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Reviews for: Grand Theft Auto: Luo Yang
Rydain
2009-05-04 . chapter 1
Readers go into this sort of story expecting reasonable immersion and a whole load of fast-paced entertainment. GTA-esque tales lend themselves to a certain suspension of disbelief with regard to over the top situations, as does your writing style. You gravitate toward genre-appropriate zaniness with a healthy dose of technology porn and a more vulgar interpretation of characters for the sake of snarky slapstick. With all of this in mind, I feel that some considerations would improve the potential of this work without ruining the fun that you've served up thus far.

There's a lot of amusing dialog featuring characters playing off one another. Zhou Tai's annoyance with Gan Ning's habits is a good example of this, as is Zhou Yu and Sun Jian's aggravation with goofy, hot-headed Ce. This is most effective as a natural interaction of personalities. I understand how you roll with the foul language, but it tends to get samey when normally straight-laced people like Sun Quan rely on it too much. Unless pushed to the point where they would spout off with the potty mouth, serious and reserved characters are best used as foils to the Gan Ning types.

Your best casting choices preserve personalities and important alliances, like family ties and close friendships. These fundamental aspects keep characters recognizable, set up their motivations and conflict potential, and can be modernized in natural-seeming ways because they are adaptable within a wide variety of situations. Zhang Jiao is well cast as a kooky religious leader and politician. The long-running Sun family business gives an apt nod to both their historical heritage and their closeness. Shu Construction is also well-considered, beginning with Liu Bei and his brothers and providing a rags to riches back story for a benevolent businessman. Ma Chao is a great choice for a protagonist. He's a favorite character of yours, and your experience with agriculture gives plenty of background for realistic details about the struggles of small farm management.

However, some of the personalities take a farfetched or well out of character turn. In the gameverse, Meng Huo and Zhu Rong do have that Gr Outta My Land anger going on. Yet they don't try to conquer anything outside Nanman. They mainly want everyone else to quit making a mess of their home. With this in mind, their greedy motivations feel like a stretch. It seems more plausible for them to want revenge on the Sun corporation for screwing them, and then that goes awry and kicks off the war. The World Peace Coalition could turn up the heat themselves with more extreme orders for Lu Bu, or Bu himself could get trigger happy. Cao Ren's profile unrecognizably flattens him from a principled, compassionate man into a generic Wei villain. It is difficult to see Ren valuing money over his conscience to the point where throws his moral compass out entirely, getting involved with illegal operations that profit from violence and human rights abuse. (And probable misogyny, given that his division distributes porn. From what we've seen of Wei and what the worst of the porn industry is known to be like, I doubt that the female actors are treated with fairness and dignity.) Such a fall from grace is like turning Liu Bei into Dong Zhuo with the wave of a hand. A more believable Ren could work for Cao Cao in the beginning, distancing himself and keeping his personal involvement within the legal, humane end of business as Wei's ambition took underhanded turns. If set to play a prominent part, he could struggle between family loyalty and doing the right thing. Wealth might very well tempt him to some extent, but I can't envision him dancing on a pile of cash while signing another sweatshop contract.

All in all, this is a nifty idea with potential to be one heck of a ride. I'm curious to see where you'll take it.
Ma Chao's awesome
2008-01-11 . chapter 7
It's one awesome story! It's so funny, especially that bit about burying the bottle of water lol.
UPDATE IT!
reveiwer123
2008-01-04 . chapter 7
this is one intence story... AND I LOVE IT! UPDATE! UPDATE!

oh and i want you to know that you are making me jealous of the Sun family children because electronic media is my college major and many of the cast in this fic are young and have really gone far. actually it's inspiring.
Phantom-Koinu
2007-11-07 . chapter 7
AH! Such a cliff-hanger to end on! T__T
No, and it's been so long since you've updated.
Update it!
x_x
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