Hey, so remember when you first played any of the GTA (or Saint's Row) series, that initial feeling of WOW this a giant city I can explore, that whole illusion of freedom?

Remember eventually noticing that 99% of the buildings were just giant cardboard boxes with doors and windows painted on them? Did you ever wish they had more interiors?

So jump ahead a few years, GTA for an example looks a hell of a lot prettier, but still the same thing, mostly fake buildings although I admit there does seem to be MORE interior places, let's call it 80% cardboard buildings.

Now switch gears and think of the modern Fallout games. LOTS of interior places to check out there, with as well as a pretty damn expansive outdoors to explore. (although I realize that it's there's more subway tunnels and caves than buildings and there are still a fair amount of "card board" buildings, but still more interior that say GTA or Saint's Row)

I always wonder if it's possible to have that in a GTA style game, maybe not now but in the future. I always assumed that what I call the cardboard city is a technical limitation, IE for sandbox city games they use most of the "space" they have for the city the streets and the traffic AI etc, and stuff like Fallout\Skyrim etc that "space" gets used for the more complicated combat and RPG elements and all the interiors.

I'm aware that the example games use totally different engines and are produced by totally separate companies not to mention they are totally different styles of games, so comparing them is kind of stupid, but I dunno just imagine the possibility of a GTA style game having extensive interiors like a Fallout/Skyrim game.

You're getting chased by rivals or cops or whatever, you get a block away but crash your car and whoever is after you will be there before you jack another car without being seen and starting the whole chase over again, so you duck into a crowded coffee shop and out the backdoor, or heck off someone or rob them and take their coat and hat and dip out a back door and you lose your stars as long as you go unnoticed for X amount of time (but you get them back if you are still wearing the coat that you took when it gets reported etc..)

Or you run into an apartment complex kick down a door and jump up in to the crawl space and shimmy over the adjacent unit, and there's a random chance of the units being empty or inhabited so there's potential for additional standoffs\stealing disguises and sneaking away etc.

I guess what I'm imaging is like a cross between GTA, Hitman, and Fallout (at least in regards to the extensive interior levels and maybe the 1st person/3rd person toggle for combat. GTA never had 1st person for combat which always annoyed me slightly, and the 1st person driving always felt weird because the car became invisible, no hood or dash, just flying around in 1st person with car noises... )


It's late and I lost my train of thought, so umm wouldn't that be neat-o, or is it just me that thinks that?

San Andreas was always my favorite, but I'm a sucker for anything 90s and that game oozed 90s.

I agree that modern processing would probably ruin any attempt at tons of interiors in a GTA style game, and I totally understand where everyone is coming from when they say that they don't play GTA to dick around inside a bunch of buildings.

I think I was more going for a "what if" idea of sandbox gaming in the future, what an insanely immersive, hyper realistic, massive sandbox/crime game may look like.

Then again you're right, if games ever hit a point where they're too realistic, people will probably starve themselves half to death and go in to debt playing them nonstop, look at some of the crap that's already happened with shitty parents addicted to MMOs or stuff like that.