Recently Rockstar announced that GTA VI will soon (in maybe a month) be officially announced. I posted about these news with some bit of excitement on Dbuzz, but the truth is... I don't really care much about them.

Cool it's confirmation of what we all knew was coming eventually, but I still remember 2011.

I was there in the lead up to GTA V's trailer dropping.

Now THAT was an event. The game looked so incredibly beautiful and revolutionary, gameplay-wise and story-wise (with the 3 protagonists).

We all know what would end happen after that, GTA V became history, becoming the second best selling game of all time and one of the best games of the 7th and 8th generation (that's just insane).

I have quite a good amount of hours into GTA V and beat it once on the PS3. It was a lot fun and felt so damn fresh and modern.
That's not to say that GTA IV didn't feel fresh and modern, of course it did, specially with its incredible physics, but with V Rockstar brought the series onto an entire new scope.

10 Year Later

Source

10 years later, 4 versions of GTA V later (7th gen, PC, 8th gen, 9th gen).

What do we have? No singleplayer expansions and one of the most lackluster repetitive nickel and dime online modes out there.
Nothing interesting or of true substance was actually delivered.

Instead it became a monster worse and more ridiculous than Fortnite and its hundreds of collabs.
I'd say Fortnite is even more grounded because at least that was always a blank cartoonish slate, GTA was supposed to be realistic...

But instead we have flying bikes, orbital cannons, flying cars and more insane crazy bullshit that just doesn't belong.

And then don't forget how people can literally hack singleplayer sessions and kill you out of nowhere (of the campaign, not solo lobbies)! It's so stupid, it's so poorly made and it's so unsafe.

I'm not sure if Rockstar has done much more progress on this front, but the fact that it happened at all is stupid.
And whilst all that happens they're still trying to take more of your money - with new "prettier versions" and more shark cards.

The soul of GTA has been irreparably broken for me. And the magic of getting a new game from this franchise is likely gone forever.

No matter how good GTA VI turns out to be, and don't get me wrong, I WILL play it, it still won't be the same.

You can cry "NOSTALGIA!" at me, but I can still feel that excitement with other game franchises, I can still feel it when new exciting stuff gets announced, I just know it won't be the same with GTA because Rockstar put their masks off.

The worst part is I'll likely be lambasted for this by a good chunk of people. As has already happened.
On Facebook I said I'm way more excited for an international Steam Deck release or news about HL3 than GTA V.

My comment was laugh reacted to hell and the sole reply was "Not even you believe in yourself, right?"

I do, I do believe in myself.
Some of the people defending the GTA franchise with their teeth and nails weren't even 5 years old when V came out, at least that's what I've seen from Facebook.

Well, regardless... I hope we get a good game here. I really do. It just won't be the same for me, and I'm kinda sad.