GTA V is coming September 17, 2013

[BoneyardBrew Member]

It's a terrible looking engine, have you tried the mod for BF3 which removes all the filters?

Once you've seen past the motion blur, tints, camera glare and all the other pointless overlays it looks ugly as hell.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the engine used by Rockstar (RAGE), RDR was visually stunning.

I'm shocked you think that. We're all allowed our opinions, but I don't think this, this, or this can be considered "visually stunning". I've played Battlefield 3 minus the filters and it blows that away. Better models, textures, lighting, shadows, you name it. All of that in addition to the fact that Frostbite 3 is what powers Battlefield 4, and that looks even better.

You say that as if the RAGE used by the GTA-series is actually better. :|

All the media put out for GTAV so far looks really poor - low resolution textures, low polygon counts, poor quality lighting, outdated facial animations, etc. That's without knowing anything about performance, which was hugely lacking in GTAIV. Yet again we'll be looking at it running 30fps on consoles?with or without framerate drops?and there's no indication that the PC version (if indeed there is going to be one) will be substantially better.

When you see the incredible work being done with games like Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and the upcoming Watch_Dogs it's hard to be anything but thoroughly disappointed with what Rockstar is doing with GTAV. And if you're a PC gamer it's hard to feel anything but contempt for Rockstar and its treatment of the PC as a platform. It should have been designed around PC / next-gen consoles and scaled back for the X360/PS3, which clearly isn't what they're doing. It seems a strange move to release a game that looks bad for the current generation around the time of the next-generation.

Was about to write out something incredibly similar. The screenshots we've been shown so far may have passed a few years ago, but certainly not on the brink of a new generation. Hell, the latest current generation titles put this game to shame. I know the "gameplay first" brigade will attempt to tear me a new one for being a graphics ######, but it's really not about that when it comes down to it. I don't mind if a game isn't the best looking on the market, but some standards should be set. I won't doubt it'll lack in gameplay either, considering how lackluster GTA IV was.

Disclaimer:

I've been a GTA fan since the top-down days so this post was somewhat saddening to write. I'm just incredibly disappointed in Rockstar's latest endeavors.

[theyarecomingforyou]

RAGE engine is technically impressive, its just gimped by 6 year old hardware. I imagine they have some form of RAGE already running on next-gen hardware, I'd be interested to see what the graphics would look like on next-gen system.

But that's the thing, it's not technically impressive. Games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3 and The Witcher 2 were able to take advantage of current-gen consoles while offering great graphics and even better PC versions, yet you seem to be suggesting that Rockstar is somehow more limited by current-gen consoles. While Max Payne 3 demonstrated that the engine has improved it was plagued by constant loading screens, which were particularly evident on the PC when the game kept jumping to horrifically low resolution pre-rendered cutscenes. Meanwhile Far Cry 3 was able to offer massive levels with very minimal loading screens and superb graphics.

Perhaps I'd be more tolerant if there was evidence that the gameplay had improved substantially but so far we haven't seen that, nor do we have evidence to suggest a huge leap forward in that department. Usually by this stage in development we'd have seen some in-game playthroughs. It's possible the game will turn out great?in which case you'd have to worry about the incompetence of Rockstar's PR department?but all the media and evidence so far points to the contrary.

I'm shocked you think that. We're all allowed our opinions, but I don't think this, this, or this can be considered "visually stunning".

Exactly. I don't get what all the fuss is about, as it doesn't look anything special from what I've seen - in fact I'd say it looks rather poor but then I'm not a console gamer.

Disclaimer:

I've been a GTA fan since the top-down days so this post was somewhat saddening to write. I'm just incredibly disappointed in Rockstar's latest endeavors.

Same. I've been playing GTA games since the original version and have to say that GTAV looks to be the worst in the series.

[TheLegendOfMart]

But that's the thing, it's not technically impressive. Games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3 and The Witcher 2 were able to take advantage of current-gen consoles while offering great graphics and even better PC versions, yet you seem to be suggesting that Rockstar is somehow more limited by current-gen consoles.

