Wu Zi Mu

exactly, that's what I mean. There used to be rewards for every 10th hidden package, for example, all along the way towards getting 100% ultimately. But not in GTA4. There wasn't even a reward for getting 100%, was my point. In San Andreas, you'd get a Hydra that spawned on top of your house in Grove Street! That was awesome...

I want to customize my character to be just like TreeFitty! Character Customization: I think they ought to give people more flexibility in choosing clothing. They should have clothes of various different fits, so you choose the style of clothes that you want first, then you can choose its' color and a logo IF you want one, where it's located, so on and so forth. After you finish designing the clothes and buy them, they are then delivered to your safehouses' wardrobes so you can change into them later on. I think there should be similar freedom in choosing tattoos for your character. Maybe have the option of designing your own tattoos? At the least, give a lot of different options, and give the option for other colors as well. Car customization should go back at least to what it was in San Andreas, but it should be even more in depth than that. Plus, I think car garages, and maybe even a showroom, should be included to give you a good reason to customize and keep cars, for trophies or otherwise. Have garages attached to some safehouses as well. Keep the street parking, but only for lower end safehouses. You should also be able to customize your safehouses, to a certain extent as well, or maybe upgrade them with gunracks. I hope there are lots more ways to customize than there were in GTA4. Having just three different pairs of pants, in three different colors, in one of three different clothing stores in the city... is just kind of sad. Customization would make each game more unique to the player, though. Sorry to the Moderator for my two previous "ranting" posts. I didn't realize it was so strict here. I am very excited about the new game, and I am an AVID GTA fan. The night before the trailer felt like Christmas Eve to me.... lol. But anyway, this post should be on topic... I hope. I don't know how to be any more on-topic than this!

It won't have SF or LV; it's Los Santos only, as well as the "surrounding countryside". However, just as Liberty City completely "grew up" from GTA3 to GTA4, I think San Andreas from GTA: SA will also experience the same effect. I am actually excited that they are focusing entirely on Los Santos/Los Angeles and the surrounding countryside, because I really liked Los Santos more than San Fierro and Las Venturas, anyway. I think if they focus on just one area, then the resulting product will be much more detailed and "alive". I just hope they FILL this city with fun things to do, which I found GTA4 to be sorely lacking in. Also, just like GTA3 and the GTA3-era games were all considered part of a "trilogy", and just like GTA4, TLATD, and TBOGT are all part of a trilogy.... the pattern would indicate that GTA5 is also going to be a trilogy. The most "ambitious" GTA to date, according to Dan Houser. Who else thinks the GTA5 trilogy might go like this? Los Santos, then San Fierro, and then Las Venturas. That would make sense, right? If you could travel between the three of them at any given time after they've all been released, that would be truly epic, as well. (although I don't think the technology of this generation of consoles could handle that... ) At any rate, I am happy they chose Los Santos, because out of all three of San Andreas's cities, I think I liked it the best. Las Venturas was a close second, ONLY cause of casinos, though. I am actually very excited with what I see so far about GTA5, everything from brighter colors, the emphasis on money-making, the perfect trailer, and what I believe is going to be a perfect combination of all of the things the new GTA did right, as well as all of the things that the old GTA (San Andreas) did right. If they can give players enough meaningful things to do in the game, with good rewards that benefit your character in some way (like in San Andreas) or having weapons spawn at your safehouse, stuff like that is what made GTA so addictive in the past. Oh, and for God's sake, give people a reward -- SOMETHING -- for getting 100%. In GTA4, you didn't get anything for 100%. That blew me away when I found that out.

Oh, well back when I was living in New Jersey, and uhhh... happen to know that people call a gram of weed a "dub" because it costs $20 to purchase. I guess it's dub, as in double, or two... 20... I don't know. A dub is a gram of weed in Southern New Jersey. And I didn't know that PCP was what he was referring to, but it actually all makes sense now that I am hearing this. I actually did find his behavior a little too bizarre to be caused by just weed, but seeing him smoke that cigar thing all the time, and also with him being quite "hood" like... lol... I just assumed it was a blunt and he was a pothead. Does PCP give a person withdrawal symptoms so they fiend like that? He was digging lots of holes in his back yard, scrambling for his water. lol

