Introduction:

There’s so much going on in a Rockstar game. These giant, insane worlds filled with so much. It makes it easy to miss the small stuff. Hi folks, it’s Falcon and today on Gameranx, 20 insane little details in Rockstar games.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Starting off at number 20, in Grand Theft Auto IV, the helicopter can blow water around. Rockstar really went nuts with the physics effects in Grand Theft Auto IV. And while most of it’s really noticeable and flashy, like when you’re shooting or knocking people over, there’s also effects that are really easy to overlook. In most games, we’re used to helicopters causing some kind of turbulence effect on water, but this game took it to the next level and actually made it so if you fly a helicopter low enough, it causes water to deform from the force of the helicopter blades. It’s interesting because a lot of the physics stuff from Grand Theft Auto IV really wasn’t continued in Grand Theft Auto V, but this one they actually beefed up in V and it’s more impressive there.

Grand Theft Auto V

Moving on to number 19, in Grand Theft Auto V, when characters hate being followed and they’ll attack you if you follow ’em around too much. Now, GTA V has some really amazing little details in it. One of the best editions is the character swapping mechanic and some of the really funny stuff you can do with it. Like if you manage to spot another playable character walking around San Andreas, like, say you’re Trevor and you see Michael or Franklin or whatever, you can follow ’em. And depending on which person you follow, you’ll get some unique dialogue where they complain about what you’re doing. – [Franklin] Hey, Mike. You stalking me or what? – [Falcon] And if you continue to follow them long enough, they’ll get sick of you and knock you out. It actually begs the question why more people who aren’t playable characters don’t get annoyed with you following them around.

Red Dead Redemption 2

And number 18 in Red Dead Redemption 2, if you try to rob people while you’re drunk, they don’t take you seriously. Of course, when it comes to little details, nothing can really beat RDR 2, but just like with the old GTA games, we’ve covered them in depth in a lot of other videos, because, I mean, there’s only two RDR games whereas we’re going on the sixth GTA at this point and that’s not counting any of the side games. So we’re by basically gonna only try to mention it a few times in this video. There’s a lot of funny little details about getting drunk in RDR 2. Of course, there’s the fact that people laugh at you when you try to stick them up when you’re drunk, but there’s more to it. When you’re drunk in RDR 2, the HUD elements, like the text on the screen, will actually be misspelled. And if you manage to anger the law and then get blackout drunk, that doesn’t save you because you just don’t see the police picking you up and dumping you in prison. That’s where you wake up.

Bully

And number 17, in Bully, if you don’t have any money, instead of buying a soda from a vending machine, you just kick it. This is a cool thing I didn’t really realize you could do in this underrated game from Rockstar Vancouver. One way to heal yourself is to buy a soda from a vending machine around the school. But if you’re outta cash, you can just kick the machine instead. It’s a funny little detail by itself, but if you kick it enough times, you usually shake a soda free. It’s not the most efficient way to get some health back, but it’s crazy they made it so something would actually happen if you kicked the machine enough.

GTA IV

And number 16 in GTA IV, the car washes change depending on the type of car. There’s car washes dotted around Liberty City and I’m guessing most people don’t bother because they do exactly what they say they do. They just wash your car. That’s the only thing they do. The only reason to go into a car wash in this game is if your car is dirty and you want it washed. The fact they’re in the game at all is kind of an impressive detail because they’re utterly unnecessary, but to make it even more insane, they made it so your car would get washed differently depending on if it’s a convertible or not. Like you drive a car with a hard top in and you just go through the automated washing machine exactly like you would expect. But if you’re driving convertible, you get a hand washing animation. It’s just a bunch of really unnecessary detail that paradoxically is super necessary to creating a more real-feeling world.

GTA: San Andreas

And number 15 in GTA: San Andreas, if you park a taxi in enemy territory during taxi missions, then rival gang members start messing up your vehicle. Now this is pretty specific. Normally other gangs don’t really hassle you a whole lot in San Andreas, but if you’re trying to do a taxi job, they can make your life pretty difficult. While you’re on a mission, if you park a taxi in an enemy gang’s neighborhood, they’ll come out and start smashing up your car as long as you sit there. It’s kind of hilarious to watch, but also a pain if you’re actually trying to make some money.

