Gran Turismo 7 Turns 3: How It’s Changed

[Greycap]

I'm still waiting for "a return to the beginning GT games" or "getting back to what made the first GT's fun" or whatever he claimed before launch.

You'll be waiting forever. It's not that the game isn't fun, but your point of view has changed so much that it's simply not possible.

Case A: Give the current GT7 to someone who's the same age you were back in the GT1 days, with the same mindset you had back then, having never experienced anything like it, and they'll be over the moon.
Case B: Play GT1 yourself now, judge it with the same criteria as you would any current game with the exception of the graphics, with no nostalgia applied. It's not really all that great to be honest.

Most of us with nearly 30 years of GT experience tend to reminisce the old games with very rose tinted glasses as they were something groundbreaking back then. Looking at them now GT1 was a very short game without all that much content, GT2 had a lot of everything with just about no coherence anywhere, GT3 is praised for its looks but it was an oversaturated and overcontrasted mess with a lot of repeated content and far too oversteery physics. GT4 is basically GT2 v2 but polished to near perfection, GT5 took the coherence issues even further and GT6 improved on it mechanically but didn't really know what it was trying to be. Against that background GT7 isn't all that bad but it doesn't have the benefit of nostalgia to elevate it to a level much higher than where it would belong.

 

[Imbissbrunto]

You'll be waiting forever. It's not that the game isn't fun, but your point of view has changed so much that it's simply not possible.

Case A: Give the current GT7 to someone who's the same age you were back in the GT1 days, with the same mindset you had back then, having never experienced anything like it, and they'll be over the moon.
Case B: Play GT1 yourself now, judge it with the same criteria as you would any current game with the exception of the graphics, with no nostalgia applied. It's not really all that great to be honest.

Most of us with nearly 30 years of GT experience tend to reminisce the old games with very rose tinted glasses as they were something groundbreaking back then. Looking at them now GT1 was a very short game without all that much content, GT2 had a lot of everything with just about no coherence anywhere, GT3 is praised for its looks but it was an oversaturated and overcontrasted mess with a lot of repeated content and far too oversteery physics. GT4 is basically GT2 v2 but polished to near perfection, GT5 took the coherence issues even further and GT6 improved on it mechanically but didn't really know what it was trying to be. Against that background GT7 isn't all that bad but it doesn't have the benefit of nostalgia to elevate it to a level much higher than where it would belong.

I don‘t think the criticism against GT7 is purely based on nostalgia. I even agree to an extent with your points. However, at least imo the main issue is that GT7 is a great racing game but not a very good Gran Turismo title.

If this game had been made by a different studio and wasn‘t called Gran Turismo, it would be considered an amazing racing game since the game’s base (graphics, sound, physics and attention to detail) is damn near flawless.

The problem is that this game is a Gran Turismo main title (unlike Sport) which means we expect certain things from it, mainly a classic career mode with a steady progression through the ranks from starting out with a simple used car and ending up driving Gr. 1 prototypes.

GT7 abandonded this in favor of a weird and completely linear menu book system that leaves you with almost no choice. The older titles pretty much let you race events in whatever order you wanted to (more or less) whereas GT7 forces you to play the races in one specific way with cars in one specific order.

GT7 also lacks many of the iconic original tracks such as El Capitan, Hong Kong, SS7 etc. that hugely contributed to the unique Gran Turismo feeling in the older games.

In addition with the hugely expensive legendary cars, many of which you can barely use in any of the „career mode‘s“ races it feels like a disjointed experience.

It‘s by no means a bad game and some aspects of it are the best I‘ve ever seen in a video game (such as the livery editor and photo mode) but it is held back by these baffling decisions regarding game design.

 

[05XR8]

I don’t know. Gran Turismo 1 has qualifying and endurance races. Something players of GT7 are screaming for. If GT1 is like My First Gran Turismo in terms of let’s say locked in content, it’s a damn good game.
For only six cars on track, GT1 still holds up with how PD tried to balance the cars players ran against.

