‘GTA V’ — How Do You Follow Up A Masterpiece?
It’s no secret that Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V(GTA V) is nothing short of a masterpiece. For a game of this size and scale, with so much going on to be running on the last generation of hardware, which is around 9-years-old now, and still hold up with how incredible the current gen and PC are, defines how great GTA V is in today’s gaming world.
The way in which GTA V portrays our world in such a satirical, yet completely pointed, way is one of the great hallmarks of the franchise as a whole. Also, Grand Theft Auto V showcases what happens when a team has a large budget and doesn’t rush a game to release. GTA V also displays what the last-gen hardware is capable of pumping out, but that can also be seen as a negative for the more powerful platforms it runs on currently. Here are a few things Rockstar can do to follow up GTA V and even top the game.
Fully Navigable Buildings
This seems like a weird thing to ask, especially considering there are buildings that you can walk into and explore. But GTA V pales in comparison when you look at games built entirely for new hardware in this area. Assassin’s Creed: Unity and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt offer hundreds of buildings, both large and small, that you can seamlessly enter and exit without the need for loading screens. If GTA V had this feature, it would make an already believable world much more immersive. By making a lot of the buildings we travel past open to explore, it open up more opportunities to do what Grand Theft Auto does best: whatever you want.
New City
GTA V’s Los Santos and surrounding areas are nice, but one could argue that other cities deserve the Grand Theft Auto treatment. While people are petitioning Portland to be the setting of GTA VI, Rockstar doesn’t need to wholly abandon what its built in the past. GTA: San Andreas featured multiple cities that could be expanded upon to create another metropolis that puts GTA V‘s Los Santos to shame. Take Las Venturas, for example. This is Rockstar’s vision of Las Vegas. Imagine being able to speed up and down the famous Las Vegas Strip, check out Fremont Street, explore the surrounding mountains that encapsulate the valley, or even run amok at nearby Hoover Dam. Couple this with the previous suggestion and allow for fully explorable casinos and houses, and Las Venturas could make a compelling setting for the next installment in the series.
New Mechanics And Features
While the main gameplay loop of GTA V is fun, and the sandbox-y nature means that the possibilities are endless, gamers are fickle and want their next game to do something different. GTA V was a masterpiece all on itself for the way it combined the famous “car-jacking” gameplay with fully legitimate and solid mechanics across the board. Driving is phenomenal, and handles better than in some arcade driving games. The mini-games are better than some games of the genre on the market (golf, tennis, etc). However, in order for Rockstar to truly elevate GTA VI over Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar will need to innovate and build upon what they created with V. Otherwise, gamers and critics alike may not be so taken with whatever Rockstar comes up with next.
How would you build upon the success of GTA V? Sound off below.
[Images via Rockstar]
