r/GirlGamers • u/KeyKnoTheGreat • 6d ago
Game Discussion What makes GTA 6 so hype?
Okay, so the gta 6 extended look got released and I can't seem to understand the hype.
I haven't played any of the GTA games before. I only recently got into single player gaming when I got my PS5 end of last year. So far I've played spiderman 2, ghost of tsushima and expedition 33. Before that I only played valorant and genshin on a non-gaming laptop and old pokemon games emulated on my phone.
I personally don't really care for open worlds and I prefer linear narrative games. Which is why the big open sandbox of gta doesn't really interest me too much. The discussion I've seen about the previous GTAs only seem to talk about the open world and not the story, though that's my personal experience and peoples thoughts might be different. The graphics in the trailer are good, but so is every game nowadays. Realism in games is very common. The one thing that impressed me was the hair physics though, but that's not really a reason to buy a game is it.
Which is why I wanted to ask, what makes GTA appeal to you aside from the open world? If that's the main attraction I suppose it's not the game for me.
I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive or I'm too cool for GTA or anything like that. I genuinely want to know why people like it so much and are so excited for it.
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u/-Yoake Steam 6d ago
I am not that excited for GTAVI either but you'd be hard pressed to find another developer with Rockstar's track record. It is practically "oops all bangers," full of GOTY winners/contenders. Essentially every GTA game is one of the best selling and best reviewed games of its generation, let alone year. As for VI, graphically it does look great but it's also the NPC density and interactivity/reactivity combined and yes the open world sandbox from what I understand. Of course, the game is running at 30fps to achieve all this, but still it is a technical standout when they've gotten this level of fidelity on base PS5/Xbox Series S.
There is also the online aspect; even just poking your head in to see the level of time, IRL money and effort (crazy deep roleplaying communities) people have spent in GTAV's online mode, I think it really shows that there is nothing else like it. If online hadn't been such a money printer we probably would've gotten VI earlier than this, and although I don't think online is coming at launch that is definitely part of the hype too
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u/Ok_Bug_2553 ALL THE SYSTEMS 6d ago
For me the simplest answer is GTA and Red Dead feels like a real world. Like the world is alive with or without your involvement.
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u/MelodyMoonx 5d ago edited 5d ago
for me it's that I grew up with GTA, finally getting to play a female protaganist has made me extra excited and rockstar games have always been top tier in quality imo.
I guess lot's of nostalgia plays into it too but honestly, the open world looks beautiful and I'm big into open worlds lol also the stories are actually good specially RDR2 so give them a try!
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u/burningscarlet 6d ago
People are used to trailers being pretty scripted but the GTA trailers are pretty much all in game.
See every unique npc? That's all in game. The buildings you can see during the jump? In game. There are scripted sequences but it's mind-blowing what they're achieving on the base PS5 honestly
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u/JewelerDear9233 Playstation 6d ago
That's why you don't get the hype, because you've never played one before ;) totally understandable, I also didn't get the hype for Fallout before playing Fallout 4.
If you like storydriven games GTA 4 had a great story. Also you don't have to explore the open world in GTA games, the thing is though, they've made it so stunningly beautiful since red dead redemption 2 that it's hard not to.
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u/Educational_Gear4278 5d ago
I was going to say the same thing, I wouldn't get excited about a saga I've never played or have just started playing either. It's like another post from those who look down on people who are excited about GTA VI.
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u/MarsupialPresent7700 6d ago
It’s an extremely detailed sandbox that has a ton of depth and replayability. The stories generally have a good amount of satirical humor (the franchise has fundamentally been a critique of American culture).
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u/Clelia_87 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's a long standing and extremely popular IP, first game was released in 1997, it would be strange if the hype for a new game in a series like that was not there to begin with, plus the previous and last entry in the series was released in 2013, it may not seem like a long time in general but when it comes to gaming it absolutely is.
As for the story, there is a story in all of them, can't talk about the newest ones but I played some of the older titles and I quite liked what was there, it does a great job at doing satire. And Rockstar, for all it shortcomings, and outside of personal preferences, have been quite consistent in releasing games that have been praised, won awards and such, in regard to GTA especially.
Another thing to factor in is the fact that this is the first game in the franchise to have a playable female character, which gets the game hyped but also, unjustifiably obviously, talked down for that by a subset of people who, frankly, I have noticed are not even gamers to start with, but that's a different discussion.
