Melee, stealth and platforming in Rockstar games

Most Rockstar games are centered around TPS, which is cool. They are not super great at it, but GTA V had pretty reasonable mechanics (allthough encounter design was pretty awful imo). Anyhow there are other gameplay features that are and always have been straight up awful in their games: melee, stealth and platforming.

For melee they basically use the same comically bad system in GTA, L.A. Noire etc. Looks stupid, feels janky. Rockstar likes to include one or two stealth missions per game, not their proudest moments. Platforming was super, super stiff in RDR (the time it takes to scale a wall...), but felt a bit smoother in GTA V. Still very limited in terms of what you can climb.

Do you think R* should add more features to these systems, or should they keep ignoring them and instead focus on slooowly improving the shooting? Which of the three do you think is the most important?

Sleeping dogs had better melee.

They are taking baby steps and improving their shooting mechanics a little bit with every game but sure it would be nice if Melee, Stealth and Platforming are more fleshed out. I think better/optional Stealth mechanics will make gameplay a lot better.

They should just copy MGSV.

In all seriousness though, they spend enough time and money developing their games, they make boatloads of cash in return, they can absolutely afford to pay for whatever talent it takes to pollish every aspect of their mechanics to a mirror sheen.

After MGSV there is no excuse for open world games to continue sailing by with sub par mechanics.

I guess it depends.

Having replayed San Andreas, they add so much to the game, but almost all of it is ill thought out.

At one point it introduces stealth - the player can crouch and stab enemies for an instakill. It has an entire mission around it acting as a tutorial. Then, practically all missions afterwords, are scripted so the enemy comes to you, or atomically becomes aware.

Agreed.

Probably my favorite open world games, mechanically speaking, are the inFamous games and the Saints Row series. Those games just "feel" right. The controls are tight and responsive and I don't feel like I'm fighting the mechanics just to play the game.

Yeah I agree stealth is probably the one I would do too, at least for GTA. It's weird how we are supposed to be criminals without the ability to sneak...

Good point, some games do spread to thin and San Andreas is one of them imo. But if you compare to Wath_Dogs it's a game that does do at least the platforming and stealth much better imo. So R* are being attacked in this area, but I guess the way they are dominating they are not too worried lol.

Have just played Infamous 1-2 and I thought many of the powers were well implemented and were fun to execute. The climbing was kind of annoying at times though. It's also a much simpler game than GTA in terms of city simulation and just overall attention to detail.

@Sushiglutton: Then I would argue that the Saints Row games are better overall, from a gameplay standpoint. Granted, stealth isn't really a thing in Saints Row so much. But the shooting mechanics feel tight, almost "arcadey" if you will. Same with the driving. The missions and activities have enough different stuff going on that all works and is fun.

I feel like the main draw to a lot of Rockstar games is the world and how detailed it can be. Because in terms of pure gameplay and fun as well as customization, I feel that games like Saints Row outclass it.

Damn you make me wish I picked up SR4 at the steam sale :). I had my mouse hover over it....

>Rockstar games
>Good mechanics

Fam, please.

I think they need to start making games instead of worlds that are actually just small playgrounds. They don't make good games just IMO.

Honestly.

The only thing that kept MGS5 from being perfection was not having a strongly paced story and memorable characters, but the gameplay was legitimately so on-point. I couldn't put it down for weeks. Using your enemies as shield, free use of cqc and good lethal and non-lethal combat in general should be a basic standard in open world games that are primarily action/adventure oriented. A game being solely carried out by a hit or miss gunplay for the entirety of the campagin is ancient practice that needs to go away for good.

Inspire from The Witcher 3 for good story and open world quest design, MGS5 for combat/ stealth/ mission approach and Max Payne 3 for gun play.

I long for the day an open world game nails most of these right.

MGS5 got SO damn close.

Imo the blending of stealth element into the wanted level system of GTA5 was brilliant. That was some of my favorite stealth of last gen because of how it was meshed with that giant world. GTA 4 had the same circle system, but it ultimately required the player to get out of the circle with a vehicle. In GTA, they let you burn through your wanted level by managing your line of sight, and it encouraged the player to evade the police on foot and to find good hiding places in order to do it. I felt the cops acted logically and they weren't unfair in spotting you when they shouldn't be able to.

However, I have to agree that the dedicated stealth sections of that game were lame and I wasn't all that great at them. There was too much checkpointing and trial and error in them for my liking. I did play some stealth games last gen, and I was pretty good at them, so I feel in GTA5 my main issue resulted from poor design.

@Sushiglutton:

Rockstar was never about platforming or stealth. These features were only shown to let you know there's more you can do to keep things interesting. I actually love how generally bad the characters are at platforming because they show how believable and out of shape they really are. Like John Marston in Red Dead Redemption as ya mentioned.

That'd be the dream bro. And you know Rockstar could hire the talent to pull it off.

It's a real shame that the GTA games have never been better than the sum of their parts.

? "more than the sum of its parts" is what defines Rockstar games like GTA. These games are incredibly popular with gamers and critics and yet they do no single thing excellently. Their sandboxes' defining feature is that it has a lot of small things woven together. If it were not more than sum of it parts it would be a limp mess of uninteresting curiosities.

If they had good gunplay, good driving, etc they would be incredibly outstanding games.

Most Rockstar games are pretty much perfect.

Terrible melee but amazing games

the problem there is that the games already have massive budgets. It's just core to the idea that it is a jack of all trades, but a master of none.

Then again, maybe Rockstar could just scale back the size of the maps a bit and use those resources to improve the gameplay and abilities more. Even that is risky though. Those huge environments drop a lot of jaws

Yeah, Rockstar really has some crappy inorganic gameplay design in a lot of their games. There's always a pause after and before nearly everything you do as a character, whether you're climbing over fences, going in and out of cover, or just aiming down your sights--it feels incredibly strange.

I think the only thing they have perfected is getting in and out of cars.

...define perfect lol.

Or let me ask you this instead.

If you took the mechanics of a GTA game and dumped them into something much smaller in scope and scale, would it still be an enjoyable game to you? No crazy open world, no sandbox lite elements, just GTA character movement, shooting, and melee mechanics. Dump those mechanics into a game level like something you'd see in the Uncharted games or Gears. Would it still be fun?

You're probably thinking of course not. Because those mechanics aren't tight enough to carry a game. They're serviceable at best. They play second fiddle to GTA's incredibly impressive open worlds, which is the real draw of the games.

Contrast this with something like MGSV. Those mechanics are pristine. Even in confined situations they carry themselves every bit as well as they do out in the wide open. You could dump those mechanics into linear point A to point B maps and they would still shine.

So the question for GTA is...

Because it's not like we're talking about some indie dev on a tight budget here. We're not talking about a new and risky IP. We're talking about one of the biggest names and best selling franchises in the industry.

GTA may be the king of open worlds, but creating an open world game isn't so unique anymore. For a long time these devs could just hang their hat on the fact that they made a technical marvel, gameplay quality be damned.

We're past that now though. TW3 showed us that you don't have to have shitty filler side content. MGSV showed us that you don't have to have shitty mechanics.

There is no reason for Rockstar to continue with their status quo when they can say **** the bullshit and put out an excellent game to compliment their excellent open worlds.