GTA 6: 10 Core Innovations It Needs To Stay Interesting

10. A Proper Stat-System

It never made a whole lot of sense just how much flak San Andreas took for it's implementation of letting you bulk up or thin down on your character. It appeared many thought the idea of Carl 'CJ' Johnson popping down the local burger joint to pile on some pounds detracted from the driveby's and gang-warfare that populated the rest of the game, particularly the first third. However all you had to do was get your 'Fat meter' up enough so that every time you sprinted the game wasn't prompting you for a quarter-pounder, yet not too much to suddenly sprout triangular man-lumps, and you were laughing. Whilst this entire system was dropped in GTA IV in favour of The Most Boring Protagonist Ever in Niko Bellic and his range of Russian tracksuits, I always thought the sculpting of your 'very own CJ' added to the immersion of the gameworld, and whilst there were only a handful of implementations (More muscle means more melee damage), if Rockstar did a better job of conveying exactly how to manage your character to achieve certain abilities, it could be a huge success. We're already halfway there with GTA V's character traits, and whilst a 'Rage Mode', slow-motion shooting and a Need For Speed-esque driving mechanic are not particularly original, if these abilities were suddenly bestowed upon you through continuous headshots or the honing of a gun with a mule-kick-recoil, it would only serve to make the overall experience that more individual.