Funnily enough that’s actually why it is my favourite GTA game (I haven’t played 5 and I won’t play 6), although nostalgia probably plays a big role too.
I also liked that it had a cold, clinical feel compared to the later GTAs. You are in “Anywhere City” and it feels like society has entered a permanent state of decline.
I also think the relatively lite cyberpunk and retro-futuristic elements added a bit of flair to the concept.
That being said, I can understand why they will never make a game like GTA2 again; bad market fit and the futurism of GTA2 is in many ways a product of the 90s/early 2000s.
Yeah, I don’t get it either, why am I supposed to connect with the city? I’m playing a violent criminal in a goofy, arcade-y top-down action game. Setting was perfect.
What I absolutely couldn’t connect with is GTA 5: The mechanics are stale, the game doesn’t respect my time and Michael and especially Trevor are just nasty, unpleasant pieces of shit. Zero enthusiasm for GTA 6 from me, it’s just going to have all the same flaws as any GTA since 3 and will surely be more tailored towards online money extraction schemes.
Meanwhile Cyberpunk 2077, with a somewhat similar dystopian setting, has become my favorite game in large parts because of the characters.
GTA2 was good, it’s just games journalists obsessed with a “3D full immersion VR future”, that they felt threatened by every 2D games made once the first Voodoo cards left the factories. The reviews were not about the games, but endless whining about they losing their “fully realistic games” (past Medal of Honor, they usually envisioned a perfect recreation of Battle of Normandy) because a man made a theme park game with accurate roller coaster physics in assembly.
The 3D push was quite similar to the current AI push, but more successful. Imagine if Microsoft blocked games being released onto XBox if they don’t have a certain amount of AI generated assets and/or “live generated content”.
Imagine if Microsoft blocked games being released onto XBox if they don’t have a certain amount of AI generated assets and/or “live generated content”.
Shhhh! Don’t tell them this idea, please!
Xbox is already dying, they’re in no position to scare developers off.
They likely already have that as plan Z already, knowing that console manufacturers demanded 3D objects in the games developers made for their consoles.
MS is definitely going this route.
GTA 2 didn’t connect not because it looked slightly different than GTA 1. This was the “transition to 3D” era and people gravitated towards such games, like Driver.
A shame because it was nice when Chinatown Wars came around some years down the road. A nice trip back to 2D, with some modernization.
I recently picked up cw again and it feels like the best aged GTA in the series
GTA2 was the best GTA.
As a high school student I installed a pirated copy on the school network so my friend and I could play it in class. This was at a small town school where the IT specialist was usually too busy being a teacher and track coach to pay attention to what students were able to do on school computers. They removed the ability for student accounts to install software eventually, but I never got punished for what I did.
Oh I loved the days of circumventing early school IT systems. I remember we discovered that we could right click on something in the start menu and get into a shared network folder, we put Halo in it and basically the whole class played matches together but alt-tabbed when a teacher came by.
It’s a joke how easy some of those were to bypass. I still remember when the lab installed some nanny cam app so they could make sure kids weren’t playing games or looking at shit they shouldn’t. The app was so bad that I could just open task manager and kill the nanny cam software.
The librarians loved me, so I don’t think they cared enough to say anything, even when they went after kids near me doing similar shit.
Haha, that’s pretty shit level software. Usually it took a little bit more effort than that to just kill it in task manager.
Yeah… Even back then I was amazed at how little effort it took to bypass. But that was in the early 00s, and basic troubleshooting like opening task manager was considered black magic (just like opening a terminal is today to most people)
I remember figuring out how to make my account an admin account in like Windows 2k through some obscure setting that was still available. We stared with weird flash games in the library, and eventually played unreal tournament.
Was that the sticky keys trick? That was a fun one to use to elevate
No. What the heck? You can/could have used sticky keys to elevate account access??? What?
Yeah, so back in the day, you could replace the accessibility executable that launches when you hit shift 5 times to enable sticky keys, and is launched as a privileged process. Rename it and copy cmd to the old exe name, hit shift 5 times and you now have an admin console.
Still works today, you just have to do it offline if you’re not an admin.
One of my friends pointed out to the teacher that they shouldn’t store the grades on a shared location the students could access and got expelled. I’ll stick to Oregon Trail.
Weird article. GTA2 came out in 1999. That’s a long time ago. I doubt most of that team still works there. The idea that they had an issue making it somehow meaning that, over two decades later, the same issues will remain is an odd conclusion.
It’s just a weird comment, I get what he’s saying back then, but Saints Row had multiple games come out in pseudo-futuristic setting that were batshit crazy and fun to play, so obviously it can be done.
Lets be honest, we won’t see a futuristic GTA at this point because shark cards are a money-printing machine and Take Two will never approve anything like that because it would be too risky.
I remember I had a Voodoo card at the time of GTA2. Playing the Glide version of that game (if you could get it working) was like being transported into the future. The resolution was higher, the framerate was higher and more smooth, the lighting effects were insane. Especially on a large CRT with vibrant colors that game looked absolutely amazing.
It’s some 20 years ago I played it but I don’t remember it as being futuristic at all? Seemed like a normal city to me or what am I missing?
Apparently it had some weird weapons, which we’ve never seen in other Grand Theft Auto surely…
It was more like retro-futurism of the 1970s
I liked the weapon mods to the vehicles - oil spills etc
Also the car crusher that gave out items and cash iirc
The gang/faction system was lot of fun, I recall one of them was just straight rednecks so ton of fun to just rampage against them.
Also loved the nice touch of the 5 minute gameplay demo being enforced your character wearing a bomb vest set to blow in 5 minutes.
The spray shops were called “Max Paint”, a reference to a game that would come out two years later.
I liked GTA2. Probably because it was the only one I played. I would love to play it today, but the tank controls are too horrible. Does anybody know of an analogue controller mod or something like that?
I played the hell out of GTA 2, had a 3 disk box containing 1 2 and London. And only now I’m bring told it was set in the future!
Yeah I thought it was just a mismatch of all different kinds. Like the 20s and 30s gangster cars and then random car styles from other eras
GTA2 was the best, this is a true fact
One of the districts in GTA2 is Funabashi, the name of a city to the west of Tokyo.
If you want to make a GTA set in the “future” that still resonates with people, set it somewhere in Japan.
Considering how often police chases and gang activity occur there, despite Japan’s extremely low crime rate, why not use Nagoya?
If your game relies heavily on cultural details, you probably shouldn’t make something outside of the culture you know.
Rockstar is a British company making games about US culture.
RDR was made by Rockstar San Diego.
Removed by mod
The guy they’re interviewing seems so detached from reality, the article links to another with more from the same guy, he’s quoted saying that “it doesn’t make sense to go to some left field location for novelty” specifically in regards to Tokyo, then goes on to say “it’s too easy to do what we know again” which sounds negative? But then follows that up with “nobody is[…]not going to play gta 6 because it’s in vice city”
It’s a really odd take tbh.
I’ll add to the chorus here saying I really liked GTA2. I dunno where he got the idea that gamers disliked it
At this rate we won’t be seeing another GTA game after 6 until 2040 anyways
At least they’ve already finished the engine it will run in.
Just please put the random string of Elvis impersonators trolling the streets back in there
