Chapters 3&4

[Tonesta]

OK, so I'm starting this thread for slow coaches like me that want to discuss the story, but still haven't finished the game and won't for many weeks yet! (100+ hours played now, and although I've done most of the stranger threads and many of the collectibles, I just made it to Guarma last night.....). I know a couple of the biggest spoilers (hard to avoid those unless you live under a rock!) but would appreciate people avoiding detailed spoilers for Chapter 5 onwards......

 

I'm absolutely loving the game still, and the story is great and engaging, but - I can't help but feel that it's lacking a little bit of discipline and focus.

 

No complaints at all with Chapters 1&2 - they served as first a tutorial, and then an introduction to gang life and I thought they were both excellent.

 

But Chapters 3&4 seemed a bit, well, rushed in their execution.

For example - in Chapter 3, we turn up in Rhodes and we meet these two warring families, and decide (instantly) to play them off against eachother. But we've barely introduced ourselves to either of them (I think it's two missions for each) before we're suddenly (without any warning) rumbled and we're wiping them both out (RIP Sean). Then in Chapter 4, we turn up in St. Denis and meet Angelo Bronte. But basically after a solitary mission for him, he's already backstabbing us and Dutch is plotting revenge.

 

I just felt that before the Grays, Braithwaites or Bronte had fully been set up as antagonists of note, we're already wiping them out and moving on.

 

Meanwhile there's all kinds of other capers and tangent missions going on that are great for character development (and probably the ongoing story arc) but aren't doing anything to move these specific chapter stories along. Which is fine - it's a big gang, so only to be expected that the story is a little cluttered. But when you've only got 14 or so missions a chapter, and more than half of those are somewhat random in nature, it doesn't leave much time to tell a specific story in each chapter.

 

Honestly, I feel that R* would have been better off combining these chapters into one; keep all the tangential content but really build either the Grays & Braithwaites or Angelo Bronte up into fully realised, meaningful characters. So that there feels like a real progression from meeting to a business relationship to a betrayal to a showdown (and this could be done across the whole of Lemoyne). As it is, for a game that is slow-paced and wonderfully deliberate in almost everything it does - the Chapter 3/4 main storylines felt a little shallow for me. Or am I crazy?

[Cutter De Blanc]

Things start falling apart more quickly as the gang makes more and more mistakes

[Kirk Lazarus]

It makes you wonder how much those other 5hrs of cut material would've evened out the sometimes rushed pacing of the main storyline.

[NikosUncle]

Yeah I agree those parts did feel rushed especially the stuff with the two families but whatever, I wasn’t going to cry about it. The new areas and environments those parts took us to was so well done I could look past it.