Tech Is Getting Worse Vol. 10 - GTA 6
AKA Realism Killed the Video Game - Part 2
Congratulations. GTA 6 is here. We’ve made our games look as realistic as possible. What did we sacrifice? Let’s go down the list.
Unique art styles…
…in favor of the exact same cinematic graphic fidelity across all works. All games now look REAL. Every game now looks indistinguishable from a trip to the Bahamas.
But if that’s not your cup of tea, you have two additional flavors: A canvas reminiscent of defecation, diarrhea, or puke…
Pictured: The color palette for Garry’s Mod’s gm_construct compared to the newly released “S&box”.
Arcade elements…
…in favor of thorough and unresponsive motion blending and grounded gameplay. Gone are the responsive and snappy movements where your character does exactly what you want them to with no delays.
In GTA 6, no longer will you carry a full arsenal around with you. That’d simply be too unrealistic for our video game.
Gone are the things that made you feel like you were playing a game. All games now feel REAL.
Original ideas…
…because low resolution once demanded imagination and helped with visual clarity. Now every “original concept” looks like overly archetypal dross straight from the ChatGPT’s paintbrush, and even if you have perfect vision… you still need glasses because there’s just so much detail everywhere, all the time.
And also temporal image processing that gives everything a fuzz and gaslights you into needing glasses.
Optimization…
…in favor of pretty sunrises and realistic water and 16k-resolution foliage that boils your GPU alive, and every single gigabyte of RAM used just by sitting on the main menu. How about them RAM prices, eh?
There’s an old saying that goes, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Unfortunately, gamers and companies alike want perfect, and it’s not looking good.
We’ve seen footage of the recent Marvel's Wolverine and we’ll let the images speak for themselves.
Bonus video: the game largely plays itself...
So… what’s next?
Let’s be honest.
Realism killed the video game.
It ain’t gettin’ any better.
Which raises the question: What could possibly make it worse?
Well… meet Take-Two CEO, Strauss Zelnick.
Strauss Zelnick is the mastermind behind some frankly cracked out capitalist ideas, such as:
Saying video game discs “don’t really make sense”.
Claims “the future of games is streaming”.
Toying with the idea that games should be priced per hour (there was clarification that it wasn’t a proposal, but still… you know it’d tickle his jollies if/when it does happen).
Defending an $80-$100 price tag for a video game.
Zelnick is our gaming industry Odysseus, at least until the end of this decade. He’s got a great idea, and we’re all bringing his idea into our city. Make sure you sleep peacefully tonight.
This is a reference to the Trojan Horse, of course. As of writing this, we’ve heard far more talks about GTA 6’s business model and potential monetization practices than we’ve seen gameplay… which by itself is already pretty sad.
Scratch that, now as of writing this: any semblance of a new “trailer” from GTA 6 (titled “Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look”) was paywalled behind a Netflix subscription. Can you imagine paying for a trailer for a $100 game? How feeble, pale, and oxygen-deprived must you be before you realize the vampire has had enough?
Internally, Rockstar has undergone significant changes, including the loss of…
Dan Houser, the primary narrative architect behind Vice City, San Andreas, IV, V, Bully, and RDR1/2.
Leslie Benzies, design and production lead.
Lazlow Jones, co-wrote almost all in-game radio stations, satirical ads, and pedestrian dialogue.
Michael Unsworth, formed the “writing trio” alongside Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries.
Rockstar pledged to avoid "punching down" on marginalized groups, which means the murderous psychopaths will fight even harder to be morally righteous psychopaths that DON’T say racism...
...then again… now that I think about it… maybe that is pretty realistic.
Post trailer woes
There is simply too much to say about the GTA 6 “extended look” that will be recorded here.
I will (perhaps) leave a genuine review for when the game actually comes out - but I’ll go ahead and spoil one thing… it’s probably best that this be the last GTA.
