Top 10: Ideas that will make GTA 5 on PS4 mind blowing

Top 10: Ideas that will make GTA 5 on PS4 mind blowing
Tom Orry Updated on by

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We’ve played GTA 4 to exhaustion here at VideoGamer.com and already thought of the kind of content we want added to the game on top of the Xbox 360 episodes. We got thinking though: what do we want from GTA 5? In keeping with how GTA 3 spawned only unnumbered sequels on the PS2, we’re guessing that GTA 5 will be launched on the next generation of systems in the winter of 2014. So here’s our Top 10: Ideas that will make GTA 5 on PS4 mind blowing.

10. Facial scanning

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Imagine playing multiplayer GTA with your friends. Not just random-faced virtual avatars but in-game characters that look like the spitting image of your mates. By the next generation of consoles we expect face scanning will have come on a bit from Rainbow Six Vegas and that your face will be faithfully recreated in the game. I can picture the cooperative bank jobs now. Just imagine sitting in the getaway vehicle as three of your mates come charging out of the bank’s double doors. It would help immersion no end.

9. Car customisation

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While playing through GTA 4 we never really felt attached to our cars. If we’d had the option to completely customise them, from performance to decals, we might have felt a stronger bond. Imagine having tools similar to those found in Microsoft’s Forza 2, effectively letting you apply any paint job you’d like. Head to the car performance store and pick up some nitros, a few neon lights and you’re set. It’d be great in single-player, but it would be brilliant in multiplayer games, with each gang having their own custom designs.

8. Zero pop-up and slowdown

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Even though the visuals in GTA 5 will probably blow everything else away, we just hope that Rockstar finally manages to eliminate pop-up and slowdown. The GTA series has been plagued by these graphical issues since it moved from 2D to 3D and by the time the next round of consoles are on the market we hope they’ll be a thing of the past. In GTA 4 it’s hard to look past these issues when they are at their most severe, and it’d be a shame to have to suffer the same problems for yet another generation of GTAs.

7. Voice recognition

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We’re expecting AI to come on in leaps and bounds by the time we’re playing GTA 5 on our PS4s, so although this one’s quite out there we’d love it to become a reality. We want to be able to speak as the lead character. If you wander up to a character and speak to him using your own voice, the game is advanced enough to understand and generate an appropriate response. We’re not talking about pre-set conversations, but proper responses that add life to everyone you speak to.

6. International Travel

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We’ve had planes in GTA games before (we assume they’ll return to the series ahead of GTA 5), but we want it taken to the next level. GTA 5 is going to be massive so we want to be able to fly a plane from one country to another, or jump on a train or boat. By default you’d just be along for the ride as a passenger, but hi-jack the vehicle and go wherever you want. It’d take joyriding to a whole new level. We know a whole world to explore might be asking for too much, but how about part of Europe? You could even take the Eurostar from England to France.

5. Open buildings

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While we know current hardware has limitations which means it would be exceedingly hard to program a game of GTA 4’s size with fully interactive buildings, but we still wanted it. On the next generation of consoles we expect power to be a non-issue, so when we walk up to a shop front, we want to be able to go in it. Houses may have locked doors, but we want to be able to break in. It’d be a huge undertaking, but we’re talking about the next generation of the GTA franchise. The sky is surely the limit.

4. Destruction

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GTA 4 features some great vehicle damage modelling, but the game world is missing real-world destruction of buildings and large objects. It’d be hard to build into a game that’s so story driven, but if you fire a rocket into a wall, you expect it to be damaged. If you drive a truck into the front of someone’s house in real life, that front wall would break up and your bonnet would be in someone’s living room. Realism in GTA 5 needs to be taken to the next level.

3. Near-real NPCs

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As great as the NPCs are in GTA 4, they’re still not all that convincing as real humans. In the first GTA on the next consoles we want people to have lives and personalities, and to have their own goals in the game. GTA 4 is great at creating the illusion of realism, but look beyond the surface and you’ll easily spot things that show you’re still just playing a game. People should go to and from work, stop in the street to talk to friends, and hopefully drive far better than they do in GTA 4.

2. City needs to remember

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In GTA 4 we’ve all run someone over and driven off without a care in the world or shot someone in the street and not blinked an eye-lid. What if the people remembered? That woman you hit with your car might have had some gangster brothers, who have now made it their life’s goal to hunt you down. That building you blew up caused a whole street to be blocked with rubble, and it takes the clean up crew a whole week to sort it out – the rubble doesn’t just disappear. The closed road resulted in a massive traffic jam on the adjoining road. Little things like this will make the game world far more believable.

1. Organic city change

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Following on from the enhanced NPCs, the city needs to be able to change by itself. If that guy who you ran over and killed died, then his family might struggle for money, meaning they have to leave their house. The road had already become quite empty a few weeks prior after a few families moved out, so teenagers take it upon themselves to cause some damage to the buildings and add some graffiti. After a few short weeks the road changes completely and is almost derelict, with most the street being empty and barely a car going down it. In someone else’s game a property developer might come in and demolish a large area of land and build a supermarket. We know it’s pretty far-fetched, but it would be incredible.

2014 is a long way away, but what do you want to see in the next generation of the GTA franchise on the PS4 and Xbox 360 successor?