TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 9,583
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
According to industry veteran Raphaël Colantonio, who worked on the Dishonored series at Arkane before starting his own studio, GTA games are "the biggest tease" and also "the biggest disappointment" for people who love immersive sim games.
"I don't mean that in an offensive way because of course who am I and who are they? They make games that sell I don't know how many thousands times more than mine and they are so incredible at doing surface simulation," he told Press Box PR. "But that’s such a stab in the heart for me when they don’t go more than surface level where there’s no long-term consequences to anything you do."
GTA games, instead, offer more of a "fantastic sandbox with incredible execution, incredible cinematography, [and] great gameplay," Colantonio added.
He went on to say Rockstar has a formula and that he "understands why they do it." At the same time, Colantonio said a game like Skyrim is more to his liking. He said in Skyrim, there is "just one instance of the world," so your actions have real, meaningful, and lasting consequences.
"You really own your consequences as a player. Everything is playable and you have to deal with your choices for the rest of the game," he said.
Colantonio was speaking about GTA games so far, and not specifically GTA 6. Rockstar has yet to share specifics on how it might have updated the formula for the new game, or if there might be further reactivity to choices players make.
He theorized that Rockstar's belief with the GTA series is that offering too much in the way of choices having real, lasting consequences confuses the player too much, so the developers take a different approach.
"What Rockstar basically say is, you know what? That part sucks. It’s too hard to do. It confuses players and most players won’t care at all anyway," he said. "Here’s what we will do instead. We put a guy with a question mark on their head. They have a mission for you. When you want to play the mission, we open an instance of the world in which nothing else matters than what's inside this instance. Then, because of that there is a trade off."
This setup works well for GTA games, Colantonio said, because it affords Rockstar the ability to have incredible set pieces and action sequences. But, again, that's not something he's personally interested in.
"People are going to be thrilled but none of it matters. That's the thing. We don't have to deal with the consequences. The players don't have to deal with the consequences. Therefore, we can push the buttons, crank things up to 11, and I totally get the draw," he said. "I totally understand why people are into it. I understand why they would be into it as developers. I understand why it sells so much but this is not my values, not that my values are not to sell a gazillion units!"
He went on to say that GTA games allowing players to fail missions and try them again breaks immersion.
"If you fail the mission, you find yourself back out oRead more: Full article on www.gamespot.com
What do you think about this?
"I don't mean that in an offensive way because of course who am I and who are they? They make games that sell I don't know how many thousands times more than mine and they are so incredible at doing surface simulation," he told Press Box PR. "But that’s such a stab in the heart for me when they don’t go more than surface level where there’s no long-term consequences to anything you do."
GTA games, instead, offer more of a "fantastic sandbox with incredible execution, incredible cinematography, [and] great gameplay," Colantonio added.
He went on to say Rockstar has a formula and that he "understands why they do it." At the same time, Colantonio said a game like Skyrim is more to his liking. He said in Skyrim, there is "just one instance of the world," so your actions have real, meaningful, and lasting consequences.
"You really own your consequences as a player. Everything is playable and you have to deal with your choices for the rest of the game," he said.
Colantonio was speaking about GTA games so far, and not specifically GTA 6. Rockstar has yet to share specifics on how it might have updated the formula for the new game, or if there might be further reactivity to choices players make.
He theorized that Rockstar's belief with the GTA series is that offering too much in the way of choices having real, lasting consequences confuses the player too much, so the developers take a different approach.
"What Rockstar basically say is, you know what? That part sucks. It’s too hard to do. It confuses players and most players won’t care at all anyway," he said. "Here’s what we will do instead. We put a guy with a question mark on their head. They have a mission for you. When you want to play the mission, we open an instance of the world in which nothing else matters than what's inside this instance. Then, because of that there is a trade off."
This setup works well for GTA games, Colantonio said, because it affords Rockstar the ability to have incredible set pieces and action sequences. But, again, that's not something he's personally interested in.
"People are going to be thrilled but none of it matters. That's the thing. We don't have to deal with the consequences. The players don't have to deal with the consequences. Therefore, we can push the buttons, crank things up to 11, and I totally get the draw," he said. "I totally understand why people are into it. I understand why they would be into it as developers. I understand why it sells so much but this is not my values, not that my values are not to sell a gazillion units!"
He went on to say that GTA games allowing players to fail missions and try them again breaks immersion.
"If you fail the mission, you find yourself back out oRead more: Full article on www.gamespot.com
What do you think about this?