I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Grand Theft Auto: The Trilo☂gy - The Definitive Editiꩲon has been getting a lot of flak recently, and not ൩just because of its terrible name. It collates GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas, which… sure, I guess let’s call that a trilogy, and was supposed to offer the titles a 2021 glow-up, but in reality left all three games a buggy mess. They’re worse than the fan made mods Take-Two recently Took-Down, which makes that decision seem even more dastardly in retrospect. Today though, I want to talk about something that’s working - kind of. The cars.
One of our features editors, Andy Ke🌠lly, recently wrote a defence of the cars in G🃏TA 4 - a game arbitrarily not included in this trilogy, probably because Rocks🍬tar feels it could make the same amount of money from remaking it individually. Sure, file size comes into it too, but the rules go🎃 out the window when you take three largely unconnected games, one of which is part of the main numbered series and two of which are unrelated spin-offs, and call them a trilogy.
In any case, the gist of the defence is that GTA 4’s heavy cars and realist♐ic physics makes driving the right kind of challenging, while also making it incredibly immersive. The driving in the trilogy is nothing like this - it’s skiddy, lightweight, and everything explodes upon the slightest ding. My complaint isn’t with my driving though - it’s with everyone else’s.
I’ve already defended some of the trilogy’s jank, reminding everyone that GTA broke boundaries for map size꧙ and depth of world, not visuals. It could definitely stand to look better, and having previously written about the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:anti-co𓂃nsumer nature of Cyberpunk 2077, I don’t feel like going to bat for Rockstar over the state of this game rushed out for the Christmas season despite clearly needing longer to smo♏oth everytജhing over. However, much like (some of) the graphics, the cars are bad on purpose. Unlike the graphics though, I still hate them.
♑I can’t imagine it’s very fun to be a driver in Vice City. They have to contend with me speeding around the town, driving on the wrong side of the road (or the sidewalk), not to mention all those times I dropped a helicopter on them. Still, why are they such terrible drivers?
I don’t mean when I’m driving around. I’m a menace to polite society. Look, if they just stayed where they were and trusted me instead of veering, it would be fine, butඣ I can♈ understand that I make them nervous. Most of the crashes I’m involved in are all my fault. I get that. But you will notice that I say ‘most’.
Why do cars randomly pull out of junctions? Why do they t-bone you when there’s a cop car around and you’re try♛ing to be god for once? Why do they never know when to brake? I understand it when 🐎they swerve when I’m around, but why do they swerve when I’m just standing on the sidewalk?
It’s not even that they&rsquo🃏;re stupid. Back when Cyberpunk launched, the AI there was stupid and simplistic. Gas, brake, honk. In GTA it’s ridiculous, slamming into every other driver on the road. It’s nothing to do with being unable to cope with a human behind the wheel either - they crash into each other when you’re in no position to influence them.
The GTA trilogy, or at least these three games Rockstar is calling a trilogy, was revolutionary i🍌n pushing open world gaming and narrative gaming forward. Thankfully, we’ve moved past this sort of driving.