirizing the American Dream, then they have the narrative flexibility to start dealing with deeper and less cartoonish stories in smaller American cities like Miami. But even then, places like San Francisco (60s counterculture), Las Vegas (the Mob and casinos), Houston (oil boom, border issues), Detroit (urban breakdown and renewal), Washington DC (politics of any era), New Orleans (Katrina aftermath), and even regions like the Pacific Northwest have a lot broader potential than Miami, which had exactly one already-used noteworthy historical period.

 

Conversely, if they want to keep going bigger and grander, while still staying in an English environment, they pretty much only have London to move on to, and that means leaving the critiques of American culture behind and taking on some new themes.

 

Think about it -- Rockstar knows there's a big San Andreas fanbase and a big Vice City fanbase, and when it was time to think about V, they chose San Andreas. Los Angeles has resonance in any historical era that also has automobiles. Miami has resonance in the 80s, period. Do people really think Rockstar didn't consider this?

 

I get that some people love Vice City, but Rockstar isn't going to spend years of effort and millions of development dollars on a fanservice project that could completely derail the financial future of their company.

 

I'd love to read some concrete ideas about how they could make a viable new game set in a newly-designed Miami-based setting, rather than another bunch of content-free posts repeating "V Y U NO VICE CITY?" Who knows, since Rockstar almost certainly poke their heads in here from time to time, maybe the Vice fans could actually do something that might spark a new viable game idea rather than just complaining that Rockstar doesn't know how to make a GTA game properly.

 

For anyone still not getting my point, I offer this... the Miami Wikipedia page, unlike the pages for many other cities, has no section discussing contemporary crime or social problems. But they have this:

 

 

In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Miami "America's Cleanest City", for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets and city-wide recycling programs.

 

There aren't enough David Caruso jokes in the world to make a contemporary Vice City game work.

 

I post this not to anger or depress people, but because I'm eager to be proven wrong.

Okay, say I accept that a contemporary Miami wouldn't work as well as contemporary LA, that leaves dozens of cities. Writing them off the way you have ignores the fact that the whole western world, not just LA, is going through this financial downturn. You could tell that story in just about any American city. It's happening everywhere.

 

From what we know this isn't about a movie star. That's the one profession that you'd NEED to be in LA to make sense.

 

Quoting from the Wikipedia page of the city, which in all likelihood is edited by people working for the city government who have tourism to think about, isn't really helping your point. Say I brought crime statistics into this?

 

http://miamifl.areaconnect.com/crime/compa...s+Angeles&s2=CA

 

You'll see there that as of 2006 Miami had a higher rate of all crimes other than rape (the one crime I would guess would never appear in a GTA) than Los Angeles.

 

Now things can change in 5 years, but to the point that it would become irrelevant?

 

Just because all YOU know of Miami is from Scarface and Miami Vice doesn't mean that the city is not relevant any more

 

And next time you reply to me actually try replying to me. Most of that wasn't even a response to what I was saying and it seemed as if you never read it at all, but just saw the words Vice City and pasted a load of bollocks.

Edited November 6, 2011 by sabbathfan

[Staten]

 

I post this not to anger or depress people, but because I'm eager to be proven wrong.

If you were so eager, you shouldn't have used such a good argument.

[Killer.Khan]

I was thinking a mix of California/Mexico would be awesome. Have the drug cartels situated in the EXTREMELY volatile Cuidad- Juarez. Work with the Cartels, Mob, Street thugs. Crooked cops/government officials you name it!

 

You could have 2 borders, the Texas and California one. The game takes place in both Mexico and CA.

[EscoLehGo]

I was thinking a mix of California/Mexico would be awesome. Have the drug cartels situated in the EXTREMELY volatile Cuidad- Juarez. Work with the Cartels, Mob, Street thugs. Crooked cops/government officials you name it!

 

You could have 2 borders, the Texas and California one. The game takes place in both Mexico and CA.

man, i'm almost certain mexico will play a big part in this game, i hope we can venture into bordertowns like back in rdr

[Halo_Override]

I post this not to anger or depress people, but because I'm eager to be proven wrong.

