How do you play Grand theft auto properly?

You stop and pick up the hookers and crash into the pet store lol

Many people seem to miss the ultimate point of GTA of completing quests and letting the story flow because they are too busy causing troubles. Killing people and running away from the police aren’t the point of the game in the first place. The sandbox environment is just there to make the game more realistic.

Umm, there’s a series of campaign missions to complete.

Stripclubs. That’s it.

Animated titties are the hottest thing.

Properly? Ironic choice of words.

GTA is designed to allow players to enjoy it in a variety of ways. Goofing off enjoying causing mayhem, or seeing how much police escalation you can experience and/or escape, are certainly popular choices.

The game has a very long list of statistics in keeps and shows, which is like a menu of things you might enjoy trying to do, or might not care about.

I’ve tried playing it in a number of ways, including trying to be as non-violent as possible or following various self-imposed moral codes (e.g. self-defense only).

However as @Mimishu1995 and @Darth_Algar pointed out, there is one main expected way the developers designed into the games, which is to follow one or more canned plot-lines that mostly involve doing various errands for organized criminals. They each usually have in mind for you to do some challenge, which sometimes involves a doublecross (so you actually have to escape to win) which leads to the next offer of a mission from someone. Some of the missions “unlock” more of the game world, so for instance in GTA 3, the city has parts you can’t reach until you complete certain crime missions, and also other criminal groups, vehicle types, locations, weapons, population types, and so on are added to play the more of those missions you do. While the games are ultimately about exploring and trying things and doing crazy things, they usually tie up a lot of the content in those scripted missions.

@Zaku “I’ve tried playing it in a number of ways, including trying to be as non-violent as possible or following various self-imposed moral codes (e.g. self-defense only).”

Funnily enough, I’ve found that my style of playing largely depends on the character and the personality the game writers give them. Niko Bellic (GTA 4), for instance, seemed to very much have a kind of mortality to him. A skewed morality, but a morality nevertheless. He didn’t seem particular like the type who would run down pedestrians or to shoot up a bunch of innocents. So I would play him as generally very calm, traffic-obeying, and would keep the killing and speeding, etc only to when a game mission required it.

Trevor Phillips (GTA 5), on the other hand, honestly comes across as a complete psychopath. So I’d get completely fucking chaotic with him.

I only go see the whores

@Darth_Algar Thanks for writing that. I’m always interested in different ways people react to different games. Have you roleplayed in other games before GTA?

I’d argue that any given video game is role play, but I take your meaning. Of course many games don’t really allow much freedom to play in a different manner. You can’t, for example, play God of War in any way other than uber-aggressive ragebeast mode. But in the games that do allow a level of freedom of game play I find that, despite how they try to pitch the game, the narrative often clearly tries to push you towards certain behaviors. Fallout 3 is a good example of this. “Play how you want, it’s your game”.... but if you play like an evil/amoral character then you get scolded by Liam Neeson, thus pointing that the gamemakers clearly want you to be the good guy.

@Darth_Algar Yes, one can look at anyone playing any game and see the aspect of it being a player relating to their role in playing the game as role playing. But there are many different ways to do that.

You’re right that many games push free play as a feature but still confine and channel behavior a lot. The design paradigm for most games is pretty confining, so when a game does allow more freedom of movement and action, they try to highlight it as a feature, but if the game has expensive pre-planned content such as 3D lip-synched voice-acted dialog and situations, it’s impossible to extend those to everything someone might do in a game world.

Even much more free games without expensive audio/visuals (such as Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft) still have limits to what the developed content is, and how the world can react to player behavior in interesting ways.

I always start out trying to get stuff, and complete missions. But, I drink as I play and become less patient, and more easily angered. I usually end up going berserk after someone hits my nice car. Next thing you know, I’ve got the whole city after me.

I miss the older GTAs, where the cops would run over a sidewalk full of pedestrians, just to put you in jail for punching someone. Rockstar is easily one of the best at making video games. Always a great product. That’s much more than I can say for EA sports. I don’t know what they do with all that money. They don’t put it into the product…