The Sad State of GTA-Like Games (That Aren't GTA) - Beyond 920

Beyond

IGN

Entertainment News, News, Video Games, Leisure

4.4 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we’ve heard Rockstar games co-founder Dan Houser talking about cancelled GTA 5 story DLC and Saints Row 1 design director Chris Stockman sharing his pitch for a Saints Row reboot, which has us lamenting the lack of open-world action games set in contemporary settings. Specifically, the kind where you can steal cars and cause mayhem - you know, like in GTA. It feels like we used to get these all the time, and now, they’re few and far between, assuming they see the light of day. The Saints Row reboot was a flop, and Volition isn’t around anymore. Mindseye didn’t deliver on its ambitious premise. Contraband, the project from Just Cause developer Avalanche was cancelled. Sleeping Dogs might get a movie courtesy of Simu Liu, but it seems unlikely we’ll get a new game anytime soon. What happened? Will we ever see this kind of game make a comeback? What about The Simpsons Hit & Run? Plus, Sony has a new holiday ad campaign that harkens back to the weirdo marketing of the PlayStation 2. This weeks show is Max Scoville, Brian Altano, and is produced by Nick Maillet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.7	slash setup beyond and hello and welcome once again to IGN's weekly PlayStation show
0:33.2	I'm your host Max Covell and today we are talking about the sorry state of open
0:37.1	world action games set in modern times.
0:40.0	Grand Theft Auto 6 is great and all, but what's going on with franchises like Saints Row, sleeping dogs, and Just Cause?
0:45.6	Let's get into it.
1:00.0	I am joined once again by my good pal Brian Altano. What's up, Brian?
1:01.0	How you doing?
1:02.0	I'm good.
1:03.0	Okay.
1:04.0	Beyond and all that.
1:05.0	And all that.
1:06.0	Those are two different shows.
1:07.0	One of them was on Nickelodeon in the 90s.
1:09.0	I kind of wish we around all that. We've been on doubled there. That's close. That's close. Yeah, that was close. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so there's some stuff to talk about. Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar games, the writer on basically every GTA game going back to, I think with the London one, the GTA 1969, the earliest forms of the franchise.
1:29.3	He isn't at Rockstar anymore, but he's been kind of going on the road, appearing on podcasts,
1:33.0	and offering some interesting insight into, I guess, the general DNA of GTA and, you know,
1:39.9	some offering little tidbits of wisdom here and there. And one of them that's really interesting is basically, like,
	...

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