GTA IV: Deserving of its current status as best game ever made?

[Dark Jaguar]

I loved the experience as well. Since they had all those interactions, Nintendo wasn't able to truly make it massive, and it was mostly limited to that town, but it was still amazing. Oblivion does this to a certain extent as well, but there are way more "standing" NPCs in that game, due to it's size, and the NPCs with all their own stories and schedules aren't all packed together like in MM, thus you lose the "step outside and know there's a story" feeling.

There are two approaches. The "intricate detail" approach, in which the designers themselves carve out their own story idea into every single NPC. The other is one that is still in it's infancy but shows a lot of promise, and again I speak of procedural content. The Sims works on the idea of a bunch of people having schedules and interacting, and then you have say Animal Crossing which also has that but you are a character IN that world (and there's less detail but it was still a very fun game). There are many more steps to take after that, but eventually it might reach the point where we could get full stories going on in a city that are procedurally generated, and at that point turning off the game will be a war crime.