Reinventing missions

[RedDagger]

GTA is rather infamous for missions summarised as Drive from A to B, kill people, drive from B to A or somewhere else. It always tries to freshen things up but the missions inevitably get repetitive with enough of them. This also resulted in the constant driving being a complaint about IV, that Rockstar tried to remedy with character switching in GTA V, to some success.

 

What could GTA Next do in terms of missions to break this formula?

Concepts tried in earlier games that never really went anywhere?

New concepts Rockstar could try out, similar to character switching?

 

And, in general, do you have any specific idea for mission layouts you think could work and would like to see them try?

[GTA_fear]

Interesting topic. I have asked myself similar questions several times. If I were to design missions in a GTA game, how would I keep them interesting and varied? Not sure the answer is that simple. It's certainly not: "l0l moar wepons and explushuns 4 teh win".

 

Maybe one of the ways to do this would be to once in a while feature missions that put you of the protagonist's body / mind for a little bit. What I mean by this is not controlling other people / NPC's, but a simple change of perspective or something like that. So, for example, if there was a mission where you had to move some cargo or a few boxes by operating a forklift in a warehouse, R* could make the warehouse's security cameras our point of view. Almost like a top-down view with a filter to make the screen a bit blurry and snowy or something like that. Or if there was a stealth mission, the same concept could be used, something like the first MGS, I don't know.

 

Or maybe the protagonist could be controlling security cameras in some place and we have to guide a friendly NPC to a specific area, telling them where the guards are over the phone, etc., almost like a minigame.

 

Related to my "changing the perspective" idea, we could also have two or three RC missions? Nothing too arcadey or over-the-top, just something to put you out of the game's actual vehicles into this small, weirdly handling toy, where you have to quickly adjust to the handling and find your way around.

 

Besides all this, maybe feature more timed missions? Is my memory flawed or have there not been that many in the HD era? And make them hard, or at least somewhat challenging, something like the player needing to traverse a good portion of a city / island and complete various tasks and objectives, you know, make him feel like: "Damn, I gotta do all this right, no mistakes". Something like "Payday for Ray" or "Espresso-2-Go!" from GTA III.

 

This is just something I've quickly thought of, I may add some more later.

[DOUGL4S1]

An underrated type of mission in the series (imo) are missions you're in the passenger seat of a vehicle shooting at enemies (i.e.

,

,

, many GTA V missions, etc). They're a nice change of pace from those "Go there and (...) and your friend does the drive-by".

[the consigliere]

Good topic. I think if a lot more interiors were in the next game this would open up a lot of possibilities, GTA as of now has been pretty much drive here, kill X but if the insides of buildings were available then you could have a lot more stealth missions, business dealings, exploring buildings having to find stuff or parts to build other items etc.

 

Another area I feel could be a lot better is on foot chases, if you could run through most buildings, hide inside, climb through windows etc I think this would be a fun change of pace from hijacking a fast car and outrunning the police that way. Think of any action movie where they have to run across building roof tops, climb fire escapes, take cover inside buildings which is a lot more common than outrunning a police fleet.

 

Open ended missions where you can choose whatever method you want to achieve an objective.

[GTA_fear]

An underrated type of mission in the series (imo) are missions you're in the passenger seat of a vehicle shooting at enemies (i.e.

,

,

, many GTA V missions, etc). They're a nice change of pace from those "Go there and (...) and your friend does the drive-by".

Yup, this came to mind too. Like you said, they provide a nice change of pace.

 

 

Good topic. I think if a lot more interiors were in the next game this would open up a lot of possibilities, GTA as of now has been pretty much drive here, kill X but if the insides of buildings were available then you could have a lot more stealth missions, business dealings, exploring buildings having to find stuff or parts to build other items etc.

 

Another area I feel could be a lot better is on foot chases, if you could run through most buildings, hide inside, climb through windows etc I think this would be a fun change of pace from hijacking a fast car and outrunning the police that way. Think of any action movie where they have to run across building roof tops, climb fire escapes, take cover inside buildings which is a lot more common than outrunning a police fleet.

 

Open ended missions where you can choose whatever method you want to achieve an objective.

I like this idea, because there's no need to add or program additional features, I mean, all the interiors are in the game already, so why not use them more, mix things up, you're right.

 

And about letting the player choose - yes! For example, I was recently playing GTA IV and prior to going to the interview with Goldberg, I parked a getaway car in an alley a block away. Unfortunately, by the time I killed Goldberg, jumped out of his office and ran back to the alley, the car had disappeared. But if it hadn't, it would've been such a good feeling escaping the cops unnoticed and with zero problems. So again, this would really require no further programming from R* (except keeping the game from despawning my car for longer, lol), they would just need to leave as many possibilities open as possible, you know, support the player's imagination.

 

As contrast to this, we could have weapon-specific mission, where you're forced to use only one of the weapons (E.g. grenades or molotovs only. We also need more sniper missions!), or missions where the player drives vehicles they don't use that often in the game (such as industrial vehicles, boats, etc.).

 

Another idea: more missions that change the world / environment in one way or another. Destroyed buildings, changed ped behavior, stock exchange prices, etc. Think III's "Blow Fish", VC's "Demolition Man", IV's "Rigged to Blow", V's assassination missions, etc.

 

I have more ideas, but I'll just stop here, I don't want to get too boring.

[RedDagger]

I definitely feel open ended missions are something that would complement GTA's style very well, something highlighted by GTA V's seemingly pointless restrictions in missions. On one extreme this could include proper support for stealth, though I feel that would need some balancing to stop abuse, with things like silenced sniper rifles - a problem with a lot of stealth-optional games is that stealth is almost always the best choice, so I'd have no problem with stealth being an option, but a very hard and entirely avoidable option.

 

But in general, open-ended scenario-based missions would be a nice change instead of the simplistic go here, kill person, lose wanted level thing going on. Would require more work from the dev's side, but would be a lot more memorable and fun.

[the consigliere]

I definitely feel open ended missions are something that would complement GTA's style very well, something highlighted by GTA V's seemingly pointless restrictions in missions. On one extreme this could include proper support for stealth, though I feel that would need some balancing to stop abuse, with things like silenced sniper rifles - a problem with a lot of stealth-optional games is that stealth is almost always the best choice, so I'd have no problem with stealth being an option, but a very hard and entirely avoidable option.

 

But in general, open-ended scenario-based missions would be a nice change instead of the simplistic go here, kill person, lose wanted level thing going on. Would require more work from the dev's side, but would be a lot more memorable and fun.

I agree with you about balancing it out, there should be many ways to do things all with unique consequences. In San Andreas there was a respect meter which was built up over the game I think this could be used in the next GTA but alongside a few different meters.

 

Maybe a reputation or respect meter which is built up from carrying out important missions in a certain way such as gunning down an enemy and his entire crew in a loud violent manner would have a big impact on respect/rep but too much of this would affect your 'heat' meter which could be how wanted you are by rival gangs or cops even when not on a mission so you would have to keep this from getting too high by taking care of some business in a more discreet manner such as sneaking into enemies apartments, assassinating enemies via silenced pistols and disposing of evidence/bodies so nobody knows it was you thus no impact on your heat meter but also no gain to your rep.

 

Ideally there would be other factors to consider such as available money, time etc and you choose how you want to play the game this way there could be endless possibilities making the game as replayable as possible.