Revisiting Gran Turismo 6: The End of an Era

[Sambert]

Sad truth is most of those Premium models could be ported over to PS4 with an average amount of effort. They really only need to improve the textures and smooth out some of the vertices on the older GTHD/GT5Prologue meshes. They did these very same changes to the few GT6 premium cars that appear in GTS.

It'll be interesting to zoom in using photomode to compare GT6 to GTS cars. I think the differences will be minute - bordering on non-existent. Notice how PD won't state a poly count for the Super Premos? Perhaps the plan is to gouge us for DLC - I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

 

[GT5 Level 41]

I just raced for fun and the enjoyment of it. My biggest problem with GT 6 was that stupid garage. I spent most my time buying cars and testing them on the Home track for the fastest lap.

The limited garage space made it very difficult for me to experiment with that car list.

 

[Rotorist]

If AI was like the best ones in seasonals and endurance games were included in the sp campaign, GT6 would be by far the best car game to date imho in providing fun while not being easy to tame on the limit. While not perfect, handling physics, feedback, car and track variety along with the track editor were its highs. Low drag over 200kph, engine sounds in some cars and the tire noise were the lows and the mediocre was the missing of some old rare cars and tracks (SSR11 anyone?). It still attracts me once a while to find some time and compare cars in my most fav tracks.

 

[Inferno251]

Nice work with the article. It is indeed an end of an era and putting it that way makes me think of not just GT6 but all the games - both full and spinoffs - that preceded it and the fun I had playing them.

I feel that this song is obligatory:



Farewell to the old era, may you rest in peace

 

[GTPVenomZombie]

I just raced for fun and the enjoyment of it. My biggest problem with GT 6 was that stupid garage. I spent most my time buying cars and testing them on the Home track for the fastest lap.

The limited garage space made it very difficult for me to experiment with that car list.

Exactly the same here. Stupid garage limit ruined GT6 imo.

 

[Polsixe]

I got a lot out of 5 and 6, in hindsight 5 was more fun, it was harder to tune the cars and the AI racing was better. Those long races were nuts! 6 had that mid life patch that reset the handling parameters, but after erverything was very similar, the Stratos and Yellowbird and Cizeta were gelded. And almost every car is way too fast for the horsepower, PD could have added a few points to the Cd and made them more realistic. It’s difficult for real cars to do 200 mph. Course creator was cool, have enjoyed that, never even tried it on GT5 version. Sad they stopped with the Vision cars, the Hyundai LMP car, the little Toyota coupe and the Chiron were all demo’d In GT6 at car shows but never pushed out to the masses. I would’ve paid $2 for each as DLC.

 

[Stumps_GTI]

This. They forced the awful PS2 models on us until GT6, yet the superbly detailed Premiums from GT5/6 have been purged. Insane - especially in light of the fact that PD claimed those Premium models were built to "next-gen" spec.

LOL, so true. Really makes you wonder if anyone talks to Kaz or questions his motives....
"Um, like..Kaz, you know all these "premiums" will be okay on the PS4, right? I mean, you let all those hundreds of PS2 cars transfer to PS3?"
What's up with that. I find it quite funny to think about.
Maybe one of the PD employees slipped those PS2 assets in without Kaz knowing? And he was like, "that's never gonna happen again!"

 

[CoolColJ]

GT5 Prologue had the best image quality, GT5 a little worse, GT6 had better lighting but was was the worse of the 3 with image quality.

 

[Codemastersk]

Why did GT6 drop the Top Gear Test Track?

Easy, they lost the license and Turn 10 has it since Forza Motorsport 6 as a DLC. FM7 has it included in the package.

As I wrote earlier, although GT6 had many flaws, it was nice because it had support for a wide variety of languages, the structure was more didactical and it felt like a more complete package than 5 was, especially playing 5 retroactively. I even have 5P and I find it more enjoyable to play than 5 because it felt more consistant.

