>>716036259the story is disjointed, anticlimactic and drags on too long. GTA IV had the same problem.
guarma + murphee country + john's rescue were kind of pointless, you could cut that and have them go straight to the native against army sideplot, add more missions to that where the gang fights the US army, and then the schism between members holds more weight - because they're fighting the fucking army.
there are ways to improve or tighten the story. like i said, the first part is grating on replays - replays in which you want to fuck around and explore cuz you didn't do certain things on your first playthrough
GTA IV suffers similar problems but you can do pretty much whatever the hell you want after like 10 mins of introduction
i also think the loot/inventory system and cores system is annoying and just serves to inflate playtime but whatever. i spent a lot of time in GTA IV trying to find a hotdog stand while blasting the radio