GTA Myths
There's been quite a furor lately over myths, with the addition to the GTA Wiki editors of Stephendwan, a self-professed myth-hunter, something thought long gone in a game now five years old (San Andreas). I just started this discussion partly for me to air my thoughts about myths and partly so there can be an open forum for debate, rather than on the Myths' talk pages or on those of the users involved.
Here is how I see GTA myths though, with respect mainly to San An, as that seems to get the most press as a "myth generator". Most of the "big myths" are from early on in the game's life-cycle, in 2004 or so, when all we had to go on was the PS2 version. You can't look into the game files of a PS2 without considerably know-how/hard/software. Well, you could, but my second point pretty much nullifies that; it would seem that a large portion of GTA fans are those below the age of eighteen. And not just slightly below, many are around 12/13, and likely have no idea how to explore the contents of a PS2 DVD. Hence, there was no way to verify whether or not a myth was true/false. We must also take into account the (no offence intended, but you shouldn't really be here if you are ;) ) gullibility of the young, into being fooled that anything could be "Bigfoot" or "Nessie" or "serial killer" or whatever. Hence most of the "big" myths came about in those days. Arguably I'd say the biggest shatter in the whole myths thing has been the 2005 PC release date. When we can actually look into the game's code (because, seriously, there's NO EFFORT whatsoever to obfuscate things in there. They even have folders named after staff members! All the data is plaintext. Good for modding, but sloppy coding) we can see that these myths do not exist. Note how any "new" myths are greeted with far more scepticism and such, as well as allegations of modification. When one can perform an exhaustive search for "Mothman" one can see that it's mere fabrication by someone wanting to become popular for starting a myth. They're the memes of the GTA fandom. Frankly, and I'm going to voice my opinion now, if you believe half of these myths you're likely not mature enough to be playing the game. I'm not aiming this at anyone, it's just a general statement. As I said before, if you take offence, you probably shouldn't be here :P... C-d-rom 23:20, 23 July 2009 (UTC)