5 had a more lenghtier career, but I think it is just as bad as 6 was. 6 is really short, but 5 acknowledges that and makes everything to slow you down. Spec 2.0 fixes this mostly but even without the insane grinding without any purpose, you can be locked out of events just because the Used Dealership didnt sell the car you needed and you have to start and exit on races just to shuffle the list of cars available to buy.

People like to point it out how GT5 is longer pointing Endurances, but I think they were awful because were unnecessarily too lenghty. I like the idea of longer races, but they were way overboard in the series. The ideal lenght in my opinion is around 2 hours, more than that you are just running in circles.

Many people point it out how good 5 was in single player and such but I can't agree because it started to plant the seeds of the online-only idea that now it is fully realised. Again, GT5 locked you out of some events because you couldnt buy the car you wanted or needed at any time, so the solution they created is the loan and sell to a friend system that it's not around anymore and now it is impossible to properly enjoy without a hacked save with all the cars required for these events. GT6 removed that, but it had a major focus on the Seasonal Events because the main campaign was extremely short. Problem is that these Seasonal Events were too sterile, they felt like were created by a random generator.

I liked GT6 and even more than GT5, but still it was kind of underwhelming so I mostly played GT4.

 

[m8h3r]

I was thinking about my feelings towards GT5/GT6 last night. After a naughty My name is Mayo platinum I got looking through my older trophies, 5 and 6 being of great intrigue. I found HUGE enjoyment playing GT5 back in the day to the point that I had barely any trophies left including unlocking the purchase 1000 cars. I then moved on to GT6 and for some reason it just never sat as well with me. Most notably that I didn't even unlock the "Autobarmy" trophy. I'm well on the way to the equivalent distance on GT Sport already.

 

[Lubeify100]

Easy, they lost the license and Turn 10 has it since Forza Motorsport 6 as a DLC. FM7 has it included in the package.

As I wrote earlier, although GT6 had many flaws, it was nice because it had support for a wide variety of languages, the structure was more didactical and it felt like a more complete package than 5 was, especially playing 5 retroactively. I even have 5P and I find it more enjoyable to play than 5 because it felt more consistant.

5 had a more lenghtier career, but I think it is just as bad as 6 was. 6 is really short, but 5 acknowledges that and makes everything to slow you down. Spec 2.0 fixes this mostly but even without the insane grinding without any purpose, you can be locked out of events just because the Used Dealership didnt sell the car you needed and you have to start and exit on races just to shuffle the list of cars available to buy.

People like to point it out how GT5 is longer pointing Endurances, but I think they were awful because were unnecessarily too lenghty. I like the idea of longer races, but they were way overboard in the series. The ideal lenght in my opinion is around 2 hours, more than that you are just running in circles.

Many people point it out how good 5 was in single player and such but I can't agree because it started to plant the seeds of the online-only idea that now it is fully realised. Again, GT5 locked you out of some events because you couldnt buy the car you wanted or needed at any time, so the solution they created is the loan and sell to a friend system that it's not around anymore and now it is impossible to properly enjoy without a hacked save with all the cars required for these events. GT6 removed that, but it had a major focus on the Seasonal Events because the main campaign was extremely short. Problem is that these Seasonal Events were too sterile, they felt like were created by a random generator.

I liked GT6 and even more than GT5, but still it was kind of underwhelming so I mostly played GT4.

I agree with all of those points. Never completed GT5 for the endurance race reasons

 

[elston87]

As of two days ago, Gran Turismo 6 is now four years old. I still greatly enjoy the game for what it has brought us, but in my opinion, it is the game that had the most amount of potential to be the "dream Gran Turismo game on the PS3", but it fell awfully short from that.

Every new feature that was added in the game, with the exception of some, felt like it was just thrown in there without well-versed purpose. B-Spec came in too late, and even then, after all of the updates that the game had received by that point, credits weren't necessarily a problem for obtaining/upgrading cars to pass a race. B-Spec also wasn't helpful for the "endurance" races, speaking of which, I remember a comment from a Sony spokesperson somewhere on the PS Blog, stating that "they're getting that resolved, not to worry" or something to that effect. If I can find it, I'll post it here. But in the end, we never really got extended length endurance races of any sort.