Rockstar will never show the protagonist using drugs. If you notice, in every GTA game, whether they are actually showing the side effects of drugs -- Ryder, in San Andreas, always seen smoking a blunt (Marijuana)... and in one mission you see that he has dug several holes in his back yard, in a state of paranoia, looking for his "water" or something like that. Ryder is clearly abusing the drug, however, there is a part in San Andreas where CJ's wallet gets taken by Toreno and CJ says "I had a dub in there, it better still be there when I get it back" or something like that. So, I think it's safe to say that CJ DOES smoke weed from time to time, but he never does it in game/ in-view like Ryder does. He does it in private, at home, in those 6 hours/minutes after you've saved your game and he sleeps lol. Billy Grey, from TLATD, was a major heroin addict I think. And this led him to be a drug addict, and an insane leader, who made a lot of really bad decisions and ended up getting killed. In San Andreas, one of the first missions you go on, you are going through the hood looking for drug dealers so you can kill them. You go to a crack house, and you beat up the drug dealers, and you see 5-10 crackheads and junkies just leaning up against the wall, dying basically. You will never SEE a GTA protagonist using drugs, I don't think. Nor will you see them smoking anything at all. I can't decide if it's because Rockstar just has a totally anti-drug message, or what. But most of the GTA heroes seem to be pretty smart, and they seem to understand the push-and-shove nature of the criminal underworld, which would probably require a clear mind to navigate safely at all times. The people who use drugs are always secondary characters, at best, if not the villains, at worst. This just came to mind, so I will say it as well. Although in Vice City, there's a lot going on with the coke trade and everything, the biggest users of coke in the game are Diaz (the egomaniacal kingpin whose actions ultimately get him killed) and at a certain point, it shows Ken Rosenberg doing it and acting like a retard. I don't recall ever seeing Tommy or anyone else doing coke, though. I've always admired Rockstar for this, because I do happen to know a lot of people who got into drugs, and not a single one of them who kept using drugs is doing well today. I think they realize their fans are not going to go off and start robbing banks, but getting involved with drugs is a different story for people. The average kid growing up today in America is going to know somebody using, and perhaps even selling drugs by the time they're 18. So, if they show CJ from San Andreas snorting a line of coke off the table, and then he has extra accuracy or something in the game as he goes off to cap some ballas, I just don't think Rockstar is gonna go to that level. lol

Well, when they made GTA4, they had to build the entire game from scratch. GTA4 wasn't the first game built on the RAGE engine, but it was one of the first. It was the first GTA built on the RAGE engine, for sure. Anyway, by now they've built a few other games with it, like Red Dead Redemption, Midnight Club: Los Angeles (*cough*cough*) , they're designing Max Payne 3 with it... so they have a lot more experience working with it/building games with it. Another thing that is interesting is they also just released LA Noire, which is of course based in Los Angeles. I don't think they'd just take that city, modernize it and call that Los Santos (and the trailer doesn't indicate that, either) but the point I am trying to make is that, with the other LA games especially that were released recently, I would think it would somehow shorten the work they would have to do for GTA5... whether they just reuse old models, take certain sections of the city, modernize them, basically taking advantage of the work they've already done. If so, this is an entirely good thing. Why? Because the less work they have to do actually building the city, the more work they can spend on actually designing activities for the city and making sure that the gameplay is all that it could be. I think they recognize GTA: SA's strengths and weaknesses, and GTA4's strengths and weaknesses, and I think the November 2nd trailer is their artistic-as-hell way of telling everyone that the game WE were waiting for is coming soon. Makes me wanna go watch the trailer again

Yeah, the drug-dealing thing is one of the coolest side missions I've ever seen R*G come up with for a GTA game. Most of the reviews all commended them for implementing it. I do agree that it was perhaps a little bit overpowered, but I found myself spending lots of time on doing it and avoiding the storyline missions because I wanted to go meet up with a certain drug dealer by a certain time to get a lower price on something so I could sell it later on for lots of profit. I hope they include something similar to this in GTA5, as well as other black market economy-type minigames (car theft? Identity theft? I want to see a lot of variety, including the stuff that was fun and WORKED in the past, as well as new things that can be fun as well... maybe even petty crimes like purse-snatching, or burgarly?) I also think it would be cool to have the ability to "go through" somebody's purse when you steal it, for example. You can sift through all the stuff, toss the junk, keep the cash, sometimes find jewels/diamonds etc. That's just as an example to show in more detail what I mean, you could apply the same idea to going through people's cars and houses as well. This idea was VERY well executed in CTW, like the drug dealing minigame, etc. You could even burglarize somebody's house, find their stash of drugs and either steal them or EMPLOY the person (edit: perhaps, in GTA5 that is ^.^) For all of the ways they include to make money, however, I want them to balance it by giving us stuff to invest in. Like businesses, with their own attached missions and objectives and ways to get a return on the investment you made. I also would like to see more weapons that you could BUY, and the ability to customize the weapons we BUY and accessorize them with whatever equipment we want to BUY and use with them (scopes, silencers, etc.) Since GTA5's theme is "the pursuit of the almighty dollar" (versus GTA4's theme, which they even told us up front was NOT going to be a "rags-to-riches" story) I believe that buying businesses and making money/getting rich is definitely going to be a huge part of the game. I think they've heard their fans complaints, and I think that this is going to be the GTA game everyone was expecting with GTA4.

