Games Inbox: What will be the setting for GTA 7?

The Tuesday letters page isn’t sure which PS5 game has the best graphics, as one reader explains his hatred for Donkey Kong 64.

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The next city
It’s been said that GTA 7 won’t be nearly as big a gap from GTA 6 as GTA 6 was from 5, since Rockstar won’t need to invent so much new tech. That sounds good and all but what are they planning to do for the gameplay evolution?

GTA 6 looks amazing in the trailers, but I don’t get the impression that it plays or works all that different from the previous ones. For me, GTA 7 would be the chance to give the game a proper revamp, but I’d also like to see it break the cycle of just going round in circles with the settings. This time it’s Vice City, that shouldn’t mean that next time is going to be Liberty City again.

Rockstar has made it plain that they won’t set any of the games outside the US (although I don’t know why they couldn’t create a spin-off to get around that, especially given one of the 2D games was set in London), but there’s plenty of other big cities in America.

They try and pack in most terrain types into each of the games but a story that focused on you being something other than a gangster would be interesting. Maybe you could play a cop or a paramedic or something and get mixed up in shady stuff from that. I just want them to mix it up a bit before it gets stale.
Chadha

Looking for an excuse
It’s pretty obvious to me that Microsoft wants to just give up on Xbox. I think the problem is they can’t figure out a way to back out without making themselves look really bad. There’re probably not many companies that could afford or would want Activision Blizzard either.

Even though Call Of Duty is a money printing machine, it can’t be easy organising all those developers and teams and I think you’d ever have to leave it completely alone to do it its thing, which big companies can never do, or be really good at organising game developers – which Microsoft certainly isn’t.

If the next gen doesn’t work out though, or something goes wrong with the Call Of Duty production line, I think that will be it. Xbox must be on thin ice already and I think Microsoft is just waiting for the excuse.
Trepslis

Real-world examples
I really don’t think it matters how powerful someone says a console is or isn’t. Even if you’re being really technical and looking at the specs, I’ve heard it all before. Especially the PS5 Pro being four times as fast or whatever. That’s such a vague statement, it really means nothing.

We’ll know how powerful the Switch 2 is when we get a game that stretches it or when it tries to do something and fails. Actual examples are the only thing that matters.

I think that’s why this generation has been so disappointing in general. Even now, five years later, I’m not sure what game I’d point to on the PlayStation 5, to say that couldn’t be done on PlayStation 4. Spider-Man 2 looks good but it’s not mind-blowing or anything. Horizon Forbidden West is probably better and yet that’s a cross-gen game!
Kosh

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Totally bananas
I don’t know what Donkey Kong Bananza is going to turn out like, but I can tell you just reading about Donkey Kong 64 coming to Nintendo Switch Online made my eye twitch. That game is the worst!

I’ve always felt Rare were overrated in general, but this was the absolute worse example of a collectathon I have ever played. People complain about game prices now, but this must’ve been £50 when it came out and it was my birthday present and the only thing I got.

I hated it within the first day and it’s soured my opinion of Rare and Donkey Kong ever since. That doesn’t mean I won’t consider Bananza, because I’m assuming it’s very different, but I’m not surprised Donkey Kong hasn’t had a major game to himself since, because his last one sucked!
Gordo

Arcade conversion
I wonder if Capcom would ever bring back Bionic Commando? They tried to turn it into a Spider-Man clone back on the Xbox 360, but I’d like to see something a little less try-hard and a bit more of the goofy charm of the original. Although I grew up playing the Amiga version, with its amazing soundtrack, which as I understand is much more like the arcade game (which I never saw) and most Americans and Japanese only really think of the NES version when they think of the game.

I hear Capcom is thinking of bringing back Mega Man but I never saw the appeal of those games. I guess it’s hard to get into some things if you haven’t got any nostalgia for the original. Especially NES games, which don’t exactly age that well.

I’d just like to see Capcom, and companies in general, do more wacky and less series stuff from time to time. It doesn’t all have to be The Last Of Us.
Lamnent

Boardroom battles
The thing I don’t get about Phil Spencer’s continued reign at Xbox is that it’s well known that Game Pass was his idea, he’s proud of it! And yet, from a business point of view it’s been a complete failure. They wanted that to have 100 million subscribers by 2030. They’re lucky if they’ll have a third of that. Although of course we’ll never really know because they’re too embarrassed to share the numbers now.

And that’s just one clear and verifiable failure! I don’t see what it is that his bosses think he’s done so well that he’s kept his job for over a decade and always seems to get what he wants, since Activision Blizzard was his idea as well. Either this guy has got some dirt on a lot of people or… I don’t know. I really can’t imagine why he’s kept his job given everything that’s happened and not happened.

Although whoever’s in charge of organising developers is doing an even worse job. That’s what’s really undermined Xbox for so long and I’m not sure Phil Spencer has much to do with the day to day of get games greenlit and finished.

I don’t know what goes on the behind the scenes, I don’t think anyone that isn’t Xbox does, but it all smells like office politics getting in the way of doing any actual work. Phil Spencer and his mob don’t care about Xbox or gaming or anything other than their company bonus. My evidence for this? The last 15 years of Xbox.
Lofty

GC: Matt Booty is head of Xbox Game Studios.

Ugly choice
I don’t want to stop anyone’s fun, but Final Fantasy 9 has got to have the ugliest art design in the series and really, some of the ugliest of all time. It’s no wonder to me that the new artwork for the anniversary doesn’t look anything like the actual game.

I can think of half a dozen Final Fantasy games I’d rather see get a remake before 9, most obviously 6 and 8. I think Square Enix has faintly hinted at 6 being a good idea but I don’t expect to see it. Especially not if they’ve ended up cancelling 9, which there’s been rumours about for years now.
Camphor

Gotta buy ‘em all
I was watching a video by StrawHat Midas on YouTube on Saturday gone and one commentator in the section was flabbergasted at the fact that if a parent wanted to buy their two kids a Switch 2 each, and both versions of the same Pokémon game so they could trade, it would cost nearly £1,000!

That’s crazy!

That total is about 10 times the amount when people were playing Gen 1 Pokémon on original Game Boys!

Wouldn’t it be better if Game Freak released just one version of the game with a load of pokémon to catch in the game, with the remaining pokémon sold as a DLC island pack?

But then, which pokémon would be the exclusives in order to be sent to the island/sold as DLC?

Hmmm… I haven’t really thought this through.

In reality, that idea would never happen, as the whole point of these games is to trade.

Back to the drawing board for me then.
LeighDappa

GC: It’s not 10 times. With inflation, two Game Boys and two Pokémon games would have cost the equivalent of £586 in the 90s. Although, by the time Pokémon Red and Blue came out in the UK the original Game Boy had been superseded by the Game Boy Color.

Inbox also-rans
Maybe we’ve got it wrong about Xbox and they have got rid of their execs in favour of AI. It would explain the constant dumb decisions and why Phil Spencer has stuck around for so long: he’s just a hologram.
Heathcliffe

I like the look of Resident Evil Requiem so far, but I don’t see any sign of co-op yet, which is a bit of an upset. Wasn’t there some talk of Resident Evil Revelations 3? I’d be really up for that.
Gannet

GC: There were rumours of a third game but nothing substantial.

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