RDR’s

At number 14 RDR’s raindrops gathering on the screen only when you look up. Now this is a really specific thing that you may not notice or realize happens. In a lot of games, if it rains you get raindrops on your screen no matter what happens. But in the original Red Dead Redemption, the simulation’s a little more realistic. Instead of always get rain drops on the screen, it only happens when you tilt the screen up. And if you look down, the raindrops eventually evaporate. It just sells it way better than non-directional rain droplets.

Grand Theft Auto V

At number 13, Grand Theft Auto V, when you wear tinted glasses, it changes the first person view. Being able to view the world in first person is a great addition to GTA V and this one detail that Rockstar put in is kind of wild. If you change your costume to include tinted shades, if you go into first person, your vision will be tinted in the same way that those glasses are intended to. They also made it so that your character eventually adjusts to the light, so the color starts to slowly fade until it goes back to normal. This is an impressive detail that’s also nice to players who don’t wanna look at the world through a color filter in first person if they don’t want to. It just takes a while to adjust. So it’s possible a lot of people did not realize that the effect would eventually go away.

Max Payne 3

And at number 12, in Max Payne 3, Max’s clothes eventually get covered in sweat. Before anyone complains, yes, Max Payne 3 is a Rockstar game. It was developed by Rockstar Studios, unlike the first two games which were developed by Remedy and published by Rockstar. The game is absolutely filled with amazing little details. One of the craziest is how, in certain levels, Max’s clothes gradually get sweatier and sweatier the longer you play in them. It’s actually a detail that happens in Grand Theft Auto V as well, but it’s a lot more realistic-looking in Max Payne 3.

GTA: San Andreas

And number 11 in GTA: San Andreas, in water, air bubbles come out of the car exhaust instead of smoke. We’ve talked about a lot of really memorable details in San Andreas, so we haven’t really been dwelling too much on these older games. But one we missed out on is when you submerge a car in water, it changes the exhaust. Normally it’s smoke, but in underwater, you get bubbles instead. It’s a small, but a really crazy detail to include in a game that’s as old as San Andreas. And it’s not really one that you would think developers would even really think of.

Grand Theft Auto IV,

And number 10 in Grand Theft Auto IV, tires deflate slowly when they’re shot. It’s another really cool detail in GTA IV. If you shoot a bullet hole in them, then the air drains out slowly rather than instantly, like in most games and also realistically models the bullet hole in the tire. You can see the smoke move around as the tires spins. It’s just really small details that are easy to miss, but they add up to a level of realism in GTA IV that felt next-gen back when it first came out.

Bully

At number nine, in Bully, the teacher reacts if you spell out a swear word for the assignment. Now, Bully was actually, interestingly enough, considering all of the pushback it got, a more kid-friendly experience to how crude and violent the Grand Theft Auto series is. But that doesn’t mean it was totally free of cussing. If you wanna cause some trouble, you could get into the English class activity where you have to make as many words as possible with a set of letters and sometimes you can spell out certain swears and the teacher, well, doesn’t love it. You don’t actually get credit for spelling swears out, either. Regardless, it’s funny.

GTA V,

And at number eight in GTA V, helicopter blades actually affect the environment. We mentioned the water effect, even though it may not be quite as impressive in this game, it’s perhaps a little more realistic. There’s still some really impressive effects, though, that you can see while flying in a helicopter. One of the most insane little things you can see is if you fly a helicopter’s blades into a tree, it’ll start shooting out leaves like it’s chopping branches. And that’s not the only thing to get blown around by a helicopter, either. If you choose to fly close to a sailing ship, the sails will get blown around realistically, depending on where your helicopter is. You can even change the direction of a wind sock by positioning your helicopter next to one. It’s a real attention to detail.

At number seven, you can put firecrackers in the toilet and sometimes you’ll see a turd fly out. Putting firecrackers in a school toilet is a classic prank, so there’s not really anything surprising about being able to do it in this game. But sometimes, just to be extra gross, when you detonate a firecracker down a toilet, sometimes a poo will come flying out along with toilet water. It’s a disgusting little detail that doesn’t come up a lot, it’s rare, so it’s kind of a shock the first time you see it, especially if you’re not expecting it, but it’s hilarious.

