Make no mistake, every GTA game was remarkable in its own way, but few experiences in gaming can match the classic GTA Trilogy from the early 2000s (GTA 3,Vice City,San Andreas). In fact, I’d go so far as to argue that the epochal set of games was superior to modern GTA titles (yep, you too Red Dead 2), where Rockstar neglected the hallmark of game design that gave the trilogy its unique sense of freedom.
Specifically, I’m talking about the incredible mission design of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. As the series developed over time, each title seemed to give less freedom to the player in missions. This could be a result of Rockstar’s desire to tella more meticulous storyto eliminate any possible inconsistencies between dialogue and gameplay. These usually stem from play styles that the developer did not anticipate for you to choose. For example, if a mission requires you to drive a passenger to a checkpoint, a more complex and detailed dialogue may not have been ready for you to fly a private plane there. But, really, what is a sandbox if it doesn’t cater to different play styles and possibilities?
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GTA: Vice City, for instance, featured a mission called “Loose Ends.” In this mission, you’d receive a call from a payphone in Little Havana, then head over to a compound behind the Cherry Popper Ice Cream Company building and ascend to the roof to intercept a drug deal. You could do this the traditional way: enter through the back door and kill everyone leading up to where the deal is taking place. Alternatively, you could steal a Helicopter, land it near the payphone, then fly directly to the roof without the preceding gunfight. If you were playing with mods, you could even get up there with any vehicle using the super nitro mod. The mission’s goal wasn’t bound to a rigid structure, you hadchoice.
The hierarchy of choice begins with choosing any vehicle at the bottom (or going on foot) and ends with entirely choosing how to approach your objectives at the top. Mission design in modern GTA games rarely achieves the top of the hierarchy. This isn’t down to some technical limitation, but rather a creative path that Rockstar actively decides for their games.
In some ways, this shows how in more recent timesopen-world gamesare increasingly influenced by the cinematic stylings of linear game Linear games are like a roller coaster—a carefully curated thrill ride that delights a particular audience. Open-world games are playgrounds—essentially chaotic and messy places. These days, Rockstar actively integrates the linear rollercoaster into its open worlds, effectively limiting the functions of each ride.
One of the missions guilty of this is the first mission after the prologue ofGTA 5. “Franklin and Lamar'' features a race between Franklin and Lamar with stolen cars at the dealership. The mission’s primary goal was to present Franklin’s ability to slow time in land vehicles and make easier turns. Other than that, the mission is a great big scripted cesspool. Since I played the game more than five times — and this specific mission multiple times more — I know exactly how and when to use Franklin’s abilities to take first place from Lamar in the early stage of the mission. One problem is that Lamar is scripted to be always faster than you until a certain point. Consequently, no matter how fast you go, Lamar’s car will turn into supersonic mode by divine intervention and break all laws of physics just to be ahead of you.
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ThePlayStation 2GTA trilogy was never concerned with giving a linear experience; you were almost always free to experience a mission your way. Even one of the more hated missions inGTA: San Andreas, still offered freedom in its approach.
I’m talking, of course, about the infamous “Wrong Side of the Tracks,” where CJ and Big Smoke try to bust a Vagos deal that turned out to be an ambush.
Your objective is to kill the escaping Vagos members boarding a train to Las Venturas. The traditional way of doing it entailed just chasing the train and staying in close proximity for Big Smoke to shoot the Vagos members off the train. However, due to Smoke’s questionable shooting abilities, I had to come up with different solutions to the missions because the Vagos would escape most of the time, searing Big Smoke’s infuriating“All you had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!”into my memory. So I entered the Jetpack cheat, boarded the train, and shot the Vagos members myself! Amazingly, the game didn’t fail me for leaving Big Smoke on the bike and chasing them myself.
A more honorable way of completing the mission would be to outdrive the train to some rooftop and shoot the Vagos members from there. To this day, I find people making up alternative methods of completing the mission.
While the hardship of completing it stemmed from the infuriating coding of Big Smoke’s aim, the fail conditions were kept to a minimum so that people could come up with creative ways to beat it. Sure, maybe this entire argument was just my way of sneaking in a positive opinion oo the train mission in GTA: San Andreas, but it still showcases better mission design than any of its successors to date.
