With the official trailer for the next Duke Nukem Forever Grand Theft Auto 6 finally being out and the game having a vague ‘sometime next year’ release date as of this post, I’m reflecting on how uh, “meh” a lot of people are about it. Since it’s been over a literal decade since the release of the previous installment, which is about as much time between GTA III and V. Back in the day, when we had to walk uphill both ways, for people’s consensus to be “ok, something to look out for” at best and dread at worst would be as unthinkable as the Cubs winning the World Series. But here we are.

So what happened?

1. Diminishing returns in graphics making it harder to razzle-dazzle people with its visual brilliance.
2. A decade of both seeing the issues in the series and seeing more open world games to the point where it’s arguably played out.
3. GTA Online, a monkeys paw that brought Rockstar piles of money at the expense of reputation. GTA V was able to continue getting griefers and Xbox Live Kids to buy shinier and shinier gimzos with real money, at the same time making it a joke to everyone else. And not the good kind.
4. The issue of what tone to adopt, where a mixture of blended ChatGPT-made (ok, I might be a little hard on the AI) scrambled crime drama mixed with juvenile ‘shocking’ Bart Simpson meets Dennis Rodman antics that were a little edgy in 2001 that the series previous had has aged horribly…. but with reasonable confidence that what’s left of Rockstar might not be able to do something differently better.

I still think it’ll be playable, make a gargantuan amount of money, and look good. But the old-time hype is just gone.