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Editor's note: Jon's a smart guy: His story on future settings for Rockstar games nearly matches the topic I came up with on last week's Mobcast. Read his suggestions and add your own in the comments! -Brett
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that critics and consumers alike are raving about Rockstar's Wild West epic, Red Dead Redemption. The game's success got me thinking: Now that Rockstar has worked their magic formula into open worlds set in New York, Miami, California, and the Old West, where should they set their next game?
Here are four suggestions:
Location: England
Time: 1700s
England during the 1700s underwent dramatic change. The Industrial Revolution sent the previously rural working class headlong into factories sprouting up in towns and cities, factories that took advantage of the wealth of technological innovation happening at the time.
This period also encapsulated the heyday of highwaymen, robbers on horseback who were often romanticized in stories. These men would pray on stagecoaches carrying the wealthy from place to place, allegedly shouting such memorable phrases as “Stand and deliver!” or “Your money or your life!” when they emerged from their hiding places in ambush.
This rich history of folklore from the time would make this an incredibly interesting setting for Rockstar to explore. The Grand Theft Auto series and Red Dead Redemption have successfully paid homage to cinema history, and by setting a game during 18th-century England they could do the same thing for the written word.
Additionally, since there exists no de facto standard for the aesthetic of the era, Rockstar could develop their own rich look without relying on pre-existing templates, as they have with their other games.
Location: Tokyo
Time: Modern Day
Asian culture has always played a significant role in past GTA games, most notably in Chinatown Wars, but for the most part the series has focused on the standard mafia life imported from Europe.
The opportunities offered by an Asian setting are numerous. The GTA games have always been at their core about American pop culture. They have taken satirical swipes here and there, but for the most part the games are lacquered with the infinite hopes of the American Dream. An Asian setting could be used to do exactly that for a completely different country, one with its unique culture, stereotypes, and ideals.
I personally enjoyed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City because it managed to take a place I'd never been, from an era I'd never experienced, and put it together in such a way so that by the end of the game I felt as if I'd actually been to 1980s Miami -- even if that Miami was a surreal pastiche of the real place. For those who've never been to Tokyo (myself included), an open-world game could do a similar thing, transporting us to a world we've never come close to seeing in the flesh.
Location: The Caribbean
Time: Early 18th Century
Much like the cowboys of the Wild West, pirates are another criminally underutilized subject in the world of video games, especially in the action genre. Rockstar could take the time of pirates and inject it with grit, taking it in the opposite direction of the kid-friendly seas of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge facing the developer of a pirate-themed open-world game would be sea travel. Sea travel in games too often manages to be slow and monotonous, lacking any of the excitement of careening down city streets filled with countless living and metallic obstacles. And if your character was forced to swim for any length of time? Forget about it.
If Rockstar could address these issues, a swashbuckling open-world game would be a really unique experience. Imagine working your way up from a lowly cabin boy to the captain of your own ship, getting into bar fights, and pouncing on enemy crews to steal their booty and their rum.
Location: Anywhere
Time: The Future
Perhaps the most unlikely suggestion on this list is for Rockstar to go all science fiction on us for the first time in their history. My initial justification for heading to the future for some open-world mayhem is a little thin -- really, I just want hover cars -- but there are some interesting angles to the setting that a developer with Rockstar's pedigree could explore.
Futuristic depictions of cities tend to have more than their fair share of unpleasantness about them, and who better than Rockstar to imagine the directions our twisted human desires will take a few centuries from now? Rockstar could really go wild with crimes of the future, like organ harvesting or alien smuggling.
So where would you like Rockstar to set their next franchise? Do you want something historical like Red Dead Redemption, or simply a different contemporary setting? Do you even want a change of setting at all, or are the characters the real stars of Rockstar's franchises for you?
