R* Decisions You Couldn't Understand

[Killerman29]

while we ban mods yay!

[Troll GT]

On 9/20/2021 at 8:25 AM, E Revere said:

Why did they have to retcon Catalina into GTA SA? In GTA III, her character design is obviously meant to be a born and raised LC local reflecting real life Latin populations of NYC, she has their accent and a Liberty Tree article says that she's of Dominican and Colombian descent, quite typical for NYC. But they screwed it up in SA by making her a honey-coloured Chicana from the West Coast countryside. Her essence no longer makes sense in III. I don't buy that she could go to LC and climb the ranks of a Colombian Cartel high enough become a co-boss.

 

But that same article says that she isn't from Liberty City... 

[Be-Deliver]

When you're hanging out with Kate it gets mentioned from her and hinted a couple times from Packie that he is overprotected of her and will attack anyone that dares to look at her funny. When choosing the revenge ending, I wonder why Packie wasn't with you chasing Pegorino despite Jimmy accidentally killing Kate in a drive by to murder Niko for declining the deal. 

[Algonquin Assassin]

16 minutes ago, Be-Deliver said:

When you're hanging out with Kate it gets mentioned from her and hinted a couple times from Packie that he is overprotected of her and will attack anyone that dares to look at her funny. When choosing the revenge ending, I wonder why Packie wasn't with you chasing Pegorino despite Jimmy accidentally killing Kate in a drive by to murder Niko for declining the deal. 

 

He stays with Maureen to comfort her during her grieving process. There's even a phone call he makes to Niko shortly after Kate dies so while he probably wanted to go along with Niko he also didn't want to leave his mother alone and potentially risk being another casualty if things went astray.

[EkaSwede]

On 10/11/2021 at 6:37 PM, Killerman29 said:

while we ban mods yay!

Kinda like Tomas "bitch ass" Edison who tried to remove Nikola Tesla from history so he could take credit for his ideas.

[lol232]

I have no idea why they didn't make this door openable/accessible, I mean it's Franklin's house, and it's a faster access to the garage and way out?!

[Algonquin Assassin]

I don’t think this has been mentioned before, but I’ve always wondered why R* didn’t wait to put the Scarface soundtrack songs into Vice City since. …well it’s largely inspired by Scarface?

 

Flashback FM is my favourite radio station in GTA III, but I admit when I listen to it I wish those songs were in Vice City as they’d fit the atmosphere and tone so much better.

[H-G]

2 hours ago, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

I don’t think this has been mentioned before, but I’ve always wondered why R* didn’t wait to put the Scarface soundtrack songs into Vice City since. …well it’s largely inspired by Scarface?

 

Flashback FM is my favourite radio station in GTA III, but I admit when I listen to it I wish those songs were in Vice City as they’d fit the atmosphere and tone so much better.

Maybe so as not to make the game look like a cheap Scarface rip-off? VC was simply intended to just pay homage to the said movie (in a rather respectful way, may I add?) like it does to several others of the same kind(?), it would've felt like a crappy copy-paste to use those songs TBH.

 

Not to mention VC's storyline kinda serves the purpose of the film's in-game parody too (at least IMO), so... *shrugs*

[The Tracker]

7 hours ago, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

I don’t think this has been mentioned before, but I’ve always wondered why R* didn’t wait to put the Scarface soundtrack songs into Vice City since. …well it’s largely inspired by Scarface?

 

Flashback FM is my favourite radio station in GTA III, but I admit when I listen to it I wish those songs were in Vice City as they’d fit the atmosphere and tone so much better.

 

Believe me, that could have been one of the lamest decisions ever put by R*. 

 

Vice City was already too much of a reference to Scarface, so putting the exact same soundtrack made for that movie into the game would have been way too much, it would have made the game feel rather like a videogame version of it, or even a parody, rather than its own thing, like the game proved to be when it added its own selection of songs. 

Edited October 21, 2021 by The Tracker

[Algonquin Assassin]

21 hours ago, H-G said:

Maybe so as not to make the game look like a cheap Scarface rip-off? VC was simply intended to just pay homage to the said movie (in a rather respectful way, may I add?) like it does to several others of the same kind(?), it would've felt like a crappy copy-paste to use those songs TBH.

 

Not to mention VC's storyline kinda serves the purpose of the film's in-game parody too (at least IMO), so... *shrugs*

I don’t get what you mean that it would make it look like “crappy copy and paste” when there are far more brazen and obvious references like apartment 3C, the office in Tommy’s mansion etc so what harm could a few songs possibly do?

 

It’s not I’m saying the entirety of Scarface’s soundtrack should’ve replaced what Vice City currently has, but it’s hindsight that’s all and something that has bothered me for years as both a fan of Scarface and Vice City. I love the numerous Scarface references, but the fact it doesn’t include even a single distinguishable song is bothersome to me personally.

 

If anything at all their inclusion in GTA III doesn’t make much sense since GTA III has almost an exclusively original soundtrack that was curated for the game so having songs plucked from a soundtrack of a movie it doesn’t directly reference is a bit weird.

 

 

Edited October 22, 2021 by MiamiViceCity1986

[H-G]

5 hours ago, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

I don’t get what you mean that it would make it look like “crappy copy and paste” when there are far more brazen and obvious references like apartment 3C, the office in Tommy’s mansion etc so what harm could a few songs possibly do?

 

It’s not I’m saying the entirety of Scarface’s soundtrack should’ve replaced what Vice City currently has, but it’s hindsight that’s all and something that has bothered me for years as both a fan of Scarface and Vice City. I love the numerous Scarface references, but the fact it doesn’t include even a single distinguishable song is bothersome to me personally.