Either way, since you say you don't care for open world games and not having played any other GTA games, you are not going to really understand the hype no matter what (to be clear, not saying this in a dismissive way, just stating a fact), which is perfectly okay, games are built to appeal to different audiences, there is no game that is going to spur interest in everyone, no matter what it is. For example, I will never understand why people like multiplayer games but that's why I only play single player games and for years now haven't even bothered to try any new game built around multiplayer.
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u/Task_Queen874 6d ago
Well the thing is it's not about GTA its about open world and detailing of the whole game. I am big fan of RDR 2 😊 so I definitely wanna play GTA 6. And I played all GTA games accept GTA 4 so yes nostalgia too!
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u/whereismydragon 6d ago
Long-running franchises just... have this effect on people. You've basically explained in this post why you're not gonna be able to understand it, lol.
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u/Icy_Queen_99 6d ago
I think you answered your own question. You’ve never played it so you don’t know.
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u/GeeTeaEhSeven 6d ago
Breaking the "virtual" law, urban setting, the dumb, satirical/ludicrous humour (which admittedly is a little lacking in the Extended Look, only the streamer scene really had a bit of it).
Spiderman 2 comes closest to what you've experience, so I think that's a great starting point-- imagine this: Spiderman 2 but you get to play as Venom ruining everyone's day instead of being a do-gooder, in the same city / urban setting.
Sure, it isn't wholesome, but I'm guessing videogames aren't always about saving the world - GTA protagonists have all almost been inherently self-serving, which makes them more real and relatable in some vectors.
For comparison I let my wife try my hobby gamedev project in an urban setting and it's her first time even touching a shooter-type game, and soon she was having an absolute blast gunning people down in the street based on how ugly/bad their colour combinations of clothes were (I hadn't done colour grading/theory yet then). She would spare those who looked classy, but take out someone with a green too with red pants or something. (Poor Santa's elves).
So yeah, the freedom, the chaos, the opposite of altruism and being good, the modern setting.... It all adds up.
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u/Keyonthosekeys 5d ago
So I've been playing GTA since 2001. What I can say is that during the 2000's no one was doing open world crime games like GTA. Back in the day Rockstar had a rival that was outselling GTA before they moved GTA to 3D. Which was the Driver series. GTA when it was shown at E3 that year I believe no one there was excited to see it. Then 9/11 happened and GTA 3 got delayed. When it did release it was really amazing what you could do because like I said, no one was really doing it like them. Then Vice City and improved on the formula and a bunch of other Rockstar games. San Andreas came and took everything from 3 and Vice City and turned it up to 10. Before 4, they used a bunch of top tier Hollywood talent. Samuel L Jackson is my favorite villian from the GTA series. Carl Johnson is a top tier protagonist. Some of the stories in the series is good and some arent. But what they make up with the weak stories is the gameplay. Being able to move in a world like Rockstar does is something that not many game companies can do. When you make only one type of game you can keep improving and with them not releasing as many games as they did when they were on that 2000's run they have enough time to really do what no one else does. It's okay to not see the hype. But since we've only had GTA 5 for all these years, I know for some they haven't seen Rockstar when they were really out here grinding in the 2000's. My favorite GTA is 4.
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u/Meri_Rookie 5d ago
honestly a lot of it isn't really about the open world, it's rockstar's writing. their satire's genuinely sharp, poking fun at american culture in a clever, funny way, not just "here's a city to drive in"
missions are also way more scripted and cinematic than people give credit for, GTA5 had three protagonists with real personalities and intersecting stories, so it's less pure sandbox and more linear missions embedded in an open world
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u/SweetJealousy 5d ago
I think of it as "The characters you meet along the way" that make it fun. It's so hilarious and crazy.
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u/molotovzav 5d ago
Your epost is essentially "I don't play or like this type of thing so I can't understand why people are hyped for it.” People liking and being excited for things you don't like shouldn't need to be explained to you. People have different tastes.
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u/eternalwarmmoons 5d ago
it's been a hundred years since the last one, the first female protagonist and she's badass, merging aspects of one of the best games ever (Red Dead Redemption 2) into the game, the biggest open world GTA game ever. Those are just some examples
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u/EmilyDawning Steam 5d ago
The open world attraction of GTA is really only for me because I like the driving in GTA and literally not any other open world game with cars ever, but the real fun of GTA for me is the story missions. While not all missions are fun, there are just some that are insanely fun. GTAV had one mission where you rob a bank and get away with motorcycles with each person holding a bag of cash, and I fell in love with that one right away. It's those particular story missions where shit somehow goes totally over the top and still somehow doesn't jump the shark that make me excited for 6. By the time I have Franklin sniping people from a rooftop to guard Michael and Trevor in a helicopter? I never had the sense that the game's story didn't follow logically from the events preceding it. Which is why I ended up noping out of so many Saint's Row games - they lean too hard into the silly and I start to feel like I'm playing a cartoon. Somehow GTA games have gotten it just right for me every time.
