The Devil is in the detail
There is a famous quote in Jurassic Park from Jeff Goldblum's Dr Ian Malcolm. "Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Last week Rockstar released a new trailer for the much hyped GTA 6. Viewers were amazed by the technical marvel that Rockstar had delivered. Many reviewers and gaming sites were picking their jaws up off the floor in reaction to the brightly lit and colourful display of Vice City it's various attractions and activities.
One thing that stood out to me was everyone reacting to a clip of a customer walking out of a store with a six-pack of beer. They zoomed in and watched in disbelief as the individual bottles all had liquid that had been rendered to realistically move and splash as if in the real world.
I might be showing my age as someone that grew up with a SEGA MegaDrive and looking like Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud, but when did we get to this point in gaming? Don't get me wrong. I'm all for improving the graphics and performance of games. I still remember thinking how life-like everyone looked in SmackDown! Just Bring It on PS2 back in the day. But I don't need to see a digital version of The Rock slapping the goosebumps on his forearm.
Rockstar have always been an innovator in game development. The jump from GTA 1 & 2 to GTA 3 was light-years. GTA 3 gave us a fully fleshed out, explorable open world where we could live out our fantasy as a a lowlife rising up the ranks in the underworld. They expanded on it in their following games, Vice City and San Andreas. Both to critical and financial success. Combined with compelling stories and interesting characters, there's no wonder the franchise would become so popular. 
The PS3 generation brought with it improved graphics and performance capabilities. Characters and environments in games began to look more realistic than ever before. LA Noire went as far as to employ facial scanning technology to capture the subtle changes in facial expressions. Much of the technology developed in that generation has defined what modern gaming looks like, from the Uncharted series, Batman Arkham, Call of Duty to God of War and Spider-Man.
The focus on detail isn't entirely recent. Rockstar were already focusing on details that were practically unnoticeable unless you were told. In Red Dead Redemption 2, they had designed the male horses with testicals that would change in size depending on what weather environment they were in. It's a funny little detail but how many gigabytes from the near 100GB file size could have been saved by removing this and many other little details that would normally go unnoticed?
I feel that gaming in general entered it's golden era for gameplay and storytelling around that era and each update since has been based on graphic and performance based improvements. Many of the games from that period have lived through numerous remasters or remakes. Take GTA 5 and Skyrim for example. They debuted in the PS3 era and have had multiple editions released on each console generation after. We've gone through 3 console generations between GTA 5 and 6 when the PS2 had 3 mainline GTA games in 3, Vice City and San Andreas.
Maybe I'm annoyed that most game's file sizes have ballooned to the point I had to buy an extra hard drive to keep more that 3 games installed on my system at any given time. Or maybe that GTA 6 has been delayed a whole year and we could've been playing it right now if it weren't for the developers that have to put in hours of work to program beer bottles and horse testicals.
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