A Review of Grand Theft Auto XXIIV

Retro games guide you through nonlinear narratives via carefully-crafted constraints. To play Death Stranding 8 is to live in a Kojima-directed auteur film for 120+ hours. Classic games may evoke that warm fuzzy nostalgia, but they constantly break immersion. Before narrative engines, game developers forcibly corralled players back onto a pre-determined main main quest. Seriously, try playing any silver-era Nintendo game without narrative mods -- it's exhausting. Rockstar Games introduced a new narrative engine in GTA23. It does all the basics: synthesizing lore, creating stakes, balancing tension, doling out justice, playing cinematic cut scenes after climactic moments, etc. Bear with me, but my big gripe with GTA23 is that its new narrative engine is too good. In a game with helicopters and prostitutes, you can spend five actual months fishing for carp and grilling them on a shopping cart. The game will reward you with varying sizes of small carp and convince you that a legendary…