10 Times Rockstar Almost Made You Stop Playing GTA
The world's biggest gaming franchise had some notable growing pains.
As quite possibly the most well known gaming franchise of all time - at least outside of Mario, anyway - GTA has allowed Rockstar to become household names; their games being a steady reflection of both an internal work ethic and attitude, and an outlet for creative experimentation.
Flash back to GTA III and for the most part, we've very much got a "3D GTA"; something that took the sense of humour, vehicle variety and mission design of the first games, and polygonised it. That's not taking a single thing away from such an immaculate game, but start analysing everything that came thereafter, and you'll pick up on Rockstar employing an "everything including the kitchen sink" approach.
Though it was 14 years ago now, when San Andreas first introduced RPG stat-grinding, a food mechanic to maintain health and a freakin' jetpack, it started fractionating the fanbase in all sorts of different ways. Now we had a GTA fanbase that wanted a more "serious" tone - whereas others were content to roll with whatever Rockstar could conjure next.
The result became GTA V, but no matter where you sat and sit now though, GTA's back catalogue is filled with some genuinely baffling mission designs.