Grand Theft Avatar Online

Dakka dakka dakka!

I've been playing a Lot of Grand Theft Auto V lately, because it is an impressive cinematic game.  Three characters fighting together to get their ways in life without having to get screwed over by some other asshole.  Its fantastic, it's emotional, and it is more entertaining than a bag full of cats.

But it doesn't stop there.  GTAV also has an online mode which is, for want of a better description, an MMO set in Los Santos (The setting of GTAV).

In this Online mode you can do any number of things, from Holding up a convenience store, to joining a Death Match against a bunch of strangers, to racing your friends around the city, to organising heists for either the sake of hilarity or to actually attain a profit (Though those are yet to be properly implemented).

My only worry, and it's admittedly a silly worry, is that players would get bored of the city of Los Santos.  There's thousands of square miles of environment you can explore, I'm still discovering/rediscovering regions, but eventually one does run out of things to do.

So what can you do?  Why not add another city?  The setting has several environments as it is all set within San Andreas, all of which have their inconsistencies between 2D, 3D and HD universes, but that's Rockstar's problem.  That's the potential of a GTAV/GTAOnline Expansion, either reinventing old cities, or inventing new ones.  The potential is all up to the developers.

The System is what's fun though.  A very well designed Third Person game with Role Play Elements, along with a very good Vehicular system (covering anything from a push bike to a personal jet).

It's a tried and true method for a good number of years, and it makes for a really fun setup for GTA Online.

But as my train of thought moved on, it careened over to the Xbox All-stars MMO I rambled on about a few months back.

This would be a perfect setup for exactly that.  To have different regions that mimic exclusive Xbox games (or games they can get the rights to) which your player, represented by your Xbox Avatar, can roam about causing havoc or performing feats they get from whatever they have equipped, around areas that would appear in a demo levels of respective games.

I would love to jump out of a Borderlands Bandit Technical, wearing my Crysis Nanosuit, holding a Gears of War Lancer and killing a Halo Elite in a Doom Facility.  Just as an example.

Likely, Licensing and such won't allow Xbox to get that, but it's still an idea they can run with just to get some cool milage out of those charming little Mini-Me's.

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Yes, it was that big.

The more I think about it, the more I wish it were true that my little Avatar would have a professionally made world available to him to roam, and shoot, and interact.  I say professionally because there are a number of Indie games that use Avatars, and they all seem very... Low budget.

I continue to play GTA Online, driving about in whatever spiffy car I've sexed up, finishing missions, or jacking Armoured Trucks, or being chased down by the Los Santos Rozzers, and I keep wondering other things that would make an Avatar GTA interesting.

Like all the weapons would be based on NERF guns, just so that kiddies would be able to join in on the fun without being subjected to the gore of a spurting headshot.  And with that you can customise them, from an extended clip or an underslung grenade launcher, to something like an elemental effect added to your ammunition.  Or get random drops and just improve on them from there.  It'll depend on how you go about it, and whether the character you develop matches your play style.

Skill trees could be massive, just starting off with a handful of straightforward options, and expanding out more and more making characters that much more unique for each persons playstyle.

Enemies could be based off of Xbox exclusives, throwing things like Halo Elites and Gears of War Locust into the mix.  Or have mock characters of other company personifications, like the Wiis "Mii"s and have them attack in droves against environments, turning them into their own versions of said exclusives and turning them against the avatars.  Better yet, have a Zomb-ii mission such as being placed in the Xbox HQ and have to make defences in there to stop the hordes of zomb-ii's.

Then take the piss out of themselves and fly up to a mothership designed on the original xbox, maybe fly around in fighters that are based on the original controllers.  Or do a mothership dungeon crawl and fight a raid boss.

The ideas are pretty endless.