CheckMag | Those excited about GTA VI had better keep their expectations in check

The current state of the gaming industry causes concern alloyed with a fair amount of annoyance. This comes from somebody who grew up playing some of the best games ever released, including Vice City, the Serious Sam series, and Crysis 2.

Sure, plots can be entertaining enough, actors normally do a great job at voicing characters, and visuals keep getting better every year. But there is no denying that the progress we see over the years is a slow (and lazy) evolution as opposed to a disrupting revolution.

We get about a dozen triple-A games every year, give or take, and most of them tend to be strikingly similar to what we got a year, two years, five years, ten years ago. Saints Row series games look like GTA series games - does this come as a surprise to anybody? It doesn't, because this is completely normal. "Repackaging things for the new generation", as a host of a certain GTA: Vice City radio station put it about two decades ago, has always been a hot business model.

So, with most new game releases seemingly unable to pull away far enough from older titles and just drowning in cliches (kill the bad guys, make a ton of cash, save the world), it's so hard to expect GTA VI, which is set to be announced in mere days, to be a win in regard to innovative gameplay.

So far, we know for sure that GTA VI has been in development for quite a few years. It is set to be the first installment of the series that features a female as the main character, as was confirmed by leaked footage and screenshots not so long ago. Some say that the events of the game are set in Vice City, of all places; others disagree. Either way, we'll hopefully know for sure in on December 5.

The takeaway is, it is best to keep one's expectations low for the time being. The upcoming game may or may not be as terrible as the GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition, but one thing it is very unlikely to turn out to be is a breakthrough of any kind.