What could Rockstar include in an 80s VC that they didn't before?

[Bloodytears1666]

Delete.

Edited March 23, 2020 by Bloodytears1666
Nvm

[Patrizio]

References to Terminator.

[Guest]

The ability to listen to music on foot through our MP3 player.  This could be implemented in any future setting not just 80s VC, but imagine how cool it would have been to stroll leisurely along Ocean Beach towards the sunrise listening to Emotion 98.3 . 

Also stuff like newspapers replacing the internet, don't think newspapers were a thing in VC

[GhettoJesus]

Drug smuggling. You could intercept ships coming from Cuba/Mexico kinda like the couriers in San Andreas.

[Patrizio]

4 minutes ago, Utopianthumbs said:

The ability to listen to music on foot through our MP3 player.  This could be implemented in any future setting not just 80s VC, but imagine how cool it would have been to stroll leisurely along Ocean Beach towards the sunrise listening to Emotion 98.3 . 

Also stuff like newspapers replacing the internet, don't think newspapers were a thing in VC

Great point. Fans have requested this for a long time. It can do in any era too. For the 80s it could be through a "walkman."

 

RDR was great at making the most of the era - a GTA in the past could do the same.

[MrBreak16]

Am I the only one that would want a storyline like American Made?

[DexMacLeod]

1 hour ago, MrBreak16 said:

Am I the only one that would want a storyline like American Made?

I enjoyed it as a movie but I think it would make for a pretty boring GTA game. It's why I've never quite understood the people that want drug trafficking to be the major focus. I imagine the missions would just be like Trevor's missions where he flew around and dropped packages on various targets. 

 

Those were fun little side hustle missions but I feel like it'd get old very fast if they tried to stretch that into a full game. I can't see that sustaining even a single, set piece, story-driven mission like Rockstar tend to do, let alone multiple ones.

 

Maybe if they did the multiple protagonists thing again and one of them is like Tom Cruise in "American Made" flying the drugs in and another is like the kid on "Snowfall" handling the street level dealing. Still feels like could get repetitive, though. 

[Thomas Cavendish]

Space Shuttle Lauch and a mission which you jump off from the thermosphere

[Izzy Moreno]

They could expand on some ideas that were already present in Vice City like the missions involving the pr0n director. You could have sleazy actors and pseudo intellectual directors with delusions about artistic grandeur giving you missions. Tommy quickly put an end to Scotts ideas about a giant shark in his movie, but I would like to steal a giant plastic shark prob from the Miami Seaquarium.

 

But there is no shortage of new possibilities either. The scientology, or epsilon in the GTA Universe, takeover of Clearwater already happened in the 70s, but Rockstar could take some artistic liberties there. Maybe combine that with a corrupt televangelist like pastor Richards from VC who hires the protagonist against the Epsilon program, because he fears for his income due to the new competition.

 

The Space shuttle launch site at the Kennedy Space center north of Miami seems like an interesting area too. There could be a rich conspiracy theorist paying the player for infiltrating the NASA and search for the truth about extraterrestrial life.

 

The Protagonist might also assist in a Slasher movie directed by a young Starkweather and after discovering it’s more real than anticipated, must fight out of the snuff film set like in Manhunt.

 

Just some ideas, I’m sure some more creative people at Rockstar can come up with way more. The setting certainly isn’t fully explored yet.

[Kris194]

Brickell Avenue Bridge

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickell_Avenue_Bridge

[Merquis]

Most aesthentic in law enforcement

[SheHePaedo]

1880's

[BloxedRetro]

Arcades. Like in GTAO, where you can build up arcades. However, it would make more sense in 80s VC, considering how huge Arcades were.

On 3/23/2020 at 9:33 AM, Patrizio said:

Just bumping this again.

 

As someone said - a greater focus on the Colombian cartel(s).

 

A character based on Griselda Blanco.

 

A more serious, IV-like theme in VC.

I'd love for a serious game however tbh, I think that something serious on the scale of IV would work in San Fierro more. San Fierro seems like the one place that could be as depressing as Liberty imo, and given the fog in SA, I think SF fits the role perfectly. Maybe VC could have a serious story, but it'd probably be like SA and VCS where people close to the Protagonist die and they have these people on their case, but not to the scale of Dimitri and the other small plotpoints of GTA IV, such as the war PTSD

[The Coconut Kid]

I'm going to drop this post I made yesterday in here. It's more relevant to this discussion than aesthetics anyway.

 

I'm also happy to expand on any of these points at length for those interested. Happy to back them up with sources and pictures too.

