If you paid close attention to all the screenshots and last year's trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, you may have noticed that the game's mini-games and side-missions were actually put on display, even though many of us didn't know it. Rockstar's VP of creative, Dan Houser, let a ton of new info slip regarding the mini-games as well as character customization.
In Game Informer's full preview of Grand Theft Auto V, it's revealed that some forms of character customization has returned but others have not. Cue sad faces.
According to Houser...
The main thing is at a technical level to get changing scale of the character – to get them bigger and smaller – is hard, and in San Andreas the standard definition graphics were more forgiving,”...”Doing that with three different characters – we definitely thought about it but decided it was impossible.We just weren't going to get the results we want with the way the rest of the animation system works. It was just not worth making compromises elsewhere.”
Even though you can't get skinny or fat, you can still completely customize each of the characters from head to toe with a variety of clothing options, accessories and more. That's still something, right? Right?
Well, it makes sense given that if they're still using Euphoria I imagine going from skinny to fat there would be some serious clipping issues when characters turn fat/muscular as opposed to being lean/thin. Honestly, it's better to have Euphoria than a character who is fat or muscular. I mean, do we really need to weigh the pros and cons in that department?
Anyway, mini-games will be a lot more diverse. As mentioned in the article detailing the character profiles, Rockstar is working hard to add mini-games (at least two) for each character so that there will be some diversification in the way Michael, Trevor and Franklin are played.
Some of the mini-games will include doing yoga, yes yoga, repossessing cars, robbing banks, watching TV with some brand new shows, participating in triathlons like in GTA: San Andreas, jet skiing, base-jumping like in GTA IV: Ballad of Gay Tony, playing tennis, and partaking in a fully fledged golf game, again, similar to the driving range of BOGT but much more expansive.
According to House...
“What we'd learned on the best aspects of GTA IV and Red Dead was that it's better to have one really good design team than five half-assed ones that aren't that fun. People will try everything, but if it's fun they'll invest more time into it.”
True that. The best mini-games in GTA IV were the fight club, drug stops and gang warfare. GTA: San Andreas' best parts were the cross-state trucking missions, the side-missions involving the businesses, the vigilante patrol, the dance club...well, actually just about every aspect of San Andreas was awesome, so yeah. Expect GTA V to be more like GTA: San Andreas but with all the cool technical advancements of GTA IV. It's like, win-win for everyone.
