GTA Jetpack
As the more astute readers may have noticed, I changed the name of the blog to get rid of the "mind of an unemployed video game programmer". I saw what it looked like on other people's blogrolls, and figured I should fix it. Nobody's blog should take up three lines. Sorry about that.

[GTA Spoilers]

So, anyway, I noticed something odd about GTA about two thirds of the way through the game. Now, I have always loved flying in GTA, ever since it was introduced in GTA:VC. As soon as I got access to a helicopter, I flew it everywhere I could. It gave me such a great sense of freedom while lifting me above traffic, police, rival gangs, or any of that. There was nowhere I couldn't go, nothing I couldn't do. If I couldn't find a good landing place, I could just bail out and only take minimal damage.

So, when I started playing GTA:SA, I was drooling at the prospect of those new planes. I thought it would be so incredible to fly the planes across the map, viewing the countryside from a whole new perspective, and bailing out anywhere on the map (this time, with a parachute).

As it turns out, you don't really get full access to flight until near the end of the game. And once you get in a plane, all sense of wonder is lost. They start you out in a P51 Mustang, one of the greatest planes in WWII. However, as soon as you stop taxiing over the runway you realize that the flight controls are way off. I mean, they're really bad. That's coming from a guy who's written flight controls for two published flight simulators. I'm not saying they needed to be more realistic, I'm just saying they needed to be more playable. I could go into what was wrong about them, and how it should have been handled, but you don't really want to hear me bitch about flight controls.

So anyway, saddened, I went on about the game. Then, after the mission "Green Goo", they unlocked the jetpack for me.

Wow. I mean, wow. That thing is the ultimate in vehicular freedom. You could fly anywhere, land anywhere. If you want to cross the state, it takes maybe two minutes. If you want to see what's written on the top of the tallest bridge in the game (yes, there is something written there), the jetpack made it easy. You could target and shoot at enemies while hovering. It was the ultimate expression of freedom in the game.

And that was the problem.

Up until that point, I was working on my driving skills, my bike skills, even my boating skills. But as soon as you strap into a jetpack, they all seem trivial and silly. Then, when you go back to the normal missions, there's a hollowness to them. The missions are great, but their greatness is dulled by a little voice in the back of your mind saying, "This would be sooo much easier with the jetpack."

I'm familiar with the feeling, it's one I used to get at work a lot. When you're developing a game, you usually walk around with god mode turned on. Infinite ammo, all the weapons, stuff like that. You turn all that on because you need to be able to work in the world, not just play around.

The downside is that, by the time you've finished the game, the challenges all seem kinda hollow to you, because you keep thinking, "This would be soooo much easier in god mode."

So that was the problem. An otherwise excellent game gets tainted by having too much freedom, then losing it in the game. As I coasted over a gas station the other day, I found myself wondering how to go about fixing this.

Then it hit me. Fuel!

What's really missing from GTA is fuel. They already pay attention to how often you eat (forcing you to eat periodically, and making your avatar grow too fat if you eat too often), so why not pay attention to the fuel consumption of the vehicles?

This isn't just a simple way of annoying the player, either. With fuel, the player would be forced to decide which vehicle they want to take for different missions. Some vehicles have a massive benefit over others, but if those were the gas guzzlers, you might think twice about it. Also, this idea gives a new possibility for gameplay challenges. Imagine a mission where the player has to drive this huge, gas guzzling, two-lane wide, vehicle from one end of the map to the other. Not only would the player have to make sure that he doesn't take damage from the oncoming traffic, but the player would also have to map out his route so that he could periodically refuel. The mission could make every leg of the route a challenge, because suddenly the player has to worry that climbing too high a hill would use up more gas than normal.

Also, you could give realistic fuel consumption to the jetpack. From what I've heard, a real jetpack can only run for about twenty seconds without running out of fuel. Now, compared to the GTA jetpack, that's a huge limitation, but imagine if you could use it as an inventory item. You get to where you want to go, switch to the jetpack, and fly over an obstruction. That way, the jetpack becomes more of a tool, and less of a dominating vehicle.

Anyway, that's what I'd do. Your mileage may vary.

game, gta, jetpack
- posted by BrandG @ 5:53 PM