The "Sony Games" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
There seems to be a lot of speculation as to what the next installment of the GT series will contain. Some talk of a GT3 B-Spec with broadband internet capability, and maybe a few extra cars. Some think that the next GT will be a new installment designed from scratch. I know i'm looking forward to finding out.
The thing that bugs me is; Releasing a version of GT that simply builds in a Internet network multiplayer mode seems a little modest by Kazunori Yamauchi and Polyphony Digital's standards. Surely they must have much more up their sleeves besides? Compared to what we'd seen in the past, The original GT was massive beyond our wildest dreams when it was released. But when they moved to GT2, The Number of cars that they packed in was truly incredible. They also added a Rally mode, almost infinate amounts of races to enter, and an improved handling model. An Amazing amount of new features!
GT3 didn't add new features in the way GT2 did. This was initially disappointing, but it soon became clear that the reason that this happened was because Polyphony Digital had put so much work into optimizing GT3 to harness the full capabilities of PS2. And you can see this easily. Despite being an early PS2 title, it still has by far and away the best graphics on any PS2 racer, and is one of the best looking games on the market right now. The car handling has also progressed massively, making full use of the high resolution Dual Shock 2 pad. And the Rally mode was now fun to play!
With all of this developement under their belt now, I think that GT4 will make a jump similar in size to that between GT1 and GT2! There are a myriad of possibilities as to what thy might do next.
Broadband internet multiplay is the obvious one. no matter how good it gets, AI is never as thrilling to play against as another human being, but split screen has it's limitations on a game like GT as it seems a lot harder to play when your view is half the size. And lugging six TV's round to a mates house is a hassle, even if you can find five mates that have a PS2! Internet play will eliminate this problem and add masses of lifespan onto the game.
The limitation on the number of cars in GT3 was the time it took to model them in such a high resolution. 2 Weeks in comparison to 2 days for GT2. It make sense that most of the cars in GT3 can be pretty much carried straight to the next installment, so i think we could well see double the number of cars in the next installment (though this may require two discs). So maybe we'll see that Lamborghini we've been lusting after! The existance of Gran Turismo Next and the Toyota-only GT3 version show that Polyphony are modelling new cars as we speak.
Car Damage is a hot subject, that has been discussed on these here forums before. It would be great to see it, but many manufacturers refuse to allow it. The Question is, Would you trade off the number of cars available in exchange for Car Damage? Some have suggested that Polyphony should use fantasy cars so they can include car damage, but i don't like that idea and don't think it's ever likely to happen, as a massive part of the realism in GT3 stems from the amount of cars present that you also see on the road in real life, or even drive yourself.
GT3 saw the addition of Wet weather. This was a fantastic idea, but sadly it was very poorly implemented. I hope that GT4 extends the idea of variable weather conditions. Rain on all the tracks would be good, as would actual falling rain rather than just a wet track. Changeable weather during the race would also make the endurance races alot more exciting, adding an extra strategy element to help keep you interested over the hour long races (Let's face it, they're pretty dull at the moment!).
There are other little improvements that i'd like to see. For example, The original GT gave a summary of the Hp of your opponent cars before a race, and I'd like to see this brought back so that you could tune your car so it's specs match that of the opponents. This would help the experts get close races. It's dissapointing when you enter a race and blow everyone away purely because your car is better tuned. I also think that the rally courses are a bit wide. It would be cool if the tracks were narrower to closer resemble those of real rally events.
Well those are my thoughts on the Future of Gran Turismo! what do you think? What would you like to see on the next installment? Have you heard any interesting news? post your GT thoughts here!
Thanks for reading.
There seems to be a lot of speculation as to what the next installment of the GT series will contain. Some talk of a GT3 B-Spec with broadband internet capability, and maybe a few extra cars. Some think that the next GT will be a new installment designed from scratch. I know i'm looking forward to finding out.
The thing that bugs me is; Releasing a version of GT that simply builds in a Internet network multiplayer mode seems a little modest by Kazunori Yamauchi and Polyphony Digital's standards. Surely they must have much more up their sleeves besides? Compared to what we'd seen in the past, The original GT was massive beyond our wildest dreams when it was released. But when they moved to GT2, The Number of cars that they packed in was truly incredible. They also added a Rally mode, almost infinate amounts of races to enter, and an improved handling model. An Amazing amount of new features!
GT3 didn't add new features in the way GT2 did. This was initially disappointing, but it soon became clear that the reason that this happened was because Polyphony Digital had put so much work into optimizing GT3 to harness the full capabilities of PS2. And you can see this easily. Despite being an early PS2 title, it still has by far and away the best graphics on any PS2 racer, and is one of the best looking games on the market right now. The car handling has also progressed massively, making full use of the high resolution Dual Shock 2 pad. And the Rally mode was now fun to play!