 

If anything at all their inclusion in GTA III doesn’t make much sense since GTA III has almost an exclusively original soundtrack that was curated for the game so having songs plucked from a soundtrack of a movie it doesn’t directly reference is a bit weird.

 

 

Now that you've said their inclusion in GTA3 makes no sense, I gotta be honest, I agree with you. Having 80's music in a game set in 2001 feels really off TBH, well I guess they had to put something in for a station that plays '80s pop music.

 

I guess if they already had VC as a new GTA game in mind during GTA3's development, they surely would've thought about the Scarface OST's inclusion into it.

And coming to think of it, hypothetically, even if R* had added the Scarface OST to VC instead of GTA3 anyhow, which station they would've featured it on? Flash FM's playlist is pretty much full with all the songs in it rounding up an overall playlist time of roughly more than one hour.

 

What I was trying to say earlier is basically what @The Tracker said, they did their own thing with VC by using a distinct selection of music instead of making the whole game a video game adaption of the film.

 

Other than that, if GTA3's Flashback FM features one half of the Scarface OST ("Rush Rush", "Shake it Up", "Push It to the Limit", "She's On Fire" and "I'm Hot Tonight"), then why didn't it's LCS rendition feature the other half ("Dance Dance Dance", "Success", "The Right Combination" and "Turn Out the Night") of it? Although I like that they didn't repeat the mistake of having that "one whole radio station dedicated to the Scarface OST" thing again.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, H-G said:

Other than that, if GTA3's Flashback FM features one half of the Scarface OST ("Rush Rush", "Shake it Up", "Push It to the Limit", "She's On Fire" and "I'm Hot Tonight"), then why didn't it's LCS rendition feature the other half ("Dance Dance Dance", "Success", "The Right Combination" and "Turn Out the Night") of it?

I think having LCS' Flashback FM focus on late 70s italo disco was more fitting since LCS took place in the late 90s. Both renditions of Flashback still featured songs from the same producer, Giorgio Moroder.

[BananaSpud666]

9 hours ago, H-G said:

Having 80's music in a game set in 2001 feels really off TBH

Not really

On 10/21/2021 at 8:16 AM, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

Flashback FM is my favourite radio station in GTA III, but I admit when I listen to it I wish those songs were in Vice City as they’d fit the atmosphere and tone so much better.

I would've expected Dance Dance Dance to play in VCS just for the Lance Vance Dance

[lefantome]

Give the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition work to the same company that has butchered GTA San Andreas HD

[BananaSpud666]

10 hours ago, lefantome said:

Give the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition work to the same company that has butchered GTA San Andreas HD

That's what im expecting to be honest, but we don't know about it yet

[AmigaMix]

On 10/22/2021 at 1:30 PM, MiamiViceCity1986 said:

GTA III has almost an exclusively original soundtrack that was curated for the game so having songs plucked from a soundtrack of a movie it doesn’t directly reference is a bit weird.

 

I like to think they were trying to draw parallels between the two universes.

Flashback FM's songs are implied to be, in universe, a bunch of randomly selected popular tracks from the 80s, similar to their use in Scarface.

So maybe, by having those songs on the radio, they were making a statement about the state of III's version of american culture?

 

Does that sound coherent... am I schizoing out?

Edited October 23, 2021 by AmigaMix

[Jimmy Muffins]

Deadly water in Vice City and literally everything they stripped back in GTA IV which was in San Andreas. It's still a good game but it feels way more shallow than SA and after you've finished the story there's pretty much nothing to do.

[Yinepi]

On 11/27/2021 at 11:50 AM, Jimmy Muffins said:

Deadly water in Vice City and literally everything they stripped back in GTA IV which was in San Andreas. It's still a good game but it feels way more shallow than SA and after you've finished the story there's pretty much nothing to do.

Rockstar was working with a relatively new engine at the time and wasn't quite sure how implement some of the SA features onto the new engine. It wasn't until they did further tweaks to the engine (GTAV) that they were able to implement a few of those features back. Planes and car tuning being two examples of those features.

To call GTA4 shallow because it lacked SA features is rather absurd when you look at it from a game designer perspective.

[Americana]

Yeah, especially that these features which were not implemented weren't even interesting. 

 

Grand Theft Auto V brought some of them back and I've never used them.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Americana

[billiejoearmstrong8]

IV has quite a few cool activities to do outside the storyline, many of them crime based as they should be, and some fun minigames. Most of the things missing from SA are dumb and/or annoying things you only do once to get 100%. Do people really replay all those sh*tty side missions as something to do after the story? Or spend time swimming underwater in an empty sea with nothing to do? I would think the main thing most people do after the story in any game is go on rampages and get in shootouts with the police etc and just generally mess around. And doing that in IV is the most fun with the awesome combat/physics/NPC behaviour.

 

There are a couple of things from SA it would've been cool to have (in particular car customisation, infinite taxi missions and maybe some more character customisation and weapons). But IV still has lots of good stuff to do. And if you add EFLC you get a load more weapons, a tank, parachuting (including an easy to use glitch where you can fly infinitely with it like it's a jetpack lol), clubs and dancing, and some really great side missions like drug wars and gang wars and motorbike racing where you can hit opponents with baseball bats. 

 

IV might be lacking in customisation options but as far as side activities go I really don't think SA has anything that great that IV doesn't have. V on the other hand dropped almost all the cool crime activities from IV and brought back a load of useless bland side stuff a la SA instead (yoga, tow truck driving, mind numbingly tedious submarine missions etc) and it's not better for it.

Edited November 29, 2021 by billiejoearmstrong8