Yeah, I bailed on it a couple times, but kept coming back because people said it was so good. I ended up forcing myself to finish it so I could stop feeling like I was missing something, and I haven't touched it since.
I much preferred GTA IV, which people seem to hate. Idk, I just felt like Niko was more interesting to play as vs any of the three characters from V. Franklin had promise, but his arc was ultimately disappointing.
I think it just got more generic as the series/time through the game went on. I am not a "heist" or "generic crime" guy, unless it's presented as a farce, and it just started to be by the numbers and serious by that point.
Like, if we look at GTA SA, the first third is a 90s gangsta thing. OK. The second two thirds are more in line with GTA's colourful characters and irreverent style.
4 was brown and stuff, but it was different to the series. Niko was genuine, dark and caught in a shitty , weird situation. I tried with the DLC packs, but they didn't stick, probably because I tried to do them in order, and Lost and Damned was again, too heavy.
And even for a heist game, it had relatively few heists. But yeah, it really could use more satire or at least likeable characters, the story and characters as presented weren't very engaging IMO.
They dropped the ball with the characters completely, I have no idea why they just didn't do "Tommy Vercetti, Claude, CJ". Same thing with 6, why not just put Catalina in there?
These two are in very different physical areas and would be very old by GTA Vs timeline. If CJ were there, it would devolve into a repeat of SA, no? He'd want to revitalize Grove Street, not rob banks.
I think their characters were fine, they just needed some work:
Michael - super bland, so maybe just need more satire about suburban fantasies or something; perhaps could've been replaced with a retired Claude or Tommy, idk, I just thought he was bland.
Franklin - early on, he said he wanted to run a car dealership, why did that dream die? I would've loved more car theft missions, and maybe a mini management sim (hire sales people, sell modded cars, etc)
Trevor - more conflict with local drug groups, maybe a turf war like SA? Or maybe drug running minigames? Surely he has more ambition than making cash with Michael
Some of the issues I have were resolved by the online component, but I am not interested in an MMO, I want single player GTA.
Where'd you get a note that any of what we saw was running on ps5?
Everything was prerendered cutscenes so your mind will be really blown when you see an actual movie on ps5...
Edit:
It says on the end it's captured on ps5 and captured does not equal rendered.
It generally means it's not pre-rendered, but we'd need a professional group like DF to determine what's in engine and what's prerendered. A lot of the normal character scenes don't look prerendered.
Source on pre-rendered cutscenes? Idk if this is running/captured on console hardware, but I can't think of a rockstar game that used prerendered scenes.
Edit- final moments do say captured on PS5. Phew we're back to people thinking GTA looks too good for real time. Nature is healing.
As long as there seems to be no claims of it really running on the hardware rather than captured on it, the scenes could as well be prerendered. It's not about thinking it looks too good for real time (it doesn't). It's just the cynicism towards trailers which don't show any gameplay and especially long before the game is out.
Its a healthy skepticism but historically speaking rockstar hasn't toyed like that in the past. This trailer is in line with previous rockstar releases - they'll rarely go full "gameplay mode" (camera behind the character), but still showing footage from the game engine.
The leak three years ago, showing 2019 state, basically confirmed what gameplay looked like this is not far off.