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The first Rockstar game that really grabbed me was GTA IV, and its successive expansions. It was unlike anything else I had ever played, and established Rockstar in my mind as the premiere developer of narrative-driven games.
Sure, I had played and enjoyed their earlier output. Yes, even their early top-down GTA games. And Bully. And Table Tennis.
But GTA IV kicked it all to a new level.
A sprawling, realistically-rendered city with a level of physics detail never-before-seen. A huge cast of well-acted and well-written characters. And a properly-structured narrative with real character arcs, containing a solid blend of human themes, action movie nonsense, and the overt satire Rockstar is most famous for.
It also had a weird multiplayer mode.
In that mode, you could run around as your own avatar across the game world with a handful of other players, then dive into more standard game modes like Deathmatch and vehicle races.
The single player campaign and its two expansions presented an epic trilogy of movie-style narratives at a budget and execution level unlike anything else in 2008. The multiplayer was a weird, fun side mode for those craving more of the gameplay.
This same dichotomy remained in 2010’s Red Dead Redemption…but the story got shorter and the multiplayer a little more involved.
Red Dead’s campaign mode was fraught with development struggles, and although the game did receive one single player expansion, it was a fun zombie side story spin-off thing, and not a meaningful addition to the plot.
Its multiplayer was a little more involved than GTA IV’s, but its interactive world was still ultimately an elaborate lobby for more constructed modes.
Still, it had persistent elements. It had small interactions with NPCs from the main storyline. It had more features tailored towards building a community. In the marketing, it was treated almost like a second game.