 

Quote

 

Smoke. Smoke everywhere. Smoke from the burned out, dilapidated hotels in Miami Beach. Smoke from protests at torn up refugee camps. Smoke wafting over from the mainland with with Liberty City and Overtown burning in the midst of riots. If you ask me what filter I'd stick on Vice City to give it an authentic 1980s feel, it would be grit and ash and rage clinging to your screens.

 

Emptiness and neglect. Miami in the early 1980s was so violent that people would lock themselves in their rooms for fear of being robbed, raped or murdered. There are some great episodes of Miami Vice in its first season that show that Ocean Drive area both during daytime and night just completely barren and devoid of life. Someone should dig them up. There were no neons lighting up the hotels. Just death and darkness.

 

Sleaze. We haven't had pure in-your-face filth since the Red Light District in GTA III. Miami in the 1980s delivers by the bucketload. Before South Beach became a pedestrian mall and a playground for the rich and famous, Washington Avenue was a string of sex shows and adult entertainment. It was peep holes and hardcore gay sex by the twin-screen. Think 42nd Street in 70s NYC and you're on the right track. All of this has since been scrubbed from existence. It did not feature in Vice City at all.

 

Poverty. There was an obvious wealth and excess around Miami in the 1980s, thanks both to the drug trade and investment in the Miami Vice effect. But this can be sharply contrasted with the thousands of refugees who would aimlessly wander the streets completely broken and destitute. Then there were the old retirees, living on welfare in the squalour of their hotel rooms. You've got Overtown, which once thrived as 'Coloured Town', completely decimated, much like South Bronx, by poor planning since its desegregation. And not too far from Miami, actual "shanty towns" like Belle Glade, stigmatised and rendered 'no-go zones' because of violence and the spread of AIDS.

 

Violence. Forget about seagulls and rolling tides. Miami is bullets flying and bodies dropping. The so-called "refugee problem" wasn't solved by policy or law enforcement -- it ended because those guys killed each other in the street. Vice City and VCS were hardly non-violent games. I would expect an HD rendition to dial it up to eleven. Let us see the violence in the environment -- the bulletholes spiderwebbed in the sides of buildings, the empty casings left in gutters, the bodies left to bleed out in the streets. Show us Opa-Locka and "The Triangle" -- literally fenced off from the rest of Miami because it was so violent.

 

Exile. What makes Miami in this time period unique are its refugees -- 125,000 from Cuba in 1980, 20,000 Haitians the same year, a similar number of Nicaraguans and "Indochinese" all rounded off with Soviet Jews. The influence was tremendous -- but their treatment absolutely stained the area and hasn't been captured in any depiction of Miami in the 1980s that I have seen. We need our protagonist to be among them. We need to hear the constant whirl of helicopters scrambling across seas to rescue an overturned flotilla of refugees before dumping them in makeshift tents on beaches. We need to see Haitians penned into detention centres, told they will be shipped offshore to Puerto Rico because America does not want them, left without water and access to sanitation, their haunted eyes pressed against chain-link fences, and the absolute fear that surrounds them as alleged bringers of AIDS. If games were scratch and sniff, the smell would be piss, sh*t and desperation.

 

Hope. This is the main draw for me. Give us the protagonist who gets in on the ground floor -- the one who eventually funds the construction and the cranes which tower over Miami's expanding skyline; the one responsible for bringing that neon-washed Ocean Beach we know and love. And, ideally, move us between time periods. Let us play out a remaining part of the story in a modern world Vice City we the player helped build, but don't ever let us forget that city's past.

Miami in the 1980s is a terrific blueprint for a serious story closer to GTAIV. In the words of Tony Montana, it's a great big pussy just waiting to be f*cked.

 

Yeah, we've seen it before. But we've never seen it in all of its violent, miserable potential.

 

Location wise, you've got three major cities encompassing the Miami Metropolitan Area [Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach], rounded out with the Everglades and Caribbean. Each of those cities were consistently ranked among the top violent cities in the U.S. during the 1980s. The Bahamas especially were notorious for the passage of drugs and refugees. Their brutality against Haitians in particular was horrific.

 

SF is also a fair shout. Imagine a game where your protagonist is a seasoned street person, someone who perhaps once served their country but succumbed to addiction and PTSD, is rounded up from their town and bussed to San Fierro in its current state of anarchy. Basically sent off to die again. It would be horrible.

 

But some of the horror stories I could tell you about the refugee experience in 1980s Miami would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

[RamsaySaint77]

A reference to the NES

 

I found it odd how Vice City had a parody of Atari even though the game was set in 1986 and by then the Atari had long lost it's relevance in the home console market due to the video game crash of 83 and by then there were more advanced consoles like The NES or Master System

[Badman_]

AC/DC songs in the radio.

