6 Unreasonable Things I Want in the Next Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto 5 is coming out later this year, so it’s probably too late to squeeze any of my demands into that game. But seeing as how this is A.) my blog, B.) America, and C.) that Grand Theft Auto 6 is an inevitability, I feel pretty confident that I can demand any fool thing I want. I wrote previously that GTA5 needs to make sure it improves the money system. They need to give us more things to buy than were available in GTA4. That’s a reasonable request. These 6 suggestions are rather unreasonable, and you’ll see why. But  I make these requests for one very specific and important reason.

Don't pretend that GTAs 7-10 aren't also a sure thing

The Grand Theft Auto series has become the greatest real world simulation ever.

This was especially evident in Grand Theft Auto 4, where Rockstar studios created a lush, realistic, video game version of New York City and populated it with both the fantastic and the mundane. I cannot be the only gamer who spent time just walking down the sidewalks of Liberty City, admiring the visuals, the physics and the ebb and flow of this virtual city. And I know I’m not the only gamer who then pulled out his rocket launcher, blew up a city bus and then led police on a high-speed car chase through the streets of virtual Manhattan.

Because Grand Theft Auto, of course, has mastered the sandbox game play. Where you can do anything you want in a large open world – but only in their limited world with the limited toys they have given you. I think Rockstar studios should broaden their horizons and have some fun with the worlds they have created.

6. Futuristic weapons and vehicles

Saint's Row 3 is already on the right track

Why are all of these sandbox games based around urban crime? GTA, Saint’s Row, True Crime, The Godfather; companies make these elaborate virtual cities filled with people, vehicles, buildings and more, and all they can think to do with them is crime simulators? That’s bogus. Rockstar, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, have proven themselves capable of more. They produced Red Dead Redemption, which was essentially Grand Theft Auto in the old west. And it was a beautiful recreation/simulation of those times. You really felt like a cowboy roping horses and having shootouts. But why focus on the past?

Rockstar should look to the future.

I would love to see them create a future world from the ground up. Futuristic buildings, transport tubes like on Futurama, raised conveyor-belt walkways, or just nifty futuristic takes on classics like fast food or gas stations.  But if a whole futuristic world is too much to ask, add a few futuristic things to the present day games. In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, they included a jet pack. And that was fun as hell. I know they want their games to be realistic, so maybe add these bonus things via cheat codes.

Or just give us GTA: Futurama. They did it with the Simpsons

Create a realistic hover car and let people drive it around the virtual city, using the same physics engine that controls regular cars. Or add cool weaponry, like laser guns or lightsabers. Use the same exact physics and gameplay as the normal weapons, but spice them up a little. We don’t need the same exact machine gun or AK47 that’s available in every single game on the market. Use some creativity! Maybe a gun that shoots swords. Or a laser chainsaw. Blasters from Star Wars, or phasers from Star Trek. What about the silly weapons in games like Ratchet & Clank or Destroy All Humans? Like gravity guns or blasters that turn people into fish.Those games are designed around those weapons. GTA is designed around reality, so it’s the perfect place to drop in crazy stuff!

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5. Female protagonist

Picking up hookers will become 20% cooler

Whoa, now I’m getting edgy. A female protagonist is unreasonable? Probably for Grand Theft Auto. Considering they have made at least 8 games for consoles, plus more for handheld systems, and none of them have featured a female lead. Why the hell not? Are they worried that little boys won’t want to buy their games if it stars a girl? People still buy Metroid games, female Shepherd is a pretty popular choice in the Mass Effect series and Beyond Good & Evil is hailed as one of the greatest games of all time! I know I loved it. Jade was kickass.

Rockstar needs to get over themselves and give us a hard-fighting, hard-loving, foul-mouthed and angry female protagonist. We’re adults, we can handle it. Women can be bastards too!

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4. Destructible buildings

Give me more of this in video game form

If I drive a car into the side of a building, I want to actually smash through the wall. I also want to see the damage if I spend half an hour shooting infinite rocket launchers into a skyscraper. I want such destructive freedom that every single person at Fox News will have a simultaneous aneurysm at the very possibility of being able to fly airplanes into buildings. I want to be able to stand atop a massive pile of rubble and declare that this was once a city, but then it met me!

