White, Grey and Black

[Crumplet]

In GTA IV, a morality system was introduced to give a certain set of sequences including the decision to kill or not kill important characters, save this person or kill that person, etc, and I think GTA V will take this to a whole new level, every decision having devastating effects on the story and character development, bringing me to my main point:

 

Every decision you make shapes what kind of character the protagonist turns out to be and his reputation changes also, if you're the honest businessman who saves anyone he can in order to make his buck, you'll be recognized and treated as such, maybe you are a ruthless business man who doesn't take betrayal lightly, maybe you're an all out villain who will wipe out anyone who effects his business.

 

This would bring the game to a new level of customization.

[theworldfamous]

and a new level of headache for the writers and developers.

[John The Grudge]

I don't think it was that big of a thing in GTA IV to be honest. GTA isn't like Fallout or Mass Effect. The choices the player made in GTA IV were for the benefit of the player. They had little to no affect on Niko. What I mean is that you weren't shaping the character by the choices you made.

 

In games such as Fallout, the player character has no personality. It's an empty shell that will become a fleshed out character, shaped by the player's actions. In GTA the character is already written and fleshed out by the developer. There's no room for the player to project any sort of personality onto him. I'd like it to stay that way. GTA isn't an RPG.

Edited September 17, 2012 by John The Grudge

[Wayne Daniels]

I'm thinking the system from Red Dead Redemption was perfect. Thank god for the bandanna though, especially to cover jacks ugly mug

Edited September 17, 2012 by gta_aus

[aaronimpact]

I'm thinking the system from Red Dead Redemption was perfect. Thank god for the bandanna.

The thing about RDR was. It seemed liked the developers wanted you to be an honest citizen. If you got too much negative fame you would get given a diseased horse to ride.

[Wayne Daniels]

I'm thinking the system from Red Dead Redemption was perfect. Thank god for the bandanna.

The thing about RDR was. It seemed liked the developers wanted you to be an honest citizen. If you got too much negative fame you would get given a diseased horse to ride.

What! That horse was badass!

[Mokrie Dela]

I'm thinking the system from Red Dead Redemption was perfect. Thank god for the bandanna.

The thing about RDR was. It seemed liked the developers wanted you to be an honest citizen. If you got too much negative fame you would get given a diseased horse to ride.

Yeah being a badass simply didnt work in that game. I think the honor system was slapped on at the last minute.

 

I'm a big supporter in this system. It can work. You can be a cool guy and pull your punches, be a good guy, and perhaps the story will go down one route. But be a nutter and shoot everyone, and the story will go another.

 

the morality should be tracked - hurting people would take it down as with rdr, and if your morality is "bad" it would affect the missions and cutscenes. PErhaps if you're "bad" you'd be more direct and aggressive in the cutscenes, shouting and being more authoritive, but if you're "good" you'd be calmer and happily take orders.

 

The missions would vary only through mission actions though - do bad choices in the mission and the story changes one way etc.

 

 

HEadache for the writers - not really. Any writer would put the same effort into any story he/she writes. It would just lengthen dev time.

[H. León]

I would not like that, it's Grand Theft Auto! The way you treat people doesn't have to affect the whole story!

But what I would like is a similar system, that doesn't affect the story, a meter that shows how much you like certain gang of mob, that way you could work for them like the random events in RDR.

[Lock n' Stock]

 

I'm thinking the system from Red Dead Redemption was perfect. Thank god for the bandanna.

The thing about RDR was. It seemed liked the developers wanted you to be an honest citizen. If you got too much negative fame you would get given a diseased horse to ride.

The weird thing is that no matter how much of the "bad guy" you seemed in RDR, your personality would never be any different in cutscenes.

[Dick Justice]

Red Dead Redemption's Honor scale was a system that stretched from "Desperado" (Evil) to "Hero" (Good). A GTA protagonist should not be either of these things. Instead, the scale should revolve around how player's confront missions. Rather than being good or evil, our character should be different shades of grey.

 

Example: You are robbing a liquor store, you can shoot the teller to get out faster and avoid a police chase or you can hold him up until he gives you the money and risk being caught by the police. Both options are viable and both effect the player's morality despite one being far worse than the other.