If you were so eager, you shouldn't have used such a good argument.

(hat tip)

[Darrel]

I have no problem with it. It gives them a oppurtunity to really nail LA.

[Long_Haired_Boy]

Southern Cali? Overated?

 

But Rockstar knows what there doing with LA. They had 2 trys already.

[BTNH]

If Los Santos is divided into 3 islands or so by countryside, I probably won't mind. As long as I feel like I have the freedom and adventure of exploring somewhere new. I would rather have a huge city divided by rural areas than a massive clusterf*ck surrounded by a strip of field.

[CryptReaperDorian]

 

A million other games have already made a very detailed or a scaled (one of realistic size) Los Angeles.  The same goes for Las Vegas.  I really think the game needs to have multiple cities so it doesn't seem like a slightly better remake of a million older games.  I'd say this is where GTA SA did great since you were able to travel to other cities if you got bored of just one city.  Hell, you didn't even need to be in a city!

and how many of them where open world and freedom like GTA

The majority of them were sandbox or open world games. True Crimes: Streets of L.A., L.A. Noire, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles are just a few examples. Just like NYC and Las Vegas, Los Angeles has been overdone in sandbox and open world games. That's one reason why I don't want to have only Los Angeles. Besides, what good would the countryside and desert be if they didn't head anywhere? I don't want rural areas only on the outskirts of the map.

 

EDIT: I agree with BTNH. If we have one city, then parts of the city better be separated by rural areas and bridges. In my opinion, the day that the map is just a single island is the day that GTA dies. I always liked having to unlock other islands through story progression in previous GTAs.

Edited November 6, 2011 by CryptReaperDorian

[urbanfire]

You've answered your own question in the title. What's wrong with having just south cali? Yeh, because its just cali.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love GTA and will be getting the game. But as I opened the trailer for the first time, I was expecting a new mindblowingly exotic place for GTA. So when I saw LS, I said "oh, San Andreas again." But then I smiled and thought well atleast I get to go to LV and the desert again.

 

Apparently not. It's just Los Santos, a city that RockStar has done 4 times now in different iterations. If you want a detailed modern los angeles, go play Midnight CLub LA, because they do a pretty good next gen job on replicating LA. If you want an old 1940s style, play LA noire.

 

We all wanted a new location. Not just a remake of Midnight CLub. Seriously people, Midnight CLub was a huge sprawling city, and I hate to think how similar GTA V will be. The only thing I'm looking forward to is the countryside and mountains, it was a place I wanted to drive through when I played RDR.

[Algonquin Assassin]

 

We all wanted a new location. Not just a remake of Midnight CLub. Seriously people, Midnight CLub was a huge sprawling city, and I hate to think how similar GTA V will be.

I don't understand this argument. Midnight Club: LA was a racing game. We couldn't get out and explore the city ourselves. If anything it offered a completely different experience to what GTA V is likely to be.

 

Another thing to remember is Midnight Club: LA was a GPS representation of real life LA. LS is a fictional city based on LA.

 

Two qualities that set them apart. It's not going to be Midnight Club: LA's map recycled for GTA V.

[Turin88]

 

Here's what's wrong:

 

A) The thing that made San Andreas so great was the combination of all cities - not just one.

 

B) People say quality over quantity is a good tradeoff, but after GTA IV, I don't exactly trust in Rockstar's ability to do just one city, and do it well.

 

C) Excessive mirroring of real world locations is boring. If I wanted to see California, i'd go there. What I want from GTA is loose, slightly over-the-top parodies of real locations.

[CheesyJ]

There's nothing wrong with it, but many who played San Andreas would feel as if the game just isn't the same withoutb LV and SF. To them, the fantastic map of SA wasn't brilliant because of any particular city, but because of all three collectively. Then, they struggle to get their head around the idea of a GTA game without two of those areas and to them, it just doesn't feel the same.