GTA5 has been in development for 5 years, you can't just keep updating the graphics engine during development or the game would never be finished, at some point you have to stop developing graphics and start building the world. I'm not making excuses, those games you listed are far newer technology wise than the RAGE engine was 5 years ago.

None of the open world games you mentioned pack as much detail into the world as GTA does, Crysis 3 does look impressive but it has self contained levels, not a full open world. Far Cry 3 looks deserted compared to GTA.

Personally I think its amazing what they can accomplish with 512MB total RAM/VRAM minus the memory reserved for the OS. As for PC, all the games you listed had PC as lead platform and backported to consoles, GTA has consoles as lead and ported to PCs which is why you don't get the kind of fidelity asset/model wise.

[theyarecomingforyou]

None of the open world games you mentioned pack as much detail into the world as GTA does, Crysis 3 does look impressive but it has self contained levels, not a full open world. Far Cry 3 looks deserted compared to GTA.

Far Cry 3 pushed PCs to their limits with DX11 features and highly detailed environments - while the environments are obviously different, to suggest that GTA has higher detail is laughable. I mean, look at this:

It looks terrible. Then compare that to Far Cry 3:

GTA5 has been in development for 5 years, you can't just keep updating the graphics engine during development or the game would never be finished, at some point you have to stop developing graphics and start building the world.

And every other game has to deal with the same issue. You're just making excuses.

Personally I think its amazing what they can accomplish with 512MB total RAM/VRAM minus the memory reserved for the OS. As for PC, all the games you listed had PC as lead platform and backported to consoles, GTA has consoles as lead and ported to PCs which is why you don't get the kind of fidelity asset/model wise.

And that's entirely the fault of the developer. Max Payne 3 was designed around PC and had decent graphics, yet everything put out for GTAV looks terrible. If developing for the X360/PS3 is limiting the game then they shouldn't be developing for it, like a lot of other developers have realised. id Software's RAGE is the perfect example of targeting consoles, as they abandoned their PC heritage and designed everything around consoles running at 720p and the game was a technical disaster as a result. Watch_Dogs is being designed for next-gen consoles, PC and current-gen consoles and is due for release not long after GTAV but it looks dramatically better. Rockstar is too busy accepting truckloads of money from Microsoft and Sony to worry about artistic integrity or PC gamers.

Even if GTAV does make it to PC it will be very dated on release and it's entirely possible it will be a poorly optimised mess, like GTAIV was.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

GTA5 has been in development for 5 years, you can't just keep updating the graphics engine during development or the game would never be finished, at some point you have to stop developing graphics and start building the world. I'm not making excuses, those games you listed are far newer technology wise than the RAGE engine was 5 years ago.

None of the open world games you mentioned pack as much detail into the world as GTA does, Crysis 3 does look impressive but it has self contained levels, not a full open world. Far Cry 3 looks deserted compared to GTA.

Personally I think its amazing what they can accomplish with 512MB total RAM/VRAM minus the memory reserved for the OS. As for PC, all the games you listed had PC as lead platform and backported to consoles, GTA has consoles as lead and ported to PCs which is why you don't get the kind of fidelity asset/model wise.

Exactly this. If Rockstar were to continually update models and assets for the game (ala Duke Nukem Forever) it will never get done.

Usually what happens in a game development cycle is character models are made to photo-real quality then scaled back to match the hardware. This is evident in Tomb Raider - compare the PC version to the console versions - it simply blows them away.

What people are forgetting is that Rockstar are building GTA5 to that of current gen hardware (for consoles). Packing in so much data for a CITY full of textures, 100+ characters, 50+ cars, lighting information, AI, voice, radio stations, tv channels...

All this data has to fit on a dvd that cant be more than 8GB.

Of course games like battlefield 3 are going to look better, you might see only 30% of a city the same scale of LA in GTA5. That means higher quality texture maps, more realistic facial animations (we wont see LA Noire style facial animation anytime soon) - why? because the map for battlefield is maybe 1/100th in size to that of the GTA map. Trust me - as a game developer all this stuff matters.