I think the biggest problem with Gran Turismo 6's development was the upcoming release of the PlayStation 4. The game was officially announced in May of 2013, which by that time, Sony was rolling out the pre-development kits for the console (probably even earlier than that), and with Polyphony Digital being a first-party developer for Sony, I'm absolutely certain they were one of the first developers to get one. So there's no doubt that Sony had them get to work on a proof-of-concept for the PS4 (which is now a full product, Gran Turismo Sport), and at this time, they were still developing Gran Turismo 6. Fast forward to December of 2013, and the game was finally released, but it came a little time after the PS4's release date as well, which I'm sure hooked the attention of the general public.

So, during the time of Gran Turismo 6 receiving its content updates, they were working on what ultimately became Gran Turismo Sport. We've had members here (and elsewhere) drop hints that the content was probably demo'd in GT6 before ultimately making its first official appearance in GT Sport (the Hyundai VGT and the Toyota SF-R in particular). The Toyota SF-R was seen in an exclusive build of GT6 at the Tokyo Motor Show, but all that's left in the update files are some text references to it.

But we've had the addition of several great content additions in GT6 that we're probably going to never see until the successor to GT Sport is released, but I could always be proven dead wrong at any time. So many premium detailed cars, various new courses, and new car customization. GT6 was definitely the era in which speculation about the game's future content ran wild, especially with the release of Midfield Raceway; people were "predicting" what the next "remastered course" was going to be. Speaking of courses, the Course Maker also definitely came in too late in the game's lifespan. The PS4 was nearing two years old at that point, and the Course Maker also required not only a connection to PSN to play custom-made courses, but required the use of another device (Android or iOS) to even create your own courses. It was a huge turn-off for a lot of us, myself included, but there are other ways of creating your own courses, much better ways thanks to the community for releasing tools for this purpose.

I can't say that everything I said here is a fact, but it's what I've felt throughout the game's lifetime. When the online services are discontinued for the game, it sincerely makes me as to what's going to happen with the Course Maker. It's on the back of the retail game's case. Then you had one of the slogans: "The world is your track." The back end of my mind is hoping that Polyphony Digital will somehow still allow the Course Maker to be utilized to some extent- hey, I'd be happy with another Course Generator, like Gran Turismo 5 had.

Despite the shortened overall length of gameplay and the one-off feature additions, I still greatly enjoyed the game, and I still do. If they went back and added more custom options to the Arcade Mode (such as those seen in Gran Turismo 5; the game practically allowed you to create your own endurance race), it'd have a much greater replay value. I definitely enjoyed observing the game's development, though, saying this as I just finished writing up on the GT Academy 2013 demo. 👍

 

[Sander 001]

I'm visiting my Mom for the holidays and the PS3 is still hooked up here and doing fine. The controller is creaky as hell but the GT6 disc was in the console and booted up fine.

Going through the car list, damn what a trip! I completely forgot about the Rocket Car! I loved the wild variety and racing together thanks to the PP system. I hope GT Sport gets some more, it already got the XBow so that's a nice start.

I think I'm going to bring the PS3 home and see how the game plays with the G29!

 

[Codemastersk]

I am certain that they used rolling starts in races instead of grid because GT5 itself had framerate dips with the amount of smoke it loaded on the start of races.

 

[Popular_Sheep]

Now that online doesn’t work for it anymore what kind of money hacks/cheats are still out there?

 

[Chin]

I am certain that they used rolling starts in races instead of grid because GT5 itself had framerate dips with the amount of smoke it loaded on the start of races.

I think they brought in rolling starts so that you cant be leading by the end of first corner. Like in the early GT games, where you drive most of the races pretty much alone. So chasing the rabbits from a rolling start makes you feel like you are at least racing for a few laps.

I reckon they possibly could have buffed this into the difficulty of the games, by making the lead rabbit further out in front as you turn up the difficulty.