History of Grand Theft Auto

jasoncart writes "With the launch of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas this week, Ferrago has taken a look back at everyone's favorite non-linear series."

Site is slow

[zebs]

Was slow when reading it as a /. subscriber. Took a copy and its here [zebs.org.uk]

Lots of info missing!

[Jagasian]

You would have figured that they would point out that the first GTA released in 1997 included Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas all in the same game. Most gamers who even played the first GTA when it was released never got past Liberty City. I personally never got past San Andreas. The original GTA was far more difficult than GTA3, mainly do to the fact that messing up a mission was a far bigger set back in GTA. You couldn't just do the mission over again, and it would also reset your score multiplier making even harder to raise enough money to get to the next city.

Re:lame article text

[horsebutt]

And Pirates is jut about to be re-released. It is being done by Sid Meier, so isnt going to be a dodgy remake by someone else.

Re:GTA remakes?

[HAKdragon]

For what it's worth, Rockstar relased GTA as freeware a while back. It wouldn't hurt to try to get it to work under Wine.

And for the record, other than the opening movies, Vice City works perfectly under Cedega.

Re:Lots of info missing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I was able to get past San Andreas and into Vice City, though I must say, I liked the layout of San Andreas the best of the three maps.

If I remember right, there were 2 sets of missions for Liberty City, 3 sets for San Andreas, and 2 for Vice City. I only finished 1 in Vice City before getting tired and moving onto other things.

And one good thing was that if you did screw up all your missions (like I did once), you could turn to other methods of raising revenue - e.g. stealing cars (then selling them at cranes), and the ever popular "Guaranga" :-)

There were a lot of secret areas - some only accessible via bike (or even super bike). I highly doubt I managed to find them all!

Number One Question....

[fm6]

Why does the AI in GTA3 suck so thoroughly? Don't get me wrong, I really like the game. But my enjoyment is slightly spoiled by non-player characters that literaly can't find their way out of a corner. Makes it much too easy to avoid the police. What makes it really sad is that the advanced hype for the game promise the most sophisticated AI ever. Not what we got.

I guess my question is rhetorical, 'cause I know the answer. Whoever was assigned to write the AI just totally underestimated the difficulty of the task. Almost all programmers make that mistake -- they don't appreciate the difficulty of emulating human behavior. The exceptions are all serious computer scientists.

So, RQ2: why didn't they hire some of those? They had the budget for big name actors to do the voices, to render a couple hundred buildings in detail, and to develop the VR engine to make it all work. Surely they could hire an AI expert or two. Answer: they just didn't know any better. Too bad.