IF (and its highly likely) that GTA5 comes out on next gen - then you can expect it to be as good as current gen PC games. IF it does come out for next gen, expect only a short delay (of say 6 months or so) so they can add specific next gen features, like social integration and stuff. I would even say without that social intergration GTA5 would be ready in some degree for them.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Far Cry 3 pushed PCs to their limits with DX11 features and highly detailed environments - while the environments are obviously different, to suggest that GTA has higher detail is laughable. I mean, look at this:

I like how you cherry picked the worst looking, earliest in development GTA5 image just to make a point.

Compared to:

GTA5 hardly a bad looking game considering the amount of detail packed into every image, Far Cry 3 has mountains and trees, wow so much detail, DX11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And every other game has to deal with the same issue. You're just making excuses.

All the games you quoted are NEWER technology wise than GTA5 which probably started development as soon as GTA4 was released in 2008.

And that's entirely the fault of the developer. Max Payne 3 was designed around PC and had decent graphics, yet everything put out for GTAV looks terrible. If developing for the X360/PS3 is limiting the game then they shouldn't be developing for it, like a lot of other developers have realised. id Software's RAGE is the perfect example of targeting consoles, as they abandoned their PC heritage and designed everything around consoles running at 720p and the game was a technical disaster as a result. Watch_Dogs is being designed for next-gen consoles, PC and current-gen consoles and is due for release not long after GTAV but it looks dramatically better. Rockstar is too busy accepting truckloads of money from Microsoft and Sony to worry about artistic integrity or PC gamers.

Even if GTAV does make it to PC it will be very dated on release and it's entirely possible it will be a poorly optimised mess, like GTAIV was.

So its the developers fault that they only have 512MB of RAM to work with?

Max Payne 3 looks better because its not open world, they are self contained levels, its idiotic to even try and compare them. Watch_Dogs is targeted at next generation, GTA5 is targeted at current generation and has probably been in development for twice if not three times as long as Watch_Dogs hence the older tech and we haven't even seen Watch_Dogs running on PS360 yet so you can't say it looks better than GTA5.

I don't blame them for abandoning PCs, Consoles have a far larger target audience and far less piracy. PC games sell a fraction of the millions upon millions that console games sell.

I am a PC gamer but I am also not an entitled whiner about how developers are abandoning PC and we just get crappy console ports. Deal with it.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

Developers are abandoning PC because of how easy it is to pirate AAA games. Plain and simple. Dont pirate games, developers will make them again.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Exactly this. If Rockstar were to continually update models and assets for the game (ala Duke Nukem Forever) it will never get done.

Usually what happens in a game development cycle is character models are made to photo-real quality then scaled back to match the hardware. This is evident in Tomb Raider - compare the PC version to the console versions - it simply blows them away.

What people are forgetting is that Rockstar are building GTA5 to that of current gen hardware (for consoles). Packing in so much data for a CITY full of textures, 100+ characters, 50+ cars, lighting information, AI, voice, radio stations, tv channels...

All this data has to fit on a dvd that cant be more than 8GB.

And the same was true for Mafia II and it had much better graphics and a considerably better optimised engine. The reality is the RAGE engine used for GTAIV was a technical mess - there were major framerate drops on the console versions and they had to run sub-720p; even on the PC with multi-GPU setups and overclocked quad-core processors the game struggles to maintain 60fps on hardware released years later, which is shocking really. Even considering the scale of the environment the RAGE-engine does a bad job. Take Far Cry 3, for instance - it was release 4yrs after Far Cry 2, which is similar to the development period for GTA4. Yet Ubisoft Montreal was able to considerably improve the graphics and develop for the PC simultaneously.

Why should I care that Rockstar planned things poorly from a technical perspective? All I care about is the final product. The reality is that?based on the media put out so far?the game looks really dated.

