Looks like a lot of people have already given up on a game that won't be released until November 2010 (at least). So let me try to be the positive thinker again.
You all know I STILL haven't played Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, nor own a PlayStation 3, right? This goes back to an argument during the wait for Gran Turismo 4. People already gave up on GT4 when the much-promised online play was eventually dropped. Once suicide rates doubled and tripled worldwide because of that news (exaggeration, of course), didn't we still get a great racing game when GT4 shipped? You can't let just damage, online play, major sports car makers, and interior views alone be the reason to get GT5. Veterans of Gran Turismo (including 10+ year veterans like myself) love Gran Turismo for the reasons that has made it such a success.
As for the Premium vs. Standard deal, I've stayed away from this because I'm not as certain about this myself. I'm not, however, flooding this thread with angry rants about something like this. I think some people make Standard (or let's use "non-Premium") like these are cars that have PlayStation 1-quality interiors (or a very early PS2 racing game interior). I don't care much about Premium vs. Standard- I just want to go race. I just want to own and tune cars. I just want to win races whether 2 laps around Autumn Ring Mini or 24 Hours at Le Mans. That, to me, is more important than worrying too much about interiors, damage, online options, and the like. I think going with past models from GT4 is probably a good move if you can't feature every last car with impressive modeling inside and out. I don't think this will be rushed like GT3 or full of missed execution like GT2. So I'm not negative in the least bit. I'm not going to say that it's inexcusable to spend so long to come up with such a lack of positive progress. EA Sports re-hashes a lot of their stuff and nobody seems to complain, so why with GT?
Maybe I'm too much of a big picture or minimalist thinker (I say that like it's a bad thing!
). I think a lot of us just really miss the point of what makes certain games great. I've just always been a minimalist thinker with games. To explain the point a little more, here's a saying that somewhat captures the point- "beauty captures attention, but personality captures the heart." The heart of Gran Turismo is in great racing across a variety of international locales with cars from around the world. And think about this- 16 cars to a track and even time cycles. The time cycles alone HAVE to maintain interest, don't you think? People complained about no reverse lights- now we got them. Maybe you can complain on no skid marks. But still, a lot of us just tend to forget what makes certain games great rather than a bunch of features that make them such can't-miss games. I still believe this will be the hardest-hitting Gran Turismo EVER. Almost as if this game will be the racing equivalent of hard hits like in Madden NFL or even the old NFL Blitz games.
I still want to play and enjoy Gran Turismo 5. I wasn't too worried about cars from GT3 re-hashed for GT4, so why would I be truly disappointed with GT5 having certain GT4 models? The thing that I think a lot of people would make is that games that take years to create should be WORTH those years. We saw what happened with Malice. We saw what happened with Duke Nukem Forever. GT5, unlike the previous two titles, will still be loved and played for years to come until GT6. I think a lot of people are making Gran Turismo 5 out to be "GT4 with 200 'Special Cars'." I think when people become too frustrated with a game or a game series, they tend to dislike anything that doesn't seem to show any positive progress. Or at least, anything not even remotely resembling any far-fetched promises. I care more about racing and gameplay than I do any superficial claims. I'm not going to go on strike just because Gran Turismo 5 is somehow seen as a dud rather than a stud. Every game is going to have its shortcomings. The real issue of merit is how these shortcomings, if at all, plays a factor in how the final product will eventually be. Are these shortcomings to the point where GT5 somehow lost all of its magic and is simply just another racing game? Or, is it going to be a great racing game with some negative points we'll have to live with? GT4 didn't have online, but we still used the hell out of Photo Mode.
Long story short, there have been disappointments with recent news, but I still care about this game and still care about playing it. I'm as disappointed about the car deal as much as anyone, but I'm not going to go on strike at Polyphony Digital. I basically went to the latest page rather than read all or most of the pages and posts because I meant to talk about this as soon as I could. Anything I might have missed or any extra points I want to make, I'll just blog about them.
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