If my gaming life were turned into a movie, GTA would be the soundtrack. Not quite literally, although the radio stations the series is famous for have soundtracked many a gaming session, it’s just that Rockstar’s signature title forms the backbone for many players’ memories.
For me, those memories started with the original, top-down Grand Theft Auto on PS1. Back then DMA Design, as Rockstar was once known, appealed to me with its gritty, cartoonish, and yet somehow authentic open world design. Most of all, its sense of freedom edged with a famously subversive approach to humour was riotously fun. Over the years, Rockstar would come to refine this compelling formula.
When the PS2 launched I eagerly awaited the series first 3D entry. There wasn’t massive hype for it at the time, not like anything it would later become, but when Rockstar launched GTA 3 on October 22, 2001 it changed the medium forever. While Edge magazine infamously gave it 6/10 and damned it with faint praise, as if they were sniffly unimpressed (Edge later claimed it was a “misprint” on the score, but we’re not letting them rewrite history), it would go on to have a lasting influence.
It soon became apparent to players just how much GTA 3 contained and how many ways it sought to push gaming forward. Arguably it was in the little details that enriched it. The fact you could shoot the moon. The newspapers saying Zombie Elvis had been found. The ‘COCKS’ shown on the stands of a stadium as you flew over it in the Dodo. Childish yes, but once upon a time GTA revelled in this “edgy” low humour.
Nowadays, Rockstar has transformed into something else entirely, seemingly trapped by its very success. This is a developer that made Bully, Max Payne 3, Manhunt, Red Dead Revolver and Redemption, Midnight Club, and even a very good ping pong game, inspiring adoration and a ‘what will they do next?’ anticipation. But now? Now it inspires frustration.
Across forums, social media, and comments under articles about GTA remasters or canned Red Dead projects, players have been very vocal about the studio. Concerns range from the lack of support for Red Dead Online, to the lingering ill-will generated by the appalling state of the GTA Trilogy remasters, and, of course, the long wait for GTA 6.
Players wonder: Where is the GTA 5 single-player DLC? Where is the PS5 and Xbox Series patch for Red Dead Redemption 2? Why has it been so long since we’ve had a new GTA? You can sense the mounting depth of feeling. And I believe this frustration is born from the fact that no other developer can do what it does. Rockstar occupies a status and position no other enjoys or can aspire to, not even Naughty Dog.
GTA 5 has become the most profitable entertainment product of all time. Amazingly, it continues to land on best seller lists month after month. Its online mode is a never ending pinata of profits that has transformed Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, into one of the industry’s biggest players. With this success comes pressure and scrutiny.
Who else could’ve made Red Dead Redemption 2? Wandering the night streets of St. Denis and attending one of its parties, it’s still mind-blowing how much work must’ve gone into this masterpiece. The talent on display is astronomical. Who else could create the traffic systems, the weather, the animals, the AI, the animations, the physics systems, the incredible heist missions, the narratively ambitious gameplay that Rockstar can? You can ask CD Projekt Red just how hard it is.
The detailed settings Rockstar has created over the years have become worlds living inside the minds of players. We miss them. We yearn for them. In their trappings, their political leanings, and their wonderfully written protagonists, Rockstar has made experiences that occupy a role in this medium that few others can rival.
And yet, this very success leaves it less room to take risks and to work on projects that are smaller yet have that indefinable magic it’s capable of. From industry rumblings, it’s also apparent that some senior members have left the company, including one of the Housers who it’s said to have driven the dev to make such ambitious titles as RDR2.
But us gamers need GTA to take the edge off of the stuff that’s happening in the real world. The series has always been a dark mirror and parallel to real life, edging toward it with its trademark satire and humour. Its absence is keenly felt. To realise how long it’s been, the target of much of GTA 5’s satire is mostly the politics of the George W Bush era. We’ve had Obama, Trump, and Biden since then. Goodness knows, any of them needed some deflating, because that’s what GTA does so well, pricking the pretentious flatulence of the world whether it’s liberal or conservative.
Whenever GTA 6 does actually arrive, I for one hope that Rockstar remembers its earlier fearlessness and playfulness. Because we all need a dose of that.