GTA 6 – will its gameplay be as innovative as its graphics? (Picture: Rockstar Games)

A reader is impressed by the GTA 6 trailer but is worried that Rockstar Games never seems to make gameplay innovation a priority.

By now everyone’s had plenty of time to mull over the GTA 6 trailer, but clearly it’s a technical marvel and I think, in terms of graphics, beyond criticism. On the one hand that’s what you’d expect after all this time, and with all Rockstar’s money, and yet I still feel it exceeded expectations and was several levels above anything we’ve seen on the current gen consoles so far.

For me, that’s not open to question but as some have already started to point out, there’s probably little hope that the gameplay or structure has changed in any meaningful way. I found it interesting in GC’s article on the trailer, when they pointed out that many of the best-selling games don’t have particularly good gameplay – merely competent rather than outstanding – which, sadly, shows why it isn’t a priority for many companies.

This makes me sad, because I think it goes a bit further than other media, where the must successful movies or music are also rarely the best that is available. The difference with games is that many of the most celebrated developers seem to have very little interest in gameplay. Rockstar don’t and neither do Naughty Dog – and yet many would tell you they’re two of the best developers in the world.

Naughty Dog has been making the same games, with the same gameplay, for 16 years now, whether they’re called Uncharted or The Last Of Us. In gameplay terms they’re fine, but they’d be nothing without the quality of the graphics and story. That’s fine up to a point but they have all the time and money in the world to improve themselves and yet they make no effort at all. It just doesn’t seem to interest them.

Rockstar’s position is even more extreme, where the gameplay in the GTA games has been actively bad for years. GTA 4 is shocking if you go back to it. Even very simple things, like punching and shooting, they manage to overcomplicate ridiculously, which making sure it’s also no fun at all – which is quite an achievement.

The cars handle more like boats than anything else and yet Rockstar themselves publishes perfectly good shooters (Max Payne 3) and racers (Midnight Club) that they could’ve pulled from but didn’t. GTA 5 was an improvement, but it still wasn’t particularly good. It also continued to give the impression that Rockstar was purposefully refusing to look at how other games handle similar gameplay and was instead blundering along on their own.

I’d say they were being arrogant and refusing to admit they had anything to learn from others, and yet they’ve always seemed happy to admit that Zelda and others were a big influence on GTA 3, so why didn’t they just look at Gears Of War and Burnout (or whatever) for hints at how to get their action right?

What worries me, and I’ve seen a number of people say similar things, is that GTA 6 is going to look amazing but it’s still going to control like it’s two or three generations behind the times. I’ve never heard Rockstar discuss why they do or don’t do things in terms of gameplay, or anything else, but for decades now they’ve had all this time and money available to them and they’ve made so little effort to improve anything. They’ve always been behind the times when compared to the best in the genre and never made any effort to innovate.

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I find this very confusing because clearly in many areas they are market leaders, in terms of graphics and open world and, depending on your tastes, storytelling. So why don’t they care about gameplay? They could easily afford to employ the best third person shooter and racing game developers in the world, but they don’t only not do that, they don’t care if they’re actively worse than other games.

Saints Row only exists because it was basically ‘GTA with good gameplay’, even though everything else about it was grossly inferior. Imagine if GTA 6 was GTA with good gameplay, how good would that be? And yet I have no faith that will happen. Just as I doubt The Last Of Us Part 3 will play any differently to Part 2.

By reader Stamford

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A reader is impressed by the GTA 6 trailer but is worried that Rockstar Games never seems to make gameplay innovation a priority.