Maybe the way to compare GT7 to GT1 would be to only have GT7 DLC cars(102) and base it on servers down. Limit grids to six cars and the circuits that were originally in GT1 while including a couple Tokyo Expressway layouts. No use of PSVR2 and custom races.

As for Racing Modified cars, not sure GT7 livery editor qualifies. Might have to make concessions to add Gr.3 & Gr.4 of specific models in the car list. Comparing GT games just becomes iffy.

 

[equalitus]

What do you mean? You can buy engine swaps at level 50.

But we can't buy engines and put it in another car which means that we might have to get 500 tickets until we get an engine that we can put in a car we own to upgrade it more than buying turbo or NA upgrade, or there is something I missed?

 

[Famine]

But we can't buy engines and put it in another car which means that we might have to get 500 tickets until we get an engine that we can put in a car we own to upgrade it more than buying turbo or NA upgrade, or there is something I missed?

What you missed is yes you can absolutely do that. Here is an image from our last update article of me about to do precisely that:

 

[StarRacer]

I don‘t think the criticism against GT7 is purely based on nostalgia. I even agree to an extent with your points. However, at least imo the main issue is that GT7 is a great racing game but not a very good Gran Turismo title.

If this game had been made by a different studio and wasn‘t called Gran Turismo, it would be considered an amazing racing game since the game’s base (graphics, sound, physics and attention to detail) is damn near flawless.

The problem is that this game is a Gran Turismo main title (unlike Sport) which means we expect certain things from it, mainly a classic career mode with a steady progression through the ranks from starting out with a simple used car and ending up driving Gr. 1 prototypes.

GT7 abandonded this in favor of a weird and completely linear menu book system that leaves you with almost no choice. The older titles pretty much let you race events in whatever order you wanted to (more or less) whereas GT7 forces you to play the races in one specific way with cars in one specific order.

GT7 also lacks many of the iconic original tracks such as El Capitan, Hong Kong, SS7 etc. that hugely contributed to the unique Gran Turismo feeling in the older games.

In addition with the hugely expensive legendary cars, many of which you can barely use in any of the „career mode‘s“ races it feels like a disjointed experience.

It‘s by no means a bad game and some aspects of it are the best I‘ve ever seen in a video game (such as the livery editor and photo mode) but it is held back by these baffling decisions regarding game design.

EXACTLY!!!!!

 

[Junkerdenb]

The game currently is the best it’s been. The early problems with lag online have pretty much gone away. The physics and ffb are the best they’ve been.
I was lucky enough to go the World Finals n Amsterdam last year and it was amazing. The production values are through the roof for what’s a bit of a niche in gaming. It’s great to see the effort they make keeping the esports side of it alive.

I think there are some pretty easy quality of life improvements they could make:-

-Being able to sell parts.
-Invites to buy certain cars - either scrap them or make them available to buy with in game credits.
-Share tuning setups, or at least be able to set them in multiplayer lobbies.
-Rent cars in multiplayer lobbies ( like you can in Sport mode)
-Ability to assign points in multiplayer and carry results between races so we can do championships/ series.

 

[Imbissbrunto]

Tbh that‘s the main issue- PD seems to be focused more on Esports than single player. Which is very unfortunate for a game like Gran Turismo that most people have been mainly buying for the career mode from the start.

 

[ImbaSteckdose]

I bought it for multiplayer mainly but also find that lacking in a few aspects, compared to other non-GT games (I haven't played other GT games in any meaningful capacity):

• Paddocks still have connectivity issues and lag
• the Lobbies list doesn't have a filter or sorting option for nr. of players, who wants to scroll trough a long list of lobbies... I think every other racing game I've ever played had those
• Sport mode, imo the mode with the least barrier of entry, in terms of time and energy to decide on a race, only has 3 Daily races going. Why aren't there more? It feels a bit barebones, even though there's the large focus on Esports on the outside and in marketing

I'm hoping for multiplayer quality of life updates but I doubt it's going to happen, or it's turning out like the SpecII paddocks update that didn't fix these issues.

But GT7 is still the multiplayer racing game I've spent the most time on in recent years, because it works so well on controller and livery and customization options are so good