GTA VI: 10 Lessons It Must Learn From The Competition

4. A Gritty, Mature Tone - L.A. Noire

Or we could go the complete other way. This is the flip-side of the mentality the likes of Saints Row and Mercenaries have gone to town with; L.A. Noire is just one of those titles that divides all who have played it; you either loved its take on the detective genre and were blown away by the phenomenal face technology, or you thought the sporadic dialogue options tore the whole thing down not long after the first few levels. Regardless of where you sit on how effective those interrogation scenes in the game were though, the one thing L.A. Noire nailed without question was its world and overall tonality. There's still not very many games that present the realities of crime and punishment in such a bleak way. Although GTA's mechanics shouldn't suddenly veer off into detective gameplay - although that would make for a cool series of side-missions - the presentation, character dialogue and general aesthetic of Noire is something that if GTA VI went down the serious route part four started, it could work wonders. How do you think a super-serious GTA would go down? It seems people bought the latest release in their droves off reputation and brand name alone, but what makes GTA what it is? If Rockstar were to do away with all the twisted brand names (Panoramic instead of Panasonic, really?) as well as the enjoyably-overacted mission-givers we sometimes love to hate, and instead gave us an emotionally-investing story that dealt with crime and violence realistically - would it still be appealing to so many people?