Video game companies have been trying to accomplish this forever. Some games have destructible environments, and there are probably even some out there that let you destroy everything. But I just don’t think video game consoles are powerful enough to create a fully-realized world with fully-realized destruction. That doesn’t mean I have to stop demanding it! I want it now! It would especially come in handy for the next few items on my list.

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3. Extreme weather and natural disasters

Randomly the Internet has already made my wish come true

In Grand Theft Auto games, it will either be a sunny day or it will be raining. But the only difference that makes is whether it’s darker or lighter on screen. Walking around in soaking wet clothes or driving on rain-slicked streets doesn’t change anything. Well as far as I’m concerned, that whole concept needs to change! Make it snow! Coat the streets with ice so that it’s harder to drive. Fill the streets with slow-moving snowplows. Reduce visibility to zero in whiteout conditions.

But why stop at snow? Give us a hurricane or a tornado! Real horrible winds whipping around the city. Our characters could live out those shots of news reporters being blown around in the incredible wind. Cars could be knocked over, pedestrians thrown down the street and our character could get caught in a massive windstorm. It would be awesome!

I'll give or take a Bill Pullman

Grand Theft Auto 5 is to be set in California, so why not an Earthquake? Make it a part of the story, if they must. Have a bank robbery and getaway take place during the biggest Earthquake in history! Shake the whole damn map, have buildings fall down, rock the character back and forth. Let something exciting happen to the game world! Speaking of which…

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2. Giant monster attack

Everything is improved with the phrase 'add more Godzilla'

This one is straight out of the Sim City playbook. Remember that game? It was completely serious, with the player building up a city piece-by-piece. But then every so often a giant orange lizard creature or black robot alien mothership would attack and destroy the city! It was insanely awesome. Quite possibly my favorite part of the game.

So let’s do it full scale in Grand Theft Auto! I’m talking full-on Godzilla-level mayhem. Monsters the size of skyscrapers tearing through downtown. And you, the player, still your normal size. Still only able to do what you’ve always been able to do. No quick time events to kill the monster. No altering the gameplay. Heck, you might not even be able to impact the monster in anyway.

You all know this was your favorite part of Sim City games

But wouldn’t it be awesome to fly a fighter jet against him nonetheless? Or leap off a parking garage ramp and crash into the monster’s back? Or parachute down onto its head and try to hold on? It would be brilliant. It would be a fantastic change of pace. It would be the marriage of Grand Theft Auto and Shadow of the Colossus. And as such, would be the greatest game ever made.

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1. Super powers

Super monkeys are also a must

When I played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there was a cheat code that would speed up gameplay incrementally. I pushed that cheat to its max. All of a sudden, my character was running across the world and down city streets like the Flash. The rest of the game was moving just as fast, but at that speed, I didn’t notice. All I knew was the brilliance of running incredibly fast through the game world. It was then I knew that Grand Theft Auto is the perfect opportunity to truly experience super powers in a realistic setting. It would be unlike any other superhero game in existence.

Take the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series for example. There you have dozens of Marvel Comics heroes and villains, each with their own unique powers – but they’re not really unique. In order to fit the constraints of the game, the powers are all a little bit similar to each other. Iron Man’s repulsor ray blasts serve the same exact function as Spider-Man’s web blasts as do Cyclops’ optic blasts. And the game itself, from the confined levels to the armies of bad guys, are designed specifically around those powers. So you’re not using these powers in a realistic setting, you’re using them in a setting designed specifically around using those powers.

I want free-roaming super powers, like Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

This game existed and it was amazing

In a game world like Grand Theft Auto, you could set those powers free! There would be no restrictions other than the normal restrictions of our world, recreated in glorious fashion in GTA. Some games have given us a taste of this play style, like Spider-Man 2 or Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and both were brilliant games. Manhattan existed as it did, and you could either web-swing or Hulk jump to your heart’s content. But those games were confined to those specific characters and their powers. With GTA and cheat codes, we could have dozens of powers!

