Let me start by saying happy birthday, Grand Theft Auto III! GTA III turns 11 years old today :)

Ok, so as many of you might know, video game publications love lists. Top 10 of this, top 25 of that. One of the most popular lists is "top 10 most influential games." More often than not, Grand Theft Auto III appears on these lists. In many cases, it is #1. But sometimes I wonder if its influence is overestimated.

I would like to make a case that GTA III is not QUITE as influential as is commonly argued.

There is no doubt that GTA III set the gold standard for mature-themed open-world action-adventure games in 2001. It spawned several highly-acclaimed sequels, influenced games like Crackdown and Saints Row, and inspired more than a few copycat games such as The Simpsons: Hit & Run. But how influential is it? Grand Theft Auto was a revelation because it synthesized already established gameplay elements into a gritty, adult-oriented crime saga where players could do almost anything. But the foundation for GTA III had been established years earlier, as early as 1986 with The Legend of Zelda, and then again in 1998 with Ocarina of Time. 

The original Zelda set the stage for open-world, non-linear gameplay, and Ocarina built upon those ideas with an immersive, open-ended world that seemed to unfold with or without the player participating. Of course GTA III was an evolution of the type of game Ocarina represented. There were fewer barriers in GTA III, thematically and physically. Players could wander almost anywhere, and put the main storyline on hold indefinitely. Still, in many ways GTA III is Zelda in an urban setting.

The real revolution in GTA III was "emergent gameplay," which is a big idea with many definitions. I guess most simply it refers to video game mechanics that change according to a player's decisions and actions, but in Grand Theft Auto III emergent gameplay is better defined as a series of random in-game events caused by the interraction of unrelated actions and routines. Fleeing from a bank robbery and running into a traffic jam, for example. Yet here there are problems also.

Emergent gameplay was done much more convincingly one year earlier in Deus Ex. Players in Deus Ex had a hundred different choices to make, all of which had some bearing on how the game unfolded, how NPCs reacted to the hero, what kind of attributes he would have, etc. Within the framework of Deus Ex, players were asked to solve problems using imaginative solutions and with as much creative freedom as technologically possible -- very much like Grand Theft Auto III. The tools were there; it was up to the player on how exactly to use them...or misuse them.

I don't know much about its influence. All I know is that when I played this game about ten years ago at my friend's house on his PS2, I kept thinking to myself, "Holy shit! You can do EVERYTHING in this game! Steal some sweet sports cars, be chased by cops/the military, ride a tank around the city, blast random cars with rockets and shoot strangers' heads off. How can a single game be this awesome??? How can anyone get bored of this game?"

And well, I did pick the game up recently for the first time in years and I still enjoyed it. I thought its age and dated graphics would have killed it, but I was very wrong. I actually completed the last mission two days ago, and it was well worth it. Definitely not far behind from Ocarina of Time in terms of gameplay value, in my opinion. And the original legend of Zelda is from an entirely different league. (Would be like comparing Super Mario 64 with Super Mario Bros).

But yeah, I wouldn't know about its actual influence on the gaming industry. Frankly, I don't care :)

Grand Theft Auto revolutionalized the concept of a game being a sandbox to play in. Ocarina of time was hardly a sandbox, despite being open world. The only thing to do in Zelda was do the main quest or do a limited amount of sidequests. I'd be willing to bet GTAIII was one of the first games where a significant portion of players completely ignored developer made quests and did their own thing.

IDK if any game introduced a "do anything" sandbox before GTA, but clearly GTAIII was the first one to do it well considering its success, and how unknown those previous games are. 

Hmm. Interesting topic to discuss, no doubt, but I'm not sure how much I agree with what you put in the OP.

For example, saying GTA's foundation was laid by Zelda. I saw the overworld exploration part of Zelda much more in line with something like the world map in any Final Fantasy game. You can go to various different places but there's not always a whole lot to do in them. For example, in FF VII you could go to the Gold Saucer and play mini-games at any time, much like you could go to Hyrule Market in Ocarina and play some of those mini-games. Other than that, you were simply traversing a map - occasionally stopping in a town or fighting some monsters.

I saw a whole lot more interactivity when I played GTA III for the first time. I dunno, like The1 mentions I was just blown away when I first got the game at all the things I could do. I would spend hours running around doing nothing in particular. I personally wouldn't call GTA 'Zelda in an urban setting' in the same way I wouldn't call it 'Final Fantasy in an urban setting', it was much more diverse than that (to me, at least).

I think it probably was very influential in the industry, but maybe for the wrong reasons. It wasn't a massive revelation from things past, but it certainly felt like it at the time!

All very fair points. You're right about GTA not being an urbanized Zelda, but in some ways it IS Ocarina of Time moved from a sword and sorcery setting to a metropolis. Of course GTA is an evolved form of Zelda, with a much stronger emphasis on wanderlust. I guess the question is this: was GTA III revolutionary or evolutionary? Did it bring about a radical change in video games? Or did it reorganize existing elements into a new package?

Hmm.  Probably more evolutionary I guess.  

The thing with it was, like you say, there were vast 3D but slightly empty worlds out there to explore before GTA 3.  And there was also a vast 2D world with that feeling of "there's so much to do" too, in the form of the original 2D GTA games.  Somehow, when they came together, it felt like they'd created some fantastic, unique and revolutionary new experience.  But looking back, maybe it didn't.  Certainly it popularised the approach of sandbox-style games like you mention.

I think it is. It spawed one of my favorite type of games and inspired more games such as true crime and saint's row. I love the sandbox type games and the freedom to play how you want to play and do whatever you want with in the world. GTA3 was the first time,I ever heard of rockstar and it's the first game,that I played of there's. You can't forget bully and red dead redemption. The game put rockstar on the map. I personally think,that it is that influential,in it's own special way.

Influential or not but they really used and played with the human psyche when they were marketing it.

There is a recent revelation that the game's publicist successfully tried to create a controversy around the game. Now if that is right or wrong can be discussed to great lengths. One thing for sure is that controversial sells. That is why each call of duty tries to out do the previous in terms of shock value.

Here is the short article from Gamasutra. You can find others by googling around. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/179903/The_man_who_engineered_the_Grand_Theft_Auto_controversy.php#.UIW5XMXA_4Y

I prefered GTA when it was 2D and fun. The last one I played was San Andreas, I just always bored quickly of it.

Ok, Zelda OoT can be credited with a lot, but comparing it to GTA? You might as well say that Elder Scrolls: Arena influenced both GTA and Zelda as it was the first open world game... and it had a day-night cycle.

GTAIII was influenced by the previous two games by simply bringing it to a 3D environment. Driver 2 probably had far more influence than Zelda considering it was one of the first 3D sandbox games where you could actually exit the vehicle. GTAIII was an evolution and refinement of that concept, and it took off because they finally had the power to make it work.