[60017 Silver Fox]

A bigger emphasis on the drug trade is what I'd like to see. Like having more missions which involve being more involved in the dealing or piracy with the added conflicts between gangs and authorities.

And because its the 80s. Alot of Cold War references would be fun. The radios could include mass hysteria over what was going on in the final years. Perhaps a cheeky Soviet submarine could be seen on the outskirts of the map circling the boundary.

[Adrenalist]

Sweat. Sergio Leone western levels of it.

 

One of the most expensive items on the properties list: Construction company. This should include your very own personal mod shop. Yes. Your very own personal 3,000 hp steamroller for those breezy Sunday afternoon jaunts as you wave from the sidewalk to all those passing vehicles? Check. Want to cruise the Everglades in a three story tall dump truck with nitrous and extra armor? Yep. Or how about modding a semi into something more akin to a Kenworth 963? Should be doable in a construction mod shop. The construction vehicles as a whole in GTA should have some new life breathed in them. Especially if we're talking about vast open flat places one could easily get stuck and lose their life. It should just require quite a modest amount of effort on the player's side to attain. 

 

Mod shops for everything aquatic from Jet Skis, boats, submersibles, even diving gear.

 

Underwater exploratory progression to include eagle eye and mysteries lead to daunting and unforgettable journeys. 

 

It would be nice to see stealth mechanics and ai response improved upon. 

 

And last but oh so not least, interiors, interiors, interiors

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Adrenalist

[vicecityfan89]

pimping and in-depth drug dealing as side activities counterfeiting factory  

gunrunning in vice city could be fun imagine delivering 6 tons of Semtex a retired corrupt detective  in an 80's  required triad van 

 

[PolishRye]

realistic pork tapeworm 

[MrBreak16]

Soviet spies

Edited February 7, 2022 by MrBreak16

[Zello]

Anti Castro militias. 

[[]LSPD[]]

Swimming. 

[GTA-Biker]

Columbian cartels could play more important role.I think Diaz and his cartel from VC and VCS were Columbians,but they barely appear in VCS,and get wiped out around halfway through the story in VC.They were among the most powerful gangs back in the 80s,so they should be featured more,and pretty much control the drug trade in the city.Other gangs could be featured more too (Los Cabrones/Cubans, Haitians, Cholos, and Sharks could return from 3D universe, Angels Of Death were said to have a chapter in Vice City, there could be some new gangs like some new local biker gang, Yardies, etc.)

 

There's plenty of late 70s and 80s hit songs that weren't featured in VC and VCS,such as Take On Me by A Ha, Heaven Is A Place On Earth by Belinda Carlisle, Take My Breath Away by Berlin, You Spin Me Round by Dead Or Alive, My Sharona by The Knack, I Wanna Know What Love Is by Foreigner, Tainted Love by Soft Cell, Don't You Forget About Me by Simple Minds, Beat It by Michael Jackson, Every Breath You Take by Police, Highway To Hell by AC/DC, The Trooper by Iron Maiden, Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi, Paradise City by Guns N' Roses, One by Metallica, and many others.

 

Since we got plenty of cold war-era vehicles in GTA 4, GTA 5 and Online,they could return with period correct customization options:

Spoiler

 

Since we also got movie theaters, TV and arcades,we could see those movies and TV shows advertized in VC and VCS (Evacuator, Exploder, Push Up The Movie, Knife After Dark, Twilight Knife, Just The Five Of Us, Angel And The Knight, Stunt Double, etc.) and parodies of popular real life 80s movies and TV shows,as well as see the arcades return.

 

We could also see more references to 80s stuff,such as red scare and cold war propaganda still being a thing, famine in Ethiopia, aids epidemic, technology (Walkman, VHS tapes, early cell phones, video game consoles, etc.) being on the rise.

[Zello]

1980s Aerobics classes and parody the 1980s fitness craze and celebrity fitness tapes.

 

[vicecityfan89]

I would love a good star wars reference or star trek or both in gta 6

[Zello]

On 11/20/2019 at 1:00 AM, Zello said:

Drugs.

[Edward RDRIII]

Not making it in the 80's is what Rockstar could do, bye.

[The Tracker]

This soundtrack:
 

 

[Edward RDRIII]

45 minutes ago, The Tracker said:

This soundtrack:
 

 

Even if GTA 6 is set in nowadays, they can add a sort of Vice City Rock Radio with such songs.