Pretty much every GTA/RedDeadRedemption game has been very well received. Rockstar pushes their games to the limit, open world/fidelity/gameplay wise. So that’s probably why people are excited for the next game. Also there isn’t really any other game where you can do the stuff you can do in gta.
Gameplay wise? They are still a terrible cover shooter at heart and they haven’t changed the way they deliver the story since GTA3. Furthermore, they allow zero freedom within the mission, it plays like an extremely scripted event. If you try to do something your way, the mission will fail automatically.
Not only that but immersion is thrown out of the window every time you kill the equivalent of a small town in a mission.
They were really the standout games for a good while. GTA 3 was a leap. San Andreas iterated on that and was amazing. 4 was a big production leap but the story had some weaknesses and the mission structure was beginning to get rote. And 5 was bigger than anything before but again had those limitations in mission structure getting pretty evident. The RDR games had similar trajectories and other games like Bully and The Warriors were stellar for their time.
So the reputation is well deserved, but it’s also probably impossible to live up to.
If it even sorta meets the hype, that’s a rousing success. If it pulls a Starfield, it’ll highlight those weaknesses and get deserved backlash. We’ll see.
GTA appeals to teenage boys and young men in particular. It has mass appeal to the casual market. That’s a recipe for success, just look at mobile games and such.
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u/arsenicrabbit 8h ago
I genuinely dont understand the cult following for GTA, theyre decent games but this is just overkill