You think a team doing something for seven years will be as skilled as a team doing something for twice as long? My experience says this isn't how skill development works, it's not like you hit a ceiling where one team ceases (or is unable) to advance and the other catches up.
We know from the modding community that GTA III used much of Renderware's stock engine but that Vice City was quite a departure from the Renderware engine as appeared in other games. San Andreas was further departure. This seems to be fairly common with developers starting with a stock engine, then investing so much in modifications and optimisations, they effectively evolve their own fork. Happened a ton with Renderware, early idTech (Quake, Quake 2, Doom 3) and Unreal Engines. This way to get to keep the tool chains.
You usually infuse your posts with things very poetically and eloquently, although I gotta partially agree with @Sigfried1977 here, and I say partially because Rayman and Child of Light are ok games. Ubisoft's gone downhill and it's Ubisoft. What can you expect now? There are more issues in their games than anything else.
Your post sounds to me like my opinion on Blizzard doing Diablo games compared to companies that want to make something similar and fail, say Destiny... (I mean that loot wise, nothing else) As for GTA, I've never been into it, and out of curiosity I just see videos on the XO from other friends to get what's all the fuss about. I loved Red Dead Redemption though.Sigfried1977 seemed quite taken with GTA V, particularly all the little details. I am also hugely impressed with GTA V and even when messing around I often find things I've never seen before. But part of the reason is Rockstar North can seemingly do what other developers can not is simply because they have been doing this, refining their exquisite murdercraft, for almost two decades. The only non-GTA game they've turned out since GTA III is Manhunt. So more murdercraft
Sleeping Dogs, True Crime, The Getaway - all good efforts but Rockstar North have unparalleled experience in the genre. It's difficult to see them being unseated. Can they make a crap game? I'm sure they could - many didn't like GTA IV, but they've been working on engines, AI, animation and algorithms for the worlds for a long, long time.
And I say this with a touch of sadness because I'd like more games of GTA's quality but I just don't see it happening. Most publishers couldn't afford a game as grand a scale as GTA. WATCH_DOGS looked promising, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but as a believe world it was a pale imitation of GTA V. Infamous Second Son's depiction of Seattle was stunningly beautiful but the pedestrians may as well have been sheep.
Witcher 3.. well. We'll see
. I cannot imagine that something else this year will grip me like this. even if Doom does come and it is the second coming of christ it will be a close decision .Aisde from first to third person change, this is the biggest difference between the Witcher and all Elder Scrolls game.
