What the 2002 Vice City got right that nothing since has matched

Not nostalgia for its own sake. Trying to name the actual thing.

It was small. You could hold the whole map in your head after a week, and that meant every location had an identity rather than a coordinate. The Malibu Club was not a building, it was the Malibu Club. Print Works was a place you owned and thought about.

Every map since has been bigger and none of them has been as memorable, because memorability is not a function of size. A modern Vice City that is twice the size of Los Santos has to solve that problem, and I have no idea whether they can.

keysrunner_881w ago

7 replies

preloadwatch1w agoHaven't played

The Malibu Club was not a building, it was the Malibu Club. That is exactly it and I have never been able to say why the newer maps do not do that.

keysrunner_881w agoHaven't played

That is the answer and it explains why the Ultimate businesses are more interesting than they look. Ownership is the memorability mechanic.

oceandr19861w agoHaven't played

I bought the Malibu Club in 2002 and I still think of it as mine... that is a strange sentence about a video game and it is completely true.

tommysshirt1w agoHaven't played

Reading this thread a week later and the Print Works point is the one that got me... I have not thought about that building in twenty years and I could still find it.

vicebeachcam1w agoHaven't played

The mechanism is that owning things made you think about them. Print Works mattered because you had to buy it and it produced money. A landmark you drive past is a landmark. A landmark you own is a place.

gatorinthepool1w agoHaven't played

twice the size of los santos and the question is whether you can hold it in your head. i suspect the answer is no and i suspect that is fine

portgellhorn_1w agoHaven't played

Memorability is not a function of size is the sentence. San Andreas was bigger than Vice City and I can still draw Vice City from memory.

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