I'm not really excited because I felt like V basically took all of the fun detail out of the story and main world and saved it all for online.

The missions and world in V had so little charm and so little of the detail that made IV and previous so amazing. The world was massive but felt totally empty.

But I know they made a bunch of money with online so I'm sure that's how it's gonna be again this time.

Honestly, I don't think you're alone in not being excited. I feel the same about this one.

Personally it has more to do with the infection of MBAs into AAA game dev space than the old guard retiring.

No, I think that's fair. I miss being excited about new games, but the disappointment usually hits quick and hard if I ever allow myself to. Between rampant AAA shittification that's accelerated recently, and the fact that a lot of AAA wasn't all that good in the first place, it's hard to really build up any enthusiasm.

Looking at Rockstar/Take-Two's behavior in specific, since GTAV at the very latest, it's even harder to be optimistic. I bet they'll even find a way to cram shart cards into single-player, the fuckers.

At least it's rumored they got the FiveM guys to do the multiplayer, so maybe it'll be less abjectly, pathetically, monstrously shitty than GTAO. I assume they'll still find some way to ruin it, though.

Now, if it turns out it's great, I'd be ecstatic. I'm not buying this one anywhere near release but if it seems like a drastically better deal than I'm expecting, I'll be very, very surprised - and I'd like a game to surprise me pleasantly for once.

I’ll def play it but not hyped for it. Hopefully they have a good amount of single player story. Rockstar has a way of writing story and character that’s so special. Hope that hasn’t changed

Yes, you are crazy.

The core development studio is literally the best in the world.

Every time they release a game it is so far ahead of everyone else in its commitment to a living open world that it moves the entire industry forward by leaps and bounds.

A few leads are no longer there, but this isn't some Ayn Rand vision of game development where Benzies and the Houser brothers are the shoulders the game quality rests on. Do you see the shit Everywhere is looking like it's turning into? Clearly not all the talent that left was a golden goose.

It's the hundreds of people that are still there and who have come up through developing the prior games that are the lifeblood of the studio and whose efforts make an open world come alive.

There's simply no other games that have the budget and resources behind them as Rockstar's core games.

And it's not like we're jumping from GTA 5 to 6 with nothing in between as a reference point for what the studio can produce. RDR2 was in the middle between those, and was pretty darn impressive with how it moved things forward.

The only thing I could see as potentially being crappy would be if they are aiming to release it as cross generation to maximize sales. If they are really making it current gen only, I'm sure it's going to be unlike anything we've seen so far.