A Review of Grand Theft Auto XXIIV

Retro games guide you through nonlinear narratives via carefully-crafted constraints. To play Death Stranding 8 is to live in a Kojima-directed auteur film for 120+ hours.

Classic games may evoke that warm fuzzy nostalgia, but they constantly break immersion. Before narrative engines, game developers forcibly corralled players back onto a pre-determined main main quest. Seriously, try playing any silver-era Nintendo game without narrative mods -- it's exhausting.

Rockstar Games introduced a new narrative engine in GTA23. It does all the basics: synthesizing lore, creating stakes, balancing tension, doling out justice, playing cinematic cut scenes after climactic moments, etc.

Bear with me, but my big gripe with GTA23 is that its new narrative engine is too good.

In a game with helicopters and prostitutes, you can spend five actual months fishing for carp and grilling them on a shopping cart. The game will reward you with varying sizes of small carp and convince you that a legendary megacarp lurks in those waters, waiting for your hook. It will force you upstream when industrial runoff kills all the wildlife in your usual spot. The game will dole out friendship and rivalry and loss and victory in perfect proportions. You will eventually hunt down a shopping cart thief and make him beg for mercy. The call of that river will remain with you for the rest of your life.

Other reviewers became drug kingpins and oil moguls. My playthroughs led me to become a carp fisherman, Wendy's franchisee, youth pastor, and chemistry teacher.

I understand that this is a skill issue. The game does exactly what I want, but apparently I want trite bullshit. Any game that exposes my unfulfillable potential is too damn realistic.

Maybe other people have wilder imaginations, or desire cooler outcomes, or are disciplined enough to invest incremental time/effort toward long-term goals.

GTA23 is fun, but it hurts to see others having more fun than me.

6/10