Playing this through as a retrospective on the passage of time and what Rockstar represent. First person mode pretty much all the time.

Some aspects of the writing are utterly, utterly fucking dire (the talk radio). Others, great (Lamar and Franklin's relationship). It's definitely a mixed bag.

I definitely feel like the satirical humour of the game is as blunt as it gets, not like the cutting humour that older games had, like the talk radio of Vice City. The older characters of previous games felt much more sincere in their weirdness, actual caricatures of real people you could imagine, but the people presented in GTAV are just too forced, there's no subtlety to them, they feel like they exist simply to go "ha ain't this funny?!". You got laughs out of the older characters too, but they also felt like real people in the world. GTAV lacks that.

Otherwise, the gameplay is serviceable. Its basically the blueprint for open world games.

I miss the car handling of GTA4, but I do recognise the minutia of V's approach to the driving. Its definitely more accessible and arcadey, but there's subtle hints of difference between cars, such as speed dropping ever so slightly when going between gears on old banger cars, lower drops on sporty cars fucking you on ever so small bumps in the road surface, and more.

Guns are pretty basic. There's nothing to write home about with how they handle. Oftentimes I'll land a headshot but it doesn't feel like I should have, because I'm just kind of spraying, or the shot felt off. Playing in first person mode makes the shooting more enjoyable, but makes it a little awkward in some aspects, like recognising incoming damage. The indicators you get first person kind of suck for that in V.

One thing I can't forgive is no taxi mission minigame structure. You just get given a fare, pick em up, and drop em off. There's no timer, no levels, nothing. I sometimes just wanna drive and adding the taxi mission structure on top is nice, but there's fuck all in this game! Disgusting!

So far, I just got to unlocking Trevor for play, and I have to suffer with his weird cast of characters. Once more, they all feel a bit too forced to help you understand their character basis. Everything they do is absolutely drenched in what Rockstar want you to see them as, like Trevor can't have a normal conversation at all without threatening someone, Ron is always deferential to Trevor, etc etc. I could possibly accept Trevor being a psychopath if it wasn't so constant, same with Ron being a slave to Trevor. Its just so constant in their missions and dialogue, every two seconds something is occurring to reinforce their character. Its like the end stages of Flanderisation, you're just dropped right in there and anything before then doesn't exist. Just weird.

Anyway, chat over for now. I'll probably keep playing to complete it, at the least. Fuck Online though. Tried it out, enjoyed it for a couple hours and then someone began forcibly teleporting the entire server into their apartment, and when anyone left, they raged over the mic and started telefragging everyone. Its a pathetic shell because Rockstar don't seem to really address cheating.

Very interesting and enjoyable RPG. Definitely something you'd be into if you enjoy something like Morrowind.

The world is weird in a good way. Most of the time weird is just code for someone throwing shit at a wall and hoping it sticks, but there's some genuinely interesting ideas in here, like the Endless.

Playing on my Steam Deck exclusively. Doesn't have Steam Cloud saves and I can't be bothered with transferring them to my PC, so I just game on that. Works perfectly, good few hours out of the battery, 60 fps. I feel like the low default turn rate really works for the game, as it gives a heavy Kings Field feeling to the gameplay.