[DISCUSSION] E:D vs GTA Series

Alien

Alien
I have seen a few times people comparing Elite: Dangerous to the GTA series. While I can see why the comparison is made, is it justified?
Is comparing Elite: Dangerous to the GTA series a good idea?
Will it harm or help Elite: Dangerous to be compared to the GTA series?
Will Elite: Dangerous ever be as good as the GTA series (after all Rockstar have taken five games (GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, GTA IV & GTA V) and 12 years to get to where they are now, where as Frontier are starting again with Elite: Dangerous, effectively at the same point Rockstar were with GTA III)

I'm interested to know what people think on this.
 
Last edited:

JeffRyan

JeffRyan
Compared to the most controversial and successful gaming franchises of all time?

No bad thing IMHO. Only FOX viewers fall for condemnation hype these days.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Do not mix towels and tea towels. Nothing can be better than Elite. Elite is a cult game for 30 years. While GTA is a poor game for the content. To drive, kill, and to see the prostitute based on what I read. In addition, GTA IV has a reputation overrated, according to the press. With the cheat codes, you can finish the game in 24 hours, I read. And without cheat codes, there are people who have completed in 48 hours, so it's simple. Really, Elite have a another dimension.

:D
 
Last edited:

JeffRyan

JeffRyan
Patrick_68000 said:
Do not mix towels and tea towels. Nothing can be better than Elite. Elite is a cult game for 30 years. While GTA is a poor game for the content. Drive, kill, and to see the prostitute based on what I read. In addition, GTA IV has a reputation overrated, according to the press. With the cheat codes, you can finish the game in 24 hours, I read. And without cheat codes, there are people who have completed in 48 hours, so it's simple. Not really, Elite to another dimension.

:D
Click to expand...

I STILL play San Andreas when I'm in a bad mood. COME GET SOME YOU DIRTY COPS!
 

Alien

Alien
Patrick_68000 said:
Do not mix towels and tea towels. Nothing can be better than Elite. Elite is a cult game for 30 years. While GTA is a poor game for the content. To drive, kill, and to see the prostitute based on what I read. In addition, GTA IV has a reputation overrated, according to the press. With the cheat codes, you can finish the game in 24 hours, I read. And without cheat codes, there are people who have completed in 48 hours, so it's simple. Not really, Elite to another dimension.

:D
Click to expand...
Now, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I saw a couple of "I read" in your reply, which suggests that you've not actually played the game. Maybe you have played one of them, I don't know.

But something hard to argue against is £500 million in one day's sales and £1 billion in three day's sales. For it to get that sort figures, people must like a) what they've seen in previews and b) the reputation of the series. Rockstar must be doing something right, and my questions above are all about whether Frontier can live up to what Rockstar have set as "the standard".
 

Capt. Hook

Capt. Hook
I don't really see the comparison? Sandbox games - is that it? I know Charlie Brooker is big fan of both GTA and Elite but not sure that counts in this case??
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
Frankly Alien and Jeff Ryan, I do not know the game. I'm just kidding. I just read an article in the press saying that the game is always the same for 10 years, the graphics are from another era, even if the level of detail is very accurate. And $ 1 billion in 1-3 days does not mean that the game is good. I was just joking because I know many people love this game. A little provocation.

:)
 
Last edited:

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Jenner
I've never been all that into GTA, but it does have a well deserved reputation at least as far as its ability to delivery on the free-roaming sandbox experience. You can do a whole bunch of stuff in the game and it's all up to you. Dress up your character, take missions, progress in the story, go bowling, find hidden items, or just drive around and try your best not to run red lights. :) It really does deliver.

I think that, above anything, is why Elite and GTA are sometimes compared.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Wow, someone has misread what was written.

What I personally said that I can only see walking on planets part to work like GTA (comparing to versus FPS which is model SC has chosen and EVE already implemented). Not exactly like it, but you know what I mean :)

As a teen I played first GTA, and it was notoriously hard, and full of black humor (and yeah, no 3D, but still it was very fun). At the moment when GTA started to take itself too seriously as a game was gone for me. Still, I admire open world mechanics put in place, but it's nothing impossible - all you need is quite a space on hard drive, lot of tested algorithms for AI, and off you go. I recently saw Saints Row IV and if honest, that was much better "dumb fun" than GTA.

Still, it's not a dumb shooter, and what I have heard from GTA 5 yes you can shoot people, hit them, kill them - but if police is on to you, then you are really screwed.

Still, most of money they spent on GTA goes to developing handcrafted content and testing everything.
 

Slythe

Slythe
IMO the main problem* with the GTA series** is that it is too easy to get away from the Police. I found that it lacked any real challenge. Also the vehicle handling was never that great, I never really got much fun out of just driving them around, I guess the fun was all in the collisions.