Take the speed power again. All you’d need to do is speed up the character’s movements, but leave the rest of the world at normal speed. Instant super speed. There are a ton of physical powers you could make with little changes to the game. Growing or shrinking was available in Saint’s Row 2 with cheat codes. Have your character grow several stories tall and stomp around on cars and pedestrians. Reduce gravity on just your character and suddenly you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Zero gravity on player = super leaping!

The list could go on and on, and be perfect for DLC. Flying, optic blasts, running/crawling up walls, unstoppable momentum, or whatever else they could think of. With the game engine and realistic setting and physics of Grand Theft Auto, you would be able to experience these powers in real time, in a real world setting. It would revolutionize superhero video games. And it would be so easy to add to the next game. Consider the ball in your court, Rockstar.

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What are some of your ideas for additions to Grand Theft Auto? Co-op? Bigger bazookas? Motorcycles with sidecars? What are some crazy ideas? What are some reasonable ideas? What did I forget to add? Tell me in the comments!

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About Sean Ian Mills

Hello, this is Sean, the Henchman-4-Hire! By day I am a mild-mannered newspaper reporter in Central New York, and by the rest of the day I'm a pretty big geek when it comes to video games, comic books, movies, cartoons and more.

Posted on March 1, 2012, in Lists of Six!, Video Games. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.

  1. 6. Animals! I very much badly want to ride a hippopotamus through the streets of liberty city. You should also be able to destroy the zoos and animals. Everyone can then take out all their frustrations on Panda Bears. Stupid creatures won’t even have sex to save their own species. Also Monkey sidekicks and dog sidekicks are a must. Oh and to be a falconer would be so cool. You could train your falcon to kill hookers!

    5. Hardcore drugs. If you can get drunk in WoW, then you should be able to get high in GTA. And different drugs should give you different highs. Hallucinogens cause you to see things that aren’t really there. That’s actually the extent of my drug knowledge, basically from watching TV and movies. But Walk Hard: The Legend of Dewey Cox has a lot of good drug trip scenes. I’m talking something like that in video game form.

    4. Music. They call themselves Rockstar but then you can’t go into their games and become a rockstar?! What’s up with that?! You should be able to interact with instruments and then jam out on them. I have no idea how to do this, but I also do not care. I want it.

    3. The Moon. I don’t want this getting out of hand with a whole space-thing. But there should be like one rocket hidden away in secret in the game, and you should be able to re-create the moon landing. Like a little bit. Then you can hide bodies on the moon.

    2. Pies! One of your weapons should be throwing pies in people’s faces.

    1. Children…………. You know what? No….I take it back….this one is too depraved. Offending PETA, crashing planes into skyscrapers, and doing copious amounts of in-game heroin are fine. But having an in-game high school where you can go shoot up the teachers and bullies is where I’m going to draw the line. No children. That’s messed up man. I don’t think I want to play GTA anymore.

  2. great ideas sean. have the yreversed the game yet making you the cops. it would be fun to catch assholes and be kick ass cops. aka dirty harry. ” go ahead make my day “

  3. Interesting post. This is my first time reading your blog and from what I’ve seen so far, I will be coming back. Subscribed to your RSS feed and hope you will post more soon.

  4. I would love to play this game. Except the super powers and giants monsters do seem over the top. Mainly because the powers would make you invincible and the monster (without the powers) would be almost impossible to defeat. Although i would love to see destructible buildings. Plus why not add kids and schools, it would make it more realistic and you could do side missions where you kidnap kids and hold them for ransom from their rich parents it would be awesome.

    • I’m fairly certain the conservative parent groups in America would freak the hell out if they included kids that could be run down or shot and school buses (full of kids) that could be exploded. That’s the kind of line that society has drawn in the sand – though now I really really do want to see a school bus in the next game.

      But yeah, the point of the super powers and the giant monster would be to be invincible. The giant monster would be just for fun, and the point would be that you couldn’t defeat it. You’d just have to keep playing the game around it. One lone guy isn’t going to defeat Godzilla. As for the super powers, they’d have to be cheat codes and at that stage, they could definitely be used to make the character invincible – hence cheating.

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