The God-Awful Game Design of Gran Turismo 7

Reward and progression? More like bored and depression.

That’s all I’ve got.

Music (in order):

Race Day – Masanori Takeuchi (Sega GT 2002)
Slipstream – Isamu Ohira (Gran Turismo 3)
Dont Kick Yourself – Isamu Ohira (Gran Turismo 4)
License Center – Isamu Ohira (Gran Turismo 4)
Concentration – Isamu Ohira (Gran Turismo 3)
Championship Award – Isamu Ohira (Gran Turismo 3)
After The Rain – MAKOTO (Gran Turismo 5)
Blue Line (Instrumental Version) – Masahiro Andoh (Gran Turismo 2)

Channels credited:

0:00 Introduction
2:00 Game Design is Undervalued
7:41 Circuit Experience Breaks the In-game Economy
8:39 Licence Tests and Single-Player Races
14:10 Championships and the End-Game
16:48 Tribute to Past GT Events (Emotional)

[Roflwaffle]

Hey guys I hope you all enjoyed this video. I wanted to make it clear how much this aspect of previous GT games means to me and why GT7 is so much of a let down when it comes to the progression and overall design.

To everyone who watched my GT7 AI video don’t worry, I’ve had to split this into two separate videos. The second part will be releasing a week from today (so 21st Feb) and will go in depth on the mission events, the post-game, the economy (car prices, event rewards, etc.), roulette tickets and the infamous microtransactions, so stay tuned for all of that…

Also, a fun side note: That montage at the end didn’t even include any one-make or endurance races. It’s just insane how much is missing from this game...

[Mercman]

GT7 did exactly what they designed it as. A high class resturant.

You pay way too much
Everthing is executed to perfection (visuals and physics)
You leave unsatisfied and still hungry.

[bfcricky]

Something that was fun about past GT games was you had to choose your own path, decide what the best car is for 10, 000cr, decide what’s the best event to do first etc. I remember talking to my friends at school about how differently we approached it. In GT7 with the stupid menu books everyone has had the exact same experience. It baffles me how a game from 2004 can be designed so perfectly and game that came out 18 years later is so flawed.

[Smashvillain]

"Let me get in my Viper and run the Sunday Cup"

And thus, how I spent my time playing GT3 as a kid has been revealed.

[Lego___]

Its amazing that GTSPORT, the exclusively online, E-Sports game has a better, more interesting career mode than GT7; the game that is meant to be the series' new mainline entry and return to form.

[RobertoFornaro]

I remember completing the GT Mode on GT 7, it felt like it all ended abruptly. I approached the final championship not believing that it would be the final league, rather the beginning of the middle-late game, I thought "OK, we are entering the pro's". After all, it only required the Nat A license, where usually that license doesn't get you that far.
"OK, sappy cutscene, got it, what's next?"
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I was so goddamn angry, I had bought the game like 5 days before, and keep in mind I did all of the licenses, golded them. And I was working in those days so I was playing like 1 hour a day, 2 tops.

I remember GT4 requiring me weeks my first time around; and I had lot more time back then. I wasn't as good as a racer but still

[ryrin]

Man the visual design of GT3 had so much soul. I fondly remember the design of all those event banners to this day. So much is lost in search of "streamlining".

[Mycroch]

The worst part is:

you can make the events you want in custom races, but the payout is negligible, you cant switch your own car, you cant put specific tune sheets or liveries, so you gotta buy a whole new car and put a different livery on it and finally cars don’t use the tyres you SET them to use!!!

[gringoviejo]

What I really crave is a "season" mode. Allow us to create a championship series, select the tracks and the race parameters. Then we can can set homologation rules for the cars and proceed to race through the entire championship series. Maybe we can be required to use the same car for every race. Maybe the same manufacturer. Single player in GT7 is nothing short of redunadant. I have a suspicion that Turn10 is watching and listening.

[someonetookmynick]

YES. Keep dragging them king. I love GT, I have fun playing Sport mode in GT7, but every single little thing you've said really hits the nail on its head. Some incredible fumbles from PD team.

[Milehupen]

GT7 feels like a wish granted by a genie. Persumably the game we all wanted, but flawed in so many aspects. I mean just imagine, what a great game we would have, if the single player experience was as enjoyable as in the titles before.
Always looking forward to your new videos.