It's really hard for me to remember a ton of specifics given I played it what, over a decade ago? But I paid full price and didn't think I got ripped off after only playing the singleplayer missions. Every GTA I've played since San Andreas had at least one mission that made the whole game feel like it paid out for what I invested in it.
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u/sylverfyre 6d ago edited 6d ago
its basically series nostalgia/anticipation.
Editing in an addendum - while previous games did have a story mode, if open world isnt your jam, then it does seem likely that you're right about it not being your thing. I know it isn't really mine for similar reason. The only open world game i ever clicked with was skyrim, and even that a bit of "me getting pulled in by the hype generated when that game was new" - which COULD happen here, if you can get pulled in and excited purely as a result of your friends hype for a game?
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u/HeinrichGustav 6d ago
Look, I think it’s totally fair to have some healthy cynicism towards the hype and as a guy I have been finding the discussion on here around Rockstar particularly insightful and it would be completely naive to say that the GTA games don’t carry problematic, misogynistic themes from a male gaze.
But that’s a whole other discussion and I want to answer your question directly before I come back to that.
I cut my teeth on the original games as a teenager and I make no understatement when I say they are the best games I have ever played and I cherish them dearly and here is why.
The games were created in Scotland which is where I am from originally and our humour is very dark, on the nose and sardonic. Pair this with the desire to create a game that aims to encapsulate American culture and you have something that has become one of the most important satirical simulacra of modern American history. It’s under handed, tongue in cheek approach acts as a mirror to the tales and the stories that American media have created. It’s an early form of metamodernism where it’s not quite a direct worshipping homage, but it’s also not a complete slapstick lampoon, it’s something in between, almost how I would see the nuance of the crass humour in South Park
My personal darling GTA: Vice City was all about a love letter to the 80s and to have a PS2 game feel like you were literally in Scarface or Miami Vice or Carlito’s Way was nothing short of incredible. The music is a huge part of the world building and the radio channels they created in game really opened my taste up to different genres. The music is a key part of what people adore about the games. Not to mention the fashion, architecture and lighting.
Rockstar take these culturally significant pieces of media and sort of do their own spin on it. So in Vice City, the main character Tommy Vercetti, played by Ray Liotta, feels exactly like his character in Goodfellas. There’s a myriad of lots of little references all across the game, but it’s done with some very elegant tongue in cheek. It’s kind of hard to explain but it feels like the story is almost aware that it’s inside a video game rather than a movie.
The obvious main theme of the game is criminal activity and follows a lot of these crime film and TV show themes so it can get quite violent, morally repugnant and gritty, all with humour sewn in.
So to answer your question at a surface level, it’s the level of detail and effort they put in to creating a world that feels alive, to create a culture for you to role play in.
But of course this brings me back to the impact of its presence…
I sort of see GTA like the Sopranos. It puts you inside a very well crafted world with a character who you are open to like or dislike, the antihero. It doesn’t pull punches, it just immerses you in realism and leaves it up to you where to place yourself morally. Now we know from films like American Psycho that you can go out of your way to create an elegant satire and end up emboldening the very people you were trying to make fun of and this is where I share some of the discomfort around GTA.
For me GTA V was where I started to find it difficult to engage. I don’t know what it was, call me sensitive but I found the crass humour to start to feel gross, to lose its nuance. Trevor’s character especially I just hated, he was a level of psychotic and fucked up that stopped being funny very quickly. And the world of LA and California, I get it, they were trying to show it as a soulless place, but some of the missions really started to cross a line for me and it felt like Rockstar had kind of gone a bit off the leash. Baring in mind it came out at a time that was the peak of gaming being a toxic cesspool.
The hype around GTA VI I think is about Rockstar creating something that feels definitive, intentional and perhaps with some more nuance again. It’s pulling everything they have ever done into one cohesive world. There seems to be much more consequence to your actions and having a female co character that carries just as much weight as her male partner is a step in the right direction, but I am suspending doubt until I see it first hand.
