I went from ambivalent about the game to excited cause I went to the rockstar website and read about the sonny crockett looking bank robber guy in the game and looked at some screenshots, and for me the Sense of Place is the juice and nobody has ever done that better.
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if there’s a gator airboat mission I won’t be able to help myself but be excited. I won’t be buying a ps5 for any reason tho and I don’t mind not playing this game til I’m 50
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This is my general console outlook after hearing the double switch pricing.
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This whole activity of spotting the various details reminds me of the scene in Ferris Bueller where they’re at the Art Institute of Chicago and Alan Ruck’s character stares at the Seurat painting while the shot switches back and forth between his expression and closer and closer detail of the girls face in the painting until all you see are the little dots of paint on the individual threads of the canvas.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/as-seen-on-ferris-bueller-art-institute-chicago-2461629
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it does look like they’ve taken a lesson from nikki when it comes to fucking clothing textures mattering. FINALLY
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I was gonna make a comment about those places not existing anymore and I guess they did exist and then on an Old People Remember Misssissippi facebook group this morning:
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The way GTA has stuck with terrible brand names because it (still is?) trying to be edgy is fucking stupid. The name of the smartphones is called “iFruit” which maybe is a homophobic joke and a dig at people who use phones for the vapid (from the perspective of the game’s worldview) purpose of taking selfies. But now it’s 2025 and smartphones are ubiquitous. So now there’s this vestigial “satire” that this game has to keep in the universe for continuity purposes as they try to reach for a more “grounded” and “realistic” game narrative and world.
Does Red Dead 2 have this problem?
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red dead 2 is a historical game that is set in a specific period of time for pointed reasons but they constantly wash their hands of the responsibility you have when making a historical game so the klan are a bunch of silly guys who mostly team kill each other, the racism in the south is just kind of a background detail that only comes up every once in a while, and the entire chapter where you leave the us is complete and utter garbage that conflates like four different actual things and conveniently only involves the white party members
there’s no reason for them to have GTA style brands because it’s 1899
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They are pretty poorly equipped for satire, I feel like the tone is more a boner comedy or Michael Bay. Do we know it’s set in 2025? Post-covid? Whatever it ends up being will feel cutesy compared to the real thing imo
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they should just make like humor overhaul mod packs that replace all the stupid signage and naming schemes to normal non embarrassing shit
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I’ve thought about doing this but the work would be a lot
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it still really cracks me up that the fake brands and super loud ads in cyberpunk are still leagues above gta somehow
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I think RDR2 does still have this, but the distance from the modern world makes it less obnoxious
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just call them dog penis cigarettes you cowards
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Advertising was less ubiquitous due to the time period but there was a little bit of salacious ad copy in the collectible newspapers but much of it just poked fun at the time period itself.
A sampling
- Sloppy Molly’s Dockyard Oysters (‘Now with less grit’)
- Doc Crockett’s All Purpose Miracle Cure (‘A wholly natural blend of herbs, spices, opium, and strychnine’)
- Flock of Sparrows Kidney Beans (‘Once opened, consume immediately to avoid poisoning’)
- Sexing Livestock Quarterly (‘Celebrating the wonderful bond between man and beast’)
- Tain’t Toilet Powder (‘Stay Dry in the Saddle’)
I can see iFruit being homophobic but it could also be the result of trying to build out a whole universe of fake branding during the inevitable scope creep of a production like these games are. It’s like Apple makes iPhones and they want an iPhone equivalent in their game so what do they call it? Don’t know gotta think of something so we can get to thinking up names for the other three or four fake phone brands and it has to immediately register as an Apple product and apples are fruit so I guess call it iFruit and move on we’ll fix it in post and then it just ends up in the game like that.
I could see it being like that. It is interesting they aren’t showcasing the edge lord humor more. It would be okay if it kept receding into the background. Or if they actually got good at doing satire but that might be a bridge too far. Looking forward to seeing what effect all the writers leaving will have on the final product,
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I’d be inclined to agree except the scooter in the game is still named faggio which I thought was offensive back in like the GTA 3 and San Andreas times. Worldbuilding and detail work is one of Rockstar’s hallmarks so putting placeholder brands in isn’t going to be something they do.
I think what I find exhausting is the thing they’re criticizing is apple products being “expensive” and therefore vain luxury items people don’t need because the biggest problem in GTA’s world is consumerism. iFruit isn’t the worst or only thing in the game, but the relentless presence of this visual debris everywhere in the game from multiple brands just make the game a bummer to hang out in.
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yeah gta’s humor is exactly the kind of humor that has to be funny internally to a large enough group of people that no one will flag it for being anything more than juvenile
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I haven’t played them in 20+ years but I assume the first two games were funnier
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The announcer is the funniest part of gta 2
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