[+virtorio MVC]

I don't play Rockstar games because of the graphics. GTAI V looked impressive at the time, but almost everything else they've done has never looked fantastic. However, the worlds they create, story telling, and characters are always good, that's why people buy them, and I haven't seen anything to indicate GTA V won't be just as good.

Far Cry 3 looks fine on the Xbox 360/PS3 just as long as you're looking at a screenshot and not it in motion, because the framerate is garbage. It's a PC game ported to consoles. GTAV is a console game, that's where Rockstar's focus has been since the PS2 and GTA III.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Developers are abandoning PC because of how easy it is to pirate AAA games. Plain and simple. Dont pirate games, developers will make them again.

Nonsense. Developers are putting more effort into the PC - just look at the PC releases for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider, Borderlands 2, Assassin's Creed 3, Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Dishonored, DiRT series, Battlefield 3, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Max Payne 3, etc.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Why should I care that Rockstar planned things poorly from a technical perspective? All I care about is the final product. The reality is that?based on the media put out so far?the game looks really dated.

Good lord, because it IS DATED, it is FIVE YEARS OLD.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Good lord, because it IS DATED, it is FIVE YEARS OLD.

A) It was dated and poorly optimised for the time.

B) The media put out for GTAV doesn't look any better, whereas the preview footage for Max Payne 3 did look better.

The fact that you're claiming the RAGE-engine is good means we're clearly not going to agree.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Where did I said it was good, I said it was technically impressive for the 6 year old hardware, take away the memory reserved for the OS and you're left with around 200MB of RAM and 256MB of VRAM. You're just being dismissive because a ?150 console doesn't look as good as modern ?750+ PC hardware can handle.

I also like how you conveniently ignored the comparison pics I posted at the top of this page. Far Cry 3 doesn't look all that great considering its mostly hilly empty space with a smattering of trees. All the other games you mentioned are either self contained levels where they can afford to crank up the image quality or are nowhere near the scale of the world of GTA that doesn't have any load times.

[theyarecomingforyou]

I also like how you conveniently ignored the comparison pics I posted at the top of this page. Far Cry 3 doesn't look all that great considering its mostly hilly empty space with a smattering of trees. All the other games you mentioned are either self contained levels where they can afford to crank up the image quality or are nowhere near the scale of the world of GTA that doesn't have any load times.

The screenshot I posted was simply one of the first I found. As for the examples you posted - I hadn't seen them, so there's nothing "convenient" about it. However, they're all shots from a distance - as soon as you get up close things look a mess in GTAV, whereas in Far Cry 3 they look better. When you compare the videos the difference is a lot more evident.

Where did I said it was good, I said it was technically impressive for the 6 year old hardware, take away the memory reserved for the OS and you're left with around 200MB of RAM and 256MB of VRAM. You're just being dismissive because a ?150 console doesn't look as good as modern ?750+ PC hardware can handle.

Of course, because console games look terrible. We're talking about sub-720p resolutions, 30fps, low resolution textures, low polygon counts, long loading times, limited physics, etc. The very people defending the current gen consoles now are going to be the ones buying the X720 and PS4 and boasting about how much better they are, so it seems ridiculous to discount the graphical fidelity available on PC right now. What GTAV is doing is not technically impressive at all - the visuals on consoles peaked years ago and have just been treading water. People wouldn't defend DVDs over Blu-ray, so why do they act differently when it comes to consoles?

I'll be supporting the developers that actually care about progress rather than those simply accepting truckloads of money from Microsoft and Sony.

[Tarvis123]

ITT: Realistic graphics are the most important part of a game.

I would rather Rockstar spend time making the game fun and replayable, than worrying if each leaf casts a shadow.

[TheLegendOfMart]

You can't just discount things like that, to get the kind of graphical fidelity you are talking about a graphics card alone costs the same as a whole current gen console. Just because you have a ?1000 PC doesn't mean you can act all dismissive and elitist, people like you are the reason the PC gets poor console ports.

