Was going for Quality over Quantity a good decision for Gran Turismo?

[Farnell42]

As the poster of the Original Post, I will finally cast my vote on the topic; I would say that it wasn't that good. The idea of Standard cars wasn't as bad as most would have thought; think of GT as a movie, like Avengers. Not all heroes in those hero movies can be main heroes; only a handful of them gets a lot of screen time. Similarly, some cars that are loved by car fans or made a significant impact in automotive history could be getting the Premium treatment(like the Nissan GT-R or the Toyota Supra), while other 'blander' cars or 'obscure' cars will be demoted to Standard status(like the Cizeta-Moroder V16T, widely cited as one of the most worthless cars to be promoted to Premium). Gran Turismo was great for one thing; it can essentially turn into 3 different games; One game being a sim that allows you to have a taste of the world's finest driving machine, Another game being a car modification game where you build a project car of your dreams(mostly from cars that most other racing games don't give attention to, like a Honda Civic 1500 '83), and the other game being a car photography service. By going only for 3D modeling quality, they forgone two of the three aspects of GT(the Tuner, and the Photographer( The Scapes feature from GT Sport was a step back in that being based on 2D sprites, camera angles were fixed)). That being said, I thought older GTs(most notably GT5, although GT6 can qualify)could be wicked games if they chose the right cars to detail and the right cars to be demoted to sidekicks... And if they chose to fix the sound issues in time. The fate of GT Sport is certain, on the other hand; it will be left behind unless it takes a totally different route, as said by many videogame critics, who claimed that GT Sport failed to differentiate itself from many motorsports-inspired sim games on the market(most notably Project CARS 2). Unfortunately with the improvement of graphics, which increases the time of Premium cars being built, and the poor graphics level of GT6-spec Standard cars getting more apparent in the march of time, I'll say that a quantity-focused game like GT5 or GT6 will never happen again.

 

[Ddkklop]

As the poster of the Original Post, I will finally cast my vote on the topic; I would say that it wasn't that good. The idea of Standard cars wasn't as bad as most would have thought; think of GT as a movie, like Avengers. Not all heroes in those hero movies can be main heroes; only a handful of them gets a lot of screen time. Similarly, some cars that are loved by car fans or made a significant impact in automotive history could be getting the Premium treatment(like the Nissan GT-R or the Toyota Supra), while other 'blander' cars or 'obscure' cars will be demoted to Standard status(like the Cizeta-Moroder V16T, widely cited as one of the most worthless cars to be promoted to Premium). Gran Turismo was great for one thing; it can essentially turn into 3 different games; One game being a sim that allows you to have a taste of the world's finest driving machine, Another game being a car modification game where you build a project car of your dreams(mostly from cars that most other racing games don't give attention to, like a Honda Civic 1500 '83), and the other game being a car photography service. By going only for 3D modeling quality, they forgone two of the three aspects of GT(the Tuner, and the Photographer( The Scapes feature from GT Sport was a step back in that being based on 2D sprites, camera angles were fixed)). That being said, I thought older GTs(most notably GT5, although GT6 can qualify)could be wicked games if they chose the right cars to detail and the right cars to be demoted to sidekicks... And if they chose to fix the sound issues in time. The fate of GT Sport is certain, on the other hand; it will be left behind unless it takes a totally different route, as said by many videogame critics, who claimed that GT Sport failed to differentiate itself from many motorsports-inspired sim games on the market(most notably Project CARS 2). Unfortunately with the improvement of graphics, which increases the time of Premium cars being built, and the poor graphics level of GT6-spec Standard cars getting more apparent in the march of time, I'll say that a quantity-focused game like GT5 or GT6 will never happen again.

In my opinion, it was a good move to go for a quality. Yes, I understand that lots of people miss all these cars, I miss them too. But if we stay patient, we will get lots of these standards back, with much better quality. These standard cars in GT5/6, were by many criticised for their graphics and sounds ( sounds also implied to premiums..), but most importantly, I don't think PD managed to get behaviors and performances of all these cars right. Which to me, is more important than graphics or sounds.

Thanks to this change, we are slowly getting many standard cars back, in almost photorealistic quality, with fully designed interiors, with small, nice details like chime sound in ae86 for example, accurate sounds aaand more accurate car's behavior and performance. I love it.

I think next GT game will include both quality and quantity. There won't be as many cars as in GT6 ( but let's be honest, lots of them were duplicates anyway ), but it will still include at least over 400-500+ cars, all in high quality.

 

[Estoria]

Exactly.

Back in GT5 I always disliked using the standard cars because they looked cheap and sounded cheap. I always tried going for the Premiums (as I'm sure many people also did), because the attention to detail given to them made them stand out. They were much nicer to look at, much nicer to drive around with, and much nicer to listen to... well, maybe a little nicer to listen to, I suppose.

And I'm under the impression that the same would be true for me in GT Sport (or GT7 if you're willing to go there) if once again over 70% of the cars available were upscaled PS2 models.

So yes, I definitely think the move to quality over quantity was the right choice. And with model future-proofing we'll be able to stick with the same models for longer, meaning more room for updating cars that were once standard models to fantastic quality (like the TS020 GT-One... please PD, gimme it!).

 

[breeminator]

The fate of GT Sport is certain, on the other hand; it will be left behind unless it takes a totally different route, as said by many videogame critics, who claimed that GT Sport failed to differentiate itself from many motorsports-inspired sim games on the market(most notably Project CARS 2).

Surely nobody would claim today that GTS isn't differentiated from PC2. I'm not familiar with PC2's online racing, but I'm not aware it has anything like GTS's FIA seasonal championships that successfully bring large numbers of players together in races at the same time, including the top players in each region racing against each other on a fairly regular basis?

 

[Razamataz]

Glad to see standards consigned to the digital dustbin. They had to go, no question about it, especially now that the series is on PS4. Besides, any standards of considerable historic importance will eventually get remastered anyway. For example the E-Type Jag, the Mini and the Supra RZ.

 

[MIE1992]

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