[Vecis]

They could have story which in the end leads to failure.
But in case of different missions in case of success/failure.. nah, that would be more crappy missions, that less good ones. I don't mind linear story.

[mkey82]

Many have tried to tackle the issue of nonlinear storyline and afaik vast majority have failed. Especially when you consider the fact a game like GTA relies on animations/cutscenes and dialog to carry on the story. I really don't think a truly nonlinear game is technically doable without practically developing some sort of artificial intelligence, which could to some extent play with you, instead of having you playing with it.

The only feasible way (as it comes to my mind after thinking about a complex topic such as this for about 90 seconds) is to have the good ole branch, where outcome of one mission leads to a few other possible missions, etc. For instance, you could have "mission 1" which could be some sort of an intro into the game. Then have two possible outcomes (for sake of brevity), obviously "fail" and "success". Failure leads to "mission 2.1" while success would take you on to "mission 2.2".

Now, if you want to have a good storyline, obviously from this point on you'll have to have two storylines, with sensical outcomes. Obviously, "mission 2.1" will have two possible outcomes, again a failure or success and the same will be valid for every other mission. This complicates character progression and interactions drastically. For instance, one of the storylines would probably lead you toward "good" which would (for sake of a story which should be down to the point and sensical) probably end up limiting your crime spree options.

A way to have this trimmed a bit is to have various missions on some level lead to same missions as some other outcomes, so with some intersections you'd need less missions in total. A way to further complicate things and make the whole thing more nonlinear would be to have more then two possible outcomes for every/some mission. For instance, it wouldn't be the same if you'd get busted in different parts of the mission, various outcomes may ensue. Likewise, missions could have various positive outcomes, with a myriad of following all new and fresh intersections.

Lets not pretend the pink elephant is transparent and confront it head on instead. What would "busted" mean? Probably it would drop you in a jail somewhere. That would mean a less skilled player would spend an obnoxiously large amount of game time imprisoned. To break the routine, you could have player dropped in various prison systems, depending on their current geographical position in game and seriousness of the crime committed but nevertheless you'd have to get the player on track for some storyline sooner or later. Of course, one storyline could unfold inside the prison system (brainstorm!).

The other pink elephant is the actual mission content. That is, how many different missions can one possibly imagine? That leads to the unavoidable conclusion - you'd still have maybe a dozen different mission types which would just repeat under different conditions. Lets say, one storyline has you killing and looting for one side, the other has you doing pretty much the same stuff for another family/gang/whatever, just in a (wholly) different setting.

All this being written, I don't think R* is going to get into nonlinear storytelling anytime soon (I'll just ignore what they tried to do in GTAIV and write it off to temporary insanity and accompanying unaccountability for their own actions). The only game I know about which has something like this done well, albeit on a lesser scale is Blade Runner, but that's an entirely different product.

[ubergoon1912]

QUOTE (unnepeve @ Sunday, Apr 15 2012, 03:57)

I would really like this tipe of gta. But what happens when you fail most of the missions? Will it be wery short and you have to start a new game? If anyone have played Mount & Blade then there you have two options, auto save or manual save. I always choosed the auto save which means that if you fail a mission it automaticaly saves and you can't reload. I remember having a plane mission in San Andreas which i couldn't pass although i tried it 50 times in a row. And there where no other missions also to do, so it would have been nice to fail that mission permanently and continie the storyline without succeeding the mission. It would ad a wery good replay value.

dont worry N.O.E was hard for alot of us

[GroveStRoamer]

That's a good Idea man. If rockstar games goes through with this, It will indeed be the largest most ambitious game yet. I cant wait for this one

[Gregers08]

Interesting theory however I can't see them doing this for every mission unless the story only has 50 missions or they only do it for key missions.

With the multiple protag rumour floating around I think this could be a more team oriented GTA as in forming a team aswell as organising jobs such as the heist in the trailer.

Theory

It could work similar to the bank robbery in VC but for more than one mission, having a team would compliment the multi protag theory, each of the say 5 team members could have their own stories in between each big heist and each team member has different styled missions for example

Team member 1= Stealth oriented missions(5 missions).
Team member 2(Tank top guy)= Traditional San andreas styled missions(20 missions).
Team member 3= High speed missions involving chases and races and time limits(10 missions).
Team member 4= Combat oriented missions(15 missions).
Ned Luke= A mix of every mission style aswell as some more methodical missions (25 missions).

Heist= Missions to wrap up each section of the story(5 missions)

A Heist could mark an end to a particular part of the storyline from here you control Ned Luke's character and you could give each team member a specific role based on their strengths. Each heist would become progressively harder and more complex with the final one being a building wide clean out of the newly built Mile high club.

[Pandy]

That sounds amazing.

[DTUMan]

Edited

This post has been edited by DTUMan on Friday, Jun 1 2012, 06:34

[spiderman3000]

If something like this happens, I would gladly wait even 2 more years for V to come out but if they put something like that, then you can consider V to be on PS3 and pc only.

[Slamman]

5 protagonists is a bold new direction.... but trying to guess this now is of no good point, since it's already come up in nearly 2 years of guessing the V game.

How can anyone guess this proposed game changer? I find it as annoying as the numerical date guesses.
Someone said it was showing in the trailer, or something obvious and new, so obvious, I've not seen anyone point out what it is yet! hahaha

[canttakemyid]

No GTAV info whatsoever for 7 months is a "bold new direction".

On a serious note. Maybe, they are fixing the biggest issue from GTAIV (lack of replay value); which is a long and hard problem to fix. I think that there will be an empire building system that puts GTAVC and VCS to shame. It'll make those games look like Saints Row.

*It has somewhat worked before in the sense that it is one of the earliest methods used by R* to add replay value.