RDR 2,

And at number six in RDR 2, if you hold a stick of lit dynamite too long, Arthur just puts it out. Again, we said we’re trying to avoid mentioning RDR too much in here, but there’s one detail that I never really thought about until we were working on this one. When you pull out a stick of dynamite to throw, Arthur automatically lights it. And if you think about it, it’s a video game, seems like it would just stay lit forever. But it’s Rockstar and of course it’s more detail than that. So if you hold a lit stick of dynamite for long enough, instead of letting it explode, Arthur will just extinguish the fuse first, as well he should.

At number five, in Bully, you can start a food fight in the cafeteria. Now what’s crazy about this isn’t the fact you can just go to the Bullworth cafeteria and just start throwing food around, it’s that other students join in. And it’s such a little thing, but Rockstar knew that if you put up food in a cafeteria setting, someone would throw the food. So they made it so that something interesting would happen if you did. All you have to do is go into the cafeteria, pick up a fruit, and start chucking and almost immediately everyone else just starts doing it, too.

And at number four, in GTA V, if you customize a car a large amount, random NPCs will compliment you on it and wanna take pictures with it. Having a sweet ride is proof of how far you’ve come in GTA V and this little detail is just another way that Rockstar makes the world feel more alive by having its NPCs react to you in subtle ways. If you’ve really tricked out a car and you park it, passing people will comment on how good it looks, similar to how people comment on how you looked in San Andreas. They even stop to take pictures of your car if it’s impressive enough. It’s a small little detail, but adds a lot to the game.

Makes it feel more alive. And number three in GTA V, shooting gas tanks causes them to leak. Another cool little detail from GTA V is that you manage to puncture a car’s gas tank, it leaks gas. In a lot of games, shooting a gas tank just makes the car blow up. But this is a bit more realistic, so when the gas tank’s punctured, it just leaks a trail of gasoline. It’s not just an effect that appears on the ground, either. You can hang a car halfway off a ledge and you’ll see gas actually pouring out of the gas tank, rather than just instantly hitting the ground.

It’s a small detail that’s crazy, and nobody would really notice unless you looked closely. So here’s where it does get dangerous, ’cause if the car backfires, it’ll light things on fire, so in that situation, it’s pretty dangerous in terms of having a trail of gasoline behind you. Just more realistic than other games.

Max Payne 3

And at number two, in Max Payne 3, the improvised silencer gets slowly more broken the more you shoot it. In the 12th chapter of Max Payne 3, there’s a short cut scene where Max makes a DIY silencer using a plastic bottle. Considering this is an over-the-shoulder game, you don’t really get a good look at the silencer most of the time, so it’s easy to assume that the model never changes. But if you look closely enough, you can see there’s actual multiple versions of the silencer that show up in increasingly damaged states depending on how many times you fired it. For most games, you would just have an unbroken and then a broken version of the model, but it’s Rockstar, so there’s no less than four different variations of this one model that most people probably are never even gonna see. And finally, in RDR 2, if you wear a mask in Armadillo, people think it’s because of cholera. The little details in this game are endless, but this one’s really wild, both for being so detailed and so incredibly small and unnecessary. In most towns, people are suspicious of you if you just walk around wearing a mask. But in Armadillo, opinions are a little different. Instead of the usual lines you get anywhere else, people say stuff like,

“The mask only helps so much,” and assume you’re wearing the mask to avoid getting cholera. It’s actually particularly interesting in the context of the last couple years of our lives. It’s an easy to miss background detail that Armadillo recently suffered a cholera outbreak. And that’s why there’s the big bonfire outside of town. The only way you could even know this is from background details like NPC dialogue, posters, and newspaper articles and it doesn’t really have any part in the story. It’s crazy enough that they put this elaborate backstory into the town, but it doesn’t even matter, but they also added this specific detail that if you wear a mask, people around town actually have unique dialogue for it. The level of detail in this game is next level, but it’s also what we’ve come to expect from Rockstar Games. And that’s all for today. Leave us a comment, l

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