I think GTA5 will be the game everyone was expecting GTA4 to be. Why? Because GTA4 was the first, or perhaps second, game to use the RAGE engine. They had to build everything from the GROUND UP for it. Since then, though, GTA4, as well as it's two Episodic sequels (TLADT and TBOGT), as well as Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Max Payne 3, Midnight Club: Los Angeles (*cough* *cough*) and probably others as well were ALL built using the RAGE engine. The conclusion you can make from this: with GTA4, they had to build the entire game from scratch, including a brand new engine. It probably had less features/less depth because it was the first BIG game running on the new engine. Which means, all of the time they had to spend troubleshooting, honing and perfecting the RAGE engine, was time they couldn't spend on doing OTHER things developmentally. However, fast forward three years to 2011 (when GTA5 is announced). Since GTA4's release, at least seven games (mentioned above) have been built using the engine. They've got models saved on some hard-drives of Wild West style stuff (from Red Dead Redemption) and TWO games to pull Los Angeles style models from for GTA5 (LA Noire and Midnight Club: LA, anybody?) all built using the RAGE ENGINE! This is all stuff they ALREADY HAVE DESIGNED AND SAVED. They won't just take it exactly and copy/paste it, sure, probably not, but I don't necessarily think the fact they are doing all of these Los Angeles based games around the same time is ANY surprise at all. In fact, it's a good thing. They will end up having to spend less time building the city and can spend more time on fleshing the game out, and actually making it fun. By this time, they've mastered the engine that they created for GTA4. They've done the hard work. GTA5 will be the game we all wanted GTA4 to be. Not only do I just know it in my heart, but from a logical perspective, now that the hard work in game development is done -- they have the ability to spread their wings and fly with this title, reminiscent of what VC and SA were like compared to GTA3. Mark my words, this game will be what we've all been waiting seven years for, basically.

When GTA4 was at the stage in its' development that GTA5 is at right now (where it's mostly completed, it's been announced, and they are building hype and excitement for a release that will probably be in Fall of next year), they told us the theme of the game was NOT going to be "rags-to-riches" as all of the GTA3-era games were. I think they were intentionally going for something dark, depressing, and more serious than.... fun. Which was interesting at the time, I guess, but I do believe we are going more back to our roots in GTA5. In a nutshell, this is what I am trying to say: GTA4's theme: "NOT a rags-to-riches story" By contrast, however... GTA5's theme: "Will focus on the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar" I think the game will be great based on this statement. Whereas, in GTA4, you're supposed to remain sort of poor throughout the entire game -- I think GTA5 will be more about money-making, perhaps (hopefully) buying businesses as well as a number of other types of things. I hope businesses have their own missions tied to them, as well as a secondary function, and actually generate revenue. For example: You buy a car dealership. Perhaps there are missions in the game where you have to go steal another dealership's gifted employees, or maybe blow up a competitor's dealership, whatever the case may be. Once the missions are completed however, you can earn a steady stream of extra revenue by stealing cars and bringing them here, perhaps modding them. I think they could take it as deep as they wanted to, IF they focused their energies on it and less on just making the playground look pretty. Beyond the business aspect of things, I hope they provide a lot of clothing and other ways to accessorize your character. I hope the clothing comes with the option of having logos/or not. Perhaps you can even choose the logo's yourself? You can also choose your own colors, everything else. I want to see the return of Ammu-Nation, with gun range/shooting challenge, and everything. Bottom line is, I just hope that when they say it's going to be about the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, that they mean it. I hope they give us LOTS of ways to make the money, LOTS of things to spend it on, LOTS of unique businesses to buy (with their own missions and side challenges, this creates so much replay value). I want a GTA game where you literally build a crime empire. I hope they take the game as deep as possible focusing on actual gameplay/things to do, with lots of rewards and stuff along the way that make it WORTH IT. That's what made GTA so great to begin with! I want more clothes, more tattoos, ways to customize your character. I want the ability to purchase bigger car garages (forget parking on the street) IF I want to, so I can store all of the cool, unique cars that I find or build in the game. With clothes customization, I think they should have a lot of different clothing "shapes" (like different styles of shirts, pants, shoes, etc) and then after you pick your shape, THEN you can pick your color, the logos (if you want them), and everything else. This way, when you are buying clothes, you're actually creating clothes, and you can save all of your creations in the closets at your safehouses. This will give flexibility to the clothing system, and people who may be unhappy with the choices are given the ability to create their own from the ground up and then save THEIR clothing. I would be willing to bet a lot of money that GTA5 sees the return of buying businesses/property/etc and "Empire Building", AND customization in the game.