[dead.cell]

If you like the way GTAV looks, cool. I do too. But don't give me this nonsense that the Frostbite engine looks bad by comparison. That's probably the dumbest thing I've read all day long... I'm not sure why we're even having this "competition" either when it's a rather moot point anyway. It all comes down to the developers: you can have a great engine, but unless you have decent artists, your game will still look like crap. :ermm:

[theyarecomingforyou]

You can't just discount things like that, to get the kind of graphical fidelity you are talking about a graphics card alone costs the same as a whole current gen console. Just because you have a ?1000 PC doesn't mean you can act all dismissive and elitist, people like you are the reason the PC gets poor console ports.

But if you buy a lot of games on console it will end up more expensive due to the Microsoft/Sony tax. Just looking at Tomb Raider on Amazon there is a 35% mark-up for the console versions over the PC. If you spend ?300 a year on games then you're looking at an extra ?105 per year / ?735 per year and some games have an even higher mark-up. At the end of the day if all you can afford is a console then you can't expect better but I have spent money on a decent PC and do expect better.

The thing is, nobody would defend movie studios releasing Blu-ray movies at DVD quality to save on the costs of converting it to HD so why should porting games to PC be any different?

The current-gen consoles were fine at the beginning of their lifecycle but now they're chronically dated. As for PC gamers being elitist, it's by being demanding that we end up with better quality ports and poor quality ports (like GTA4) are shunned by the gaming community. And as mentioned earlier the quality of ports and releases is improving.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Has nothing to do with "all you can afford", Until Uncharted, Gran Turismo, etc.. come to the PC I will always have some form of Playstation.

You don't get to demand anything, that is just being entitled. You get what you're given and be thankful you've got it. Having a ?600, ?700, ?1000 PC doesn't give you the right to act like a spoilt brat and it certainly doesn't mean you are better than everyone else.

Developers don't target PC as lead platform because of rampant piracy and weak sales, PC games rarely sell more than 6 figures for a good game whereas the same game on consoles sell millions per platform.

[Lamp0]

You say that as if the RAGE engine used by the GTA-series is actually better. :|

All the media put out for GTAV so far looks really poor - low resolution textures, low polygon counts, poor quality lighting, outdated facial animations, etc. That's without knowing anything about performance, which was hugely lacking in GTAIV. Yet again we'll be looking at it running 30fps on consoles?with or without framerate drops?and there's no indication that the PC version (if indeed there is going to be one) will be substantially better.

When you see the incredible work being done with games like Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and the upcoming Watch_Dogs it's hard to be anything but thoroughly disappointed with what Rockstar is doing with GTAV.

Oh come on, did you really expect GTAV to look better than it does? Are you so obsessed with technical fidielty that you are blind to everything else?

What about A.I., physics, animation, sound & art design. IMO Rockstar has made some of the most impressive games this gen; Red Dead Redemption is a masterclass in art direction. Far Cry 3 would look technically superior, but it doesn't hold a candle to in it terms of art direction. It's not even close IMO.

And if you're a PC gamer it's hard to feel anything but contempt for Rockstar and its treatment of the PC as a platform. It should have been designed around PC / next-gen consoles and scaled back for the X360/PS3, which clearly isn't what they're doing. It seems a strange move to release a game that looks bad for the current generation around the time of the next-generation.

Stop being so dramatic & acting like you know better. You don't. It only looks bad to you because you're hyper sensitive to low end graphics(& perhaps bitter that it's not announced for PC?). I am hesitating to call these screenshots low end... because I think it looks phenomenal & that's taking into consideration it probably won't be as sharp on console. I am still far more excited for GTAV than I am for any next-gen title.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Rockstar published the official cover art for GTA V just now:

Source: http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/49291/grand-theft-auto-v-official-cover-art.html

[Pupik]

Improvments? Wow.

http://i.imgur.com/HoqNBuf.jpg said nothing about a dog/any kind of animal.

[cryptonym]

So it's just a rumor about January release?

[Crisp]

Please use the official thread...

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1144980-grand-theft-auto-v/

Thanks.