[vyse]

In my own review for the game that I wrote for a much smaller website than IGN, I stated that "whenever you do a race, it's not because you made that decision, but because the game told you to". My verdict was that while GT4 was a great game that you played for months, GT7 is a decent game that you put down after two weeks. Which is kind of ironic, considering all the effort they put into making GT7 into a service-based game, which are designed to keep players coming back over long periods of time.

[Weebuns]

One thing that gets me is the amount of button clicks. After a race I counted 14 button clicks to get back to the home screen.

[jdcp]

Rest in peace Like the Wind and 24 hour Nurburgring endurance, yall were the hardest pain in the ass I ever got in a videogame.

[HauntedMeta]

One things that really triggers me in GT7 apart from this, is the rolling start, who thought it was a good and fun idea to let the first racers half lap away from you ?, sometimes you nearly catch him on the last 500 meters from the last lap

[ollyclass]

Gran turismo felt like a caRPG with you learning the cars and forming an attachment to them gt7 has given me so many cars for free that I don't know which one to choose it feels like you cheated in previous games with an infinite money cheat or own all the cars.

[bigsarge]

Spot on. Including this month's update, we've had a grand total of THREE new tracks and ZERO new championships. Get rid of the stupid dealer invites and fix or get rid of the roulette system.

[Ben-Rogue]

Menu books would have been fine if they weren't the core of the campaign, and were more like the driving missions. If GT had the typical structure of: Do licenses, use license cars or buy cheap car to do beginner events, grinding a little for cash to buy cars for intermediate events, unlock some more cool cars, do some side driving missions now that you have a good selection of cars, try your hand at Pro and then Extreme events, and by then you should have the cash for the expensive bois for the Endurance event... With menu books being progression locked, and having the circuit experience being locked behind the circuit unlocks, the whole thing might have been different.

[Ben-Rogue]

I've had issues with GT game design since day one, and it doesn't ever seem to improve.
I have yet to watch the video, but I'll quickly list a few of the weird, confusing, to sheer incompetent design choices from off the top of my head after only a few hours playing:
1. HUD. The HUD is cluttered, with only two useless toggle options. Many modern racing games let you turn on/off, or even move around every HUD element. GT7's HUD blocks your rear view mirror for RHD cars when in cockpit, moves UI elements unnecessarily between views, removes the rear-view mirror between views, has unimportant information that cannot be disabled separately
2. The driving cameras are horrible, especially when playing close to the screen. The chase camera is often too low and has a narrow FOV, the hood/roof camera is all over the place (just provide a hood camera and a roof camera FFS!), the cockpit camera has no FOV adjustment, has very limited movement (can't see most of the rear view mirrors in most cars), has only 2 settings for movement, both of which are strangely janky with type 1 jerking left/right in a distracting manner with fast steering input, and 2 being better but inconsistent with the way it behaves
3. Menus take longer to navigate than they should. It take less time to load into a race than it does to load into a car dealer. It takes like 7-10 button presses to exit a race once finished (still can't disable replay auto-play), has multiple 'result screens' (just put it in one screen), game tells you you've changed vehicles with a prompt you have to press X on (obviously I've changed the car!), the paint purchasing system is for some reason separate from the car painting system, and doesn't show the car you're currently in as the 'sample' car (why??), can't just look around the car when applying parts (fixed views only, why? The right thumb stick isn't being used for anything else), the GT auto section has multiple saving/apply screens (for performing an action, then exiting after the action has been performed. Just save in the background!), the performance upgrades being sectioned off into separate tabs is confusing as hell for new players, the frame rate in some of the menus is strangely low and stuttery, makes you skip through multiple lines of dialogue before each license test (I could go on, obviously)
4. Races are still a chase the leader rubber-banding system, instead of just scaling the AI to your PP level and having a fair race start.
5. Mission events requiring you to wait for the other cars to leave is just dumb and sadistic, and should have been binned after GT4. Normal races are basically just this, but without the wait.
6. And last but not least; Roulette Tickets. Just get rid of them. The whole system is a joke. Just hand us our predetermined reward and don't piss down our leg.

[finfrog]

GT7: when the servers are taken down, no offline career for you.
RIP polyphony *sad saxophone sounds*