[SchizNitz]

I think some people are forgetting that its LOS SANTOS NOT LOS ANGELES!

[shinsta312]

Many people are stuck in the III era mindset, so they think that the map will be a direct copy/paste of 2004's San Andreas, only with San Fierro and Venturas cropped out.

That pretty much sums up the answer to the OP's question.

[CheesyJ]

I think some people are forgetting that its LOS SANTOS NOT LOS ANGELES!

Still, at the end of the day, Los Santos is basically based off of Los Angeles. If there was no such city in existence in America, then we wouldn't have Los Santos in the game, would we?

[Algonquin Assassin]

 

B) People say quality over quantity is a good tradeoff, but after GTA IV, I don't exactly trust in Rockstar's ability to do just one city, and do it well.

 

What was wrong with LC? IMO up until now it's still the best singular city R* have created for GTA.

[annie_himself]

Because we have 50 f*cking states, not 3. That's why.

 

And no, LA/Cali doesn't represent the US and damn sure doesn't represent me.

 

 

[Turin88]

B) People say quality over quantity is a good tradeoff, but after GTA IV, I don't exactly trust in Rockstar's ability to do just one city, and do it well.

 

What was wrong with LC? IMO up until now it's still the best singular city R* have created for GTA.

To me it felt like too much of an empty shell. Everything looked nice on the outside, but there were next to no buildings you could actually go inside of. Size and diversity were traded off, without getting enough back in return in my opinion...

[VaroSpain]

This is not San Andreas 2 guys. This is GTA V. Rockstar is creating a new San Andreas, so it will most probably be totally different from the old San Andreas.

[CryptReaperDorian]

B) People say quality over quantity is a good tradeoff, but after GTA IV, I don't exactly trust in Rockstar's ability to do just one city, and do it well.

 

What was wrong with LC? IMO up until now it's still the best singular city R* have created for GTA.

I agree (actually it's one city along with a state), but here's the problem. There was no rural areas to get away from all of the concrete walls. Adding rural areas only on the outside of the map barely fixes anything since it serves just about no purpose. We need rural areas that actually lead somewhere. Also, if there is no separation of areas in Los Santos (like rural areas or bridges), then I'd say this would be R*'s worst map yet (no matter how big and detailed the map is). I love being able to unlock areas of the map that I can barely see from where I'm standing by story progression.

[sabbathfan]

I post this not to anger or depress people, but because I'm eager to be proven wrong.

If you were so eager, you shouldn't have used such a good argument.

(hat tip)

This is about as much a reply to my post as your last attempt was tbh.

[BTNH]

B) People say quality over quantity is a good tradeoff, but after GTA IV, I don't exactly trust in Rockstar's ability to do just one city, and do it well.

 

What was wrong with LC? IMO up until now it's still the best singular city R* have created for GTA.

I agree (actually it's one city along with a state), but here's the problem. There was no rural areas to get away from all of the concrete walls. Adding rural areas only on the outside of the map barely fixes anything since it serves just about no purpose. We need rural areas that actually lead somewhere. Also, if there is no separation of areas in Los Santos (like rural areas or bridges), then I'd say this would be R*'s worst map yet (no matter how big and detailed the map is). I love being able to unlock areas of the map that I can barely see from where I'm standing by story progression.

R* arn't dumb. They are without a doubt the greatest map developers, hell gaming developers in the industry. They would know all this and what makes sense and what doesn't. I'm sure they are not dumb enough to simply have a strip of country around the map.... atleast I sure as hell hope so

 

The map will either be divided up - already strong reasoning to suggest Terminal Island will be included as an example, with country in the middle.

 

The map is the whole San Andreas. Can't really be ruled out, despite the hardline views by fans on both sides of the "it's deff los santos, its deff san andreas"

[jackass2009]

Many people are stuck in the III era mindset, so they think that the map will be a direct copy/paste of 2004's San Andreas, only with San Fierro and Venturas cropped out.

I wish people understood that we aren't going back to the same Los Santos

This.