LogFAQs > #955805105

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though it's not as if you can't include 60s and 70s music in the soundtrack for a modern setting game. Just have multiple "oldies" stations catering to specific decades/genres. If anything, a modern setting is better for that because modern settings can have older music, but older settings can't have modern music.

They did in GTA V and it still had a pretty mediocre soundtrack other than the classic rock station. I don't like that much modern music, so I think not being able to have modern music would make the soundtracks better. Vice City, San Andreas, and Vice City Stories all have amazing soundtracks and they're limited to music from and before 1986, 1992, and 1984.

Also, with a modern setting, you can include the even more realistic option of having every car include an MP3 player, so players can pick and choose their own music (similar to how Saints Row had the option for "mix tapes"), so you can listen to whatever you want and not have to change the station to look for something you like if your usual station plays something you don't.

The PC versions all have that, and so does the Xbox versions of III-SA. I don't know why the newer ones don't have that feature. If an Xbox from 2001 can do that, the newer consoles certainly can. I think you can play custom music on the Xbox 360 versions, but it'll still play if you leave a car, which makes it too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it.

The bigger problem for future GTA games is going to be music licensing rights, though. Now that we live in a world where constant online patches are possible, we're seeing a scenario where song rights expire over time and the developer needs to patch those songs out of the game. So unless every station they include is either entirely public domain or in-house content, some stations may get spottier over time as songs get excised out.

They've done that for Vice City, San Andreas, and IV. Newer releases of those games don't include a big chunk of their soundtracks. At least with Vice City on Steam, if you had the game before they removed the songs, you keep them. With San Andreas and IV, they released patches that removed songs. You can mod them back in on the PC versions, but you're fucked with IV on consoles unless you keep it offline and don't update it.