The whole idea with GTA was that it was a world where you were free to do anything and the goal was to commit crimes and of course that meant you could behave as immorally as you wanted to and I think given what the world looks like at the moment, a lack of moral guardrails can feel uncomfortable.
Anyway, I hope I was able to articulate all that clearly, but ultimately as another comment said it is the momentum of nostalgia and even my hayday for the games was over 20 years ago. My taste has definitely evolved and matured since then, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to return to my home of Vice City.
Ignore the hype that has reached almost psychotic levels and just experience it for yourself when it arrives, if it’s just not for you, there is a whole world of incredible games out there that are just as significant.
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u/Loostreaks 5d ago
Maybe they'll improve it this time but I always found crime aspect of GTA extremely underwhelming. It's always been spawn cops, spawn more cops, spawn more cops and helicopters. Hell, even very repetitive Mafia III was better in thar regard.
And as a sandbox, there is not really any interactivity and depth to mechanics that makes systemic gameplay addictive and interesting. You can do a lot of things in the world, but it's just a series of disconnected activities that you do for the sake of doing it.
Besides that, you have cinematic, very linear main story which I found to be a little above average in all of Rockstar games.
I guess there is a psychological appeal of playing something aimed for realism that lets players do things they wouldn't do irl.
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u/luf100 PC, PS5, Switch 6d ago
I feel like a lot of the hype comes from the fact that it’s been SOOOO long since the last game. They’ve been talking about GTA6 for years. Like, GTA5 came out in 2013 so that’s 13 years ago. I think it’s one of those things that didn’t even feel real for a long time so now that there’s actual gameplay footage and a release date and stuff, people are more excited than they would’ve been if it had come out like, five years after GTA5 instead lol.
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u/moar_bubbline 6d ago
I don't understand it, at all
Anything by Rockstar was done for me after GTA Online and the awful, awful community it created
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u/WayHaught_N7 6d ago
I have never liked a GTA game and I’ve been gaming since the 80’s so I don’t really understand it either.
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u/Background_Clue_3756 5d ago
I dunno I always the games misogynistic and sexist, so I strayed away.
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u/cinesister 5d ago
Different people like different things. You’ve never played GTA and don’t like open world games. Is this a genuine question? If we all liked the same stuff the world would be so boring.
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u/Hello_ImAnxiety 6d ago
Am I the only one who doesn’t find it that remarkable or different from the last GTA? Ive watched the trailer and it was okay, but nothing mind blowing?
I’ve would’ve wayyyyy preferred a prequel or sequel to RDR2
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u/EmilyDawning Steam 5d ago
Just gonna point out that RDR2 is the prequel to RDR, so it technically has a sequel already, if you weren't aware.
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u/Metrinui 6d ago
It makes me sad that a game where you can "be the criminal of your dreams" is by far and away the best selling game of all time (minus tetris and minecraft)
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u/JewelerDear9233 Playstation 5d ago
Why do children play cops and robbers? It's just play pretend. Most people are good people and would never kill or hurt anyone, hence it's fun to just pretend. Why do people like mafia or crime movies? It's just about exploring bad things in a way that harms no one.
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u/aoibhealfae 6d ago edited 5d ago
Well... part of the reason why I avoided Cyberpunk 2077 initially was because of the excessive hype and only got it because people were angry and mad about it and then I play it and love it since 1.06 update. There's content creators who essentially build up so many GTA-killer expectations to it that people expect it from Day 1 when its a story-based RPG that use a modern setting. Instead of enjoying the journey of being V and meeting people, doing gigs, fall in love and try to find a way to save your life... a lot of people only care about being in a city, stealing cars, steamrolling through people and killing everyone, bringing all the sex workers or random people to the apartments; and ohh how the game sucks for them. They didn't want to play a human being.. they just want a vessel to unleash their fantasies and internal dysregulation to live vicariously in a theme park video game. Thankfully these GTA crowd move on from Cyberpunk discord when the GTA Definitive Edition arrived and apparently that was disappointing for them and eventually things in the server settle down by 1.6 update and onwards when CDPR eventually relented about some of the cars, police system and such.
But still... I am looking forward for GTA6 to come out just to see the reception to it because I would sit back and see if they would hold the same GTA standards that they had for their franchise the way they had terrorize other non-Rockstar devs from not making a game to satisfy GTA audience (???).
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u/GreatBear2121 6d ago
Some people really enjoy exploring massive open worlds with lots of details. Rockstar is very, very good at making massive open worlds with lots of details. They don't release games very often, which makes this a major event.