 

In Mass Effect, Commander Sheppard can either be a Paragon or a Renegade. Both effect the type of character he is, yet neither makes him an evil person. Instead, the system in place controls public perception on the character; he'll either be an army officer who will do whatever it takes to help everyone (Paragon) or do whatever it takes to complete his mission by any means necessary (Renegade). Neither option will truly effect the story, simply because both are just a means to an end.

 

I'd like to quickly compare New Vegas to Skyrim to drive home my point. In New Vegas, you could choose the NCR (Good) or Caesar's Legion (Evil). There was a pretty stark contrast between both factions. In comparison, in Skyrim you could choose the Imperials (Light Grey) or the Stormcloaks (Dark Grey). Both factions are not incessantly evil, yet both also had key flaws that made the other seem appealing.

[Andre PT]

 

I'm thinking the system from Red Dead Redemption was perfect. Thank god for the bandanna though, especially to cover jacks ugly mug

like this.

[Mig10]

I don't think it was that big of a thing in GTA IV to be honest. GTA isn't like Fallout or Mass Effect. The choices the player made in GTA IV were for the benefit of the player. They had little to no affect on Niko. What I mean is that you weren't shaping the character by the choices you made.

 

In games such as Fallout, the player character has no personality. It's an empty shell that will become a fleshed out character, shaped by the player's actions. In GTA the character is already written and fleshed out by the developer. There's no room for the player to project any sort of personality onto him. I'd like it to stay that way. GTA isn't an RPG.

I agree with what you said above, but i think you're not right about the RPG features, they keep implementing them, on different levels in all games, and they are most likely going to bunch them up, yes the character usually has their own mind, background etc, but bold new direction may be it nonetheless there should be a lot of RPG features that wouldnt change the characters philosophy, like clothing, body weight, story decisions people keep changing their minds why not a virtual character, in GTA they show us a learning curve, why not? a lot is possible we simply don't know nothing about this.

[Racecarlock]

Moral choices should be story exclusive! Ok? I do not want to end up with bad karma or a horrible honor rating every time I drive down the damn sidewalk in a sports car! It's like yahtzee said in his Saints Row 2 review.

 

"If you give players a sandbox world full of guns, cars, and innocent, blood-filled, squishy people, they are going to want to f*ck this world’s sh*t up."

 

(few lines down)

 

"Saints Row 2 shows a much better understanding of its audience. It is fully aware that most gamers are dickheads, and if you give them any kind of freedom their first instinct will be to abuse it. If you give them guns, they will shoot old ladies. If you give them cars, they will run over old ladies. If you give them aircraft, they will ascend to the highest possible height and hurl themselves out onto an old lady. And if you give them customisable outfits their first instinct will be to take off all their clothes and run around the streets hip-thrusting in the faces of old ladies. If you try to stop them doing all this, they'll hate you for it."

 

You see, while an honor system would not necessarily stop you, it would put up an annoying "You evil, evil man!" pop up every time you ran over someone. So, yeah, aside from a story feature, this would probably be very annoying.

[Degrees]

I been enjoying Skyrim so far and loved the Mass Effect series before the crappy ending anyway.

 

I really hope to see GTA V try and fuse these two games together but still be true to the GTA series. What I saw in RDR shows me that they're kind of heading down this route.

[Shade04rek]

Well the only real "good/bad" choices of characters, that was in the players hands that effected the story is in IV, choosing between money or revenge.

 

This was tight as f*ck, and there could of been more, I expected more like that when I got GTA IV. You see there were a few more instances like that, not many though.

 

Money/Revenge at the end

Dwayne/playboy X choice

Packies brothers , cant remember their names except francis.

 

There were many gun point choices, but letting the person go usually had no effect later on.

 

But mainly at the end with the money/revenge choices, R* DID make atleast 2 scenes specialised for the choice you made. sooooo maybe there can be many side missions that V get you cool stuff depending on your choice in situations, way more of them than what was in IV though. Also , Like IV, a special choice that effects the ending of the whole game, maybe more that 2 or a secret choice where you can actually "win" with nothing bad happening at all.