With all of this developement under their belt now, I think that GT4 will make a jump similar in size to that between GT1 and GT2! There are a myriad of possibilities as to what thy might do next.
Broadband internet multiplay is the obvious one. no matter how good it gets, AI is never as thrilling to play against as another human being, but split screen has it's limitations on a game like GT as it seems a lot harder to play when your view is half the size. And lugging six TV's round to a mates house is a hassle, even if you can find five mates that have a PS2! Internet play will eliminate this problem and add masses of lifespan onto the game.
The limitation on the number of cars in GT3 was the time it took to model them in such a high resolution. 2 Weeks in comparison to 2 days for GT2. It make sense that most of the cars in GT3 can be pretty much carried straight to the next installment, so i think we could well see double the number of cars in the next installment (though this may require two discs). So maybe we'll see that Lamborghini we've been lusting after! The existance of Gran Turismo Next and the Toyota-only GT3 version show that Polyphony are modelling new cars as we speak.
Car Damage is a hot subject, that has been discussed on these here forums before. It would be great to see it, but many manufacturers refuse to allow it. The Question is, Would you trade off the number of cars available in exchange for Car Damage? Some have suggested that Polyphony should use fantasy cars so they can include car damage, but i don't like that idea and don't think it's ever likely to happen, as a massive part of the realism in GT3 stems from the amount of cars present that you also see on the road in real life, or even drive yourself.
GT3 saw the addition of Wet weather. This was a fantastic idea, but sadly it was very poorly implemented. I hope that GT4 extends the idea of variable weather conditions. Rain on all the tracks would be good, as would actual falling rain rather than just a wet track. Changeable weather during the race would also make the endurance races alot more exciting, adding an extra strategy element to help keep you interested over the hour long races (Let's face it, they're pretty dull at the moment!).
There are other little improvements that i'd like to see. For example, The original GT gave a summary of the Hp of your opponent cars before a race, and I'd like to see this brought back so that you could tune your car so it's specs match that of the opponents. This would help the experts get close races. It's dissapointing when you enter a race and blow everyone away purely because your car is better tuned. I also think that the rally courses are a bit wide. It would be cool if the tracks were narrower to closer resemble those of real rally events.
Well those are my thoughts on the Future of Gran Turismo! what do you think? What would you like to see on the next installment? Have you heard any interesting news? post your GT thoughts here!
Thanks for reading.
> Good post on GT there. I would like to see some really good damage with bits
> being strewn accoss the track along with online play. Lets hope.
Thanks. Quality crash damage is clearly the one major thing that GT3 lacks. It's just frustrating that polyphony obviously want to include it, yet the mnufacturers prevent them. grrr!
It might be cool to see cars that will roll over too.
All the TOCA games are great, but when a computer car rams you, send you into a barrier and you spend the next 10 laps doing 20mph because you've got black smoke pouring from the bonnet the fun disappears, along with the game in the cd tray.
Damage, which could
> end races before they've been coimpleted, could soon become frustrating.
I do agree with this to an extent. The introduction of damage to GT in it's current state would really need to be coupled with a big improvement in opponent AI. At the moment they rarely try to avoid you, even if you are in front. Putting a damage feature into GT3 at the moment would see you getting serious damage in most races, although it would rarely be your fault!
I would hope that if they included damage, it would be something that could be turned off, as new gamers will need to bump into stuff whilst they're learning!
The idea of gravel etc that would spill onto the track and affect the handling when you came around next time would be cool as it makes the circuits less predicatable.
Another one on the subject of weather would be rain etc that fell either during the race or just on part of the circuit so again the track is not so predictable.
Tracks which run alongside the seas edge (cant remember the name at the mo) could have an area where the waves crash against the side and water washes over the road again making the handling more unpredicatble.
And lastly why dont they add a couple of whinging, arguing kids in the back of the car to put you off while you were driving - Just imagine cruising into a corner at 150 in your Skyline when a kids cuddly toy flashes across the windscreen in front of you - Hey you wanted realism !!!!
(Though for me it's more like 40 in a Renault Scenic - bah!)
I've been playing Project Gotham on the Xbox quite a bit, which features damage. Okay, the body deforms, lights break etc., but the handling of the car doesn't change at all - it just slows you down a bit.
So, at the end of the day, is the visible damage really important? I personally don't think so.
As nh said, it can easily ruin a game. If you slide into a barrier and your engine falls out, fine - it's your mistake. But more often than not, after practicing, when I hit a barrier it's usually because some daft AI driver has shoved me into it.
"Real" damage (i.e. race-ending damage) should only be implemented once they have achieved reasonable driver AI, where they won't actually try to pass you by deliberately ramming you into a barrier.
If you have the ability to change them and have the one that suits you, it also means that you can switch between them, rather like the difficulty levels you can pick on other games.