*not everyone is going to see it as a problem.
**GTA IV is the one I played extensively, other versions may have been better of course.
 
Last edited:

insanephoton

insanephoton
Now GTA IV has a reputation as being the low point of the series. A lot of the 'dumb fun' had been taken out of it and perhaps it did take it's self too seriously. The main reason I gave up was that it didn't feel quite as compelling as the previous ones and the double login every time you wanted to play just made it a chore.

The thing is although the core game remained largely the same as the previous games the city had so much more detail. Now fans of the series know all about the dark humour in the radio broadcasts, but there were also tv shows, theatres (many of the acts were awful but intentionally so, but they also had part of a Ricky Gervais stand up routine). There was so much more to do than just shoot people and drive.

From what I've seen from the trailers and read about GTA V. They've put some of the fun back and expanded all the stuff from Liberty city in IV and added all the outdoor elements from San Andreas and put it all in a map bigger than all the previous maps combined.

Elite being compared to GTA is no bad thing. GTA for all it's faults and controversy is a game that even a lot of non gamers have heard of.
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
Although they're both open world games (and I believe Dan Hauser has stated that GTA wouldn't have happened without ELITE) there's a big difference in the way they're made. The beauty of GTA is that for all its vast freedom, every inch of it is meticulously hand-crafted. And because it's massively successful they can afford to throw hundreds of artists at it to make that possible.

I think whatever you think about the morality of GTA, you have to take your hat off to the huge amount of work that goes into it and that something so incredibly complicated works at all! All those possibilities and the logic very rarely breaks.

I remember when GTA3 came out just being amazed you could get AI and collision detection working on that scale and with that draw distance. It's a piece of work.

GTA also has the advantage that the enviroment you're in is spatially very interesting, meaning combat and driving never feel samey. In ELITE you're basically in a big empty space, which makes it hard to add variety and depth to the combat and flying. It's all sort of the same.

But I'm very encouraged by the sound of combat in ELITE: DANGEROUS (it seems like it's taking a few pointers from FTL) and I think ELITE will still win for atmosphere and immersion.
 

izzy

izzy
GTA and Elite are two different types of game. I think we cannot compare these series.
I have never played GTA and not really interested by it ... but I cannot deny that it is great success ;)
 

Cosmo Bozo

Cosmo Bozo
What really made GTA 4 for me was a realistic car handling and damage mod, combined with managing to get my steering wheel and pedals working with it :D

Where it really shine is the sheer amount of content, and the variety of stuff you can do. It hits the headline for the controversial stuff, but that's only a small part.
If Elite can achieve the same level of consistent quality and varied content I will be a very happy bunny, but you have to remember GTA has an enormous budget

Haven't got the new one, I don't have a console...
got the whole series up to that except GTA london in a steam sale a while back...£4.99 :)
 
Last edited:

izzy

izzy
Cosmo Bozo said:
What really made GTA 4 for me was a realistic car handling and damage mod, combined with managing to get my steering wheel and pedals working with it :D

Where it really shine is the sheer amount of content, and the variety of stuff you can do.
If Elite can achieve the same level of consistent quality and varied content I will be a very happy bunny, but you have to remember GTA has an enormous budget
Click to expand...

Yes an enormous team too ... I don't know how many people have worked but it must be huge
 

Bingo Brewster

Bingo Brewster
A lot of you know my views on the content of GTA.

While I accept that technically GTA is a great game and obviously wildly successful, I feel as negatively about GTA (the content) as I feel positively about the Elite series. So to my way of thinking there is no comparison

Apologies to Alien if this has gone a bit off topic.
 

Hamerstein

Hamerstein
I really enjoyed GTA IV. I know it came in for some flak for taking itself too seriously (and being ultra-violent), but with the expansions (especially when storylines coincided from different angles), it's probably one of the few games I've become really absorbed by the storyline for.

That said, I don't really see where the parallels between it and ED are drawn. Ok they're both open world, both have significant content beyond the obvious (shoot stuff to progress). But I'd probably draw more of a comparison between GTA IV and the Mass Effect series for how it plays. GTA IV lets you sand box whereas MASS Effect is ostensibly linear in that you haven't much to do unless you're following the plot. But they both follow a sequence of "crafted" events to "unlock" content.

ED is more a pure sandbox, there is no storyline (as far as we're aware), you make the story yourself and it'll vary massively depends on what you do and how you act, not just based on a few coded dialogues.

Will I miss having "crafted" content? Probably not as I'm not expecting it. Do I have concerns once it stops being purely a space-sim and goes EVA on planets? Definitely yes, it'll be straying into territory that is traditionally the demesne of other AAA titles and it's not going to be easy to stand up to comparisons with them. Will I garner as much enjoyment as I did from GTA IV? Absolutely, for entirely different reasons.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom