5. Keep it Serious
The new GTA franchise simply cannot turn into Saints Row, the madness of which is brilliant fun in its own terms, but not welcome in a GTA game. Some great films put seriousness over spectacle. Raging Bull didnt exactly encourage me to take up boxing Why cant games do the same? The last thing games developers want to encourage is a link between games and violence in the real world. GTA is in a great position to teach us something about gangland violence and it should take the opportunity. There are a couple of games around at the moment which are putting seriousness ahead of simple spectacle with some really interesting results. Spec Ops 2: The Line does some really interesting things in its stubborn attempts to avoid simply being another poor Call of Duty clone. War isnt fun and Spec Ops does not let players fall into this line of thinking. Niko Bellic is a far greater role model than the cold hearted, sadistic, racist, killer Price or his puppet Soap in the Call of Duty games. At least Niko has a conscience.