When Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, who’s well known for making courageous – and often unpopular – statements, claimed earlier this month that GTA 6 would set a new “creative benchmark for all entertainment,” many folks were quick to dismiss such claims as Take-Two and Rockstar Games’ hype machine derailing way too early. But what if he’s right?
The thought of Rockstar setting a new bar for interactive entertainment isn’t an alien concept. In fact, we’re still trying to figure out how the hell GTA Online keeps printing money at such an absurd rate in spite of years of complaints about a broken in-game economy and unbalanced updates. And maybe the answer is simply that Rockstar did in 2013 something that other triple-A developers are still struggling to figure out. It hasn’t been an easy evolution, but the UK-headquartered company has always been ahead of the curve.
To this day, we’re still talking about GTA 3 like the first proper 3D open-world game (sorry, Daggerfall). That’s canon now. Claude Speed’s hijinks in Liberty City set the stage for arguably the most famous structure used by modern action-adventure games. And while developers all over the world were trying to adjust to such a radical change, 2002 brought forth Vice City, which is a “magical place” for diehard fans – no matter when they first played it.
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