I’m taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.
Our last stop in this series is Grand Theft Auto V: a game so nice, they released it thrice.
13 years. Three console generations. 230 million copies. Over $10 billion in revenue. The numbers that tell the story of Grand Theft Auto V’s longevity and success are wildly impressive and virtually unprecedented. The only other games even in the conversation are Minecraft or, depending on your criteria, about 200 different versions of Tetris. The numbers, however, don’t tell us why GTA V still sells more copies every few months than most games will ever total. They don’t tell us why people can’t get enough of it, and they don’t tell us why it’s special. So how did we get here? I guess it was the weather.
While GTA IV’s Liberty City sandbox was a dense, modestly-sized, and entirely urban environment, GTA V’s vision of the city of Los Santos was considerably more sprawling and varied. Yes, it retained a grid-like downtown district packed with tall buildings and a few particularly sizable skyscrapers, but Los Santos otherwise has a wholly different identity to that of Liberty City – and the map encompasses an area way beyond Los Santos itself.
The aesthetic shift is stark. Weather depending, the beating San Andreas sunshine gives vehicles a dazzling gleam, casts crisp shadows, and saturates the whole place with a sharp, sun-bleached vibe. It’s not the stylised orange tint that illustrated the oppressive heat of 1992 Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas, but it’s bright, effective, and a striking visual departure from the cold, drab, and gritty appearance of Liberty City.
It’s also such a different place to explore. The town is splintered into dozens of distinct districts that seamlessly blend from one to the next – from the affluent mansions of Vinewood Hills and Richman to the spectacle of Vinewood itself, glowing under a thin layer of grime and entertainment industry sleaze, and from the sun-kissed sand and beach bum backalleys of ageing Vespucci to the graffiti-tagged and struggling suburbs of South Los Santos.
Outside Los Santos, the countryside opens up to include desert, forest, mountains, and a handful of other small towns dotted around the map. It’s essentially a greatly expanded vision of the southern segment of GTA: San Andreas’ map – the section that features Los Santos, Mount Chiliad, and its immediate surroundings. It’s actually more than twice the size of GTA: San Andreas in its entirety, even if it doesn’t always feel that way, considering you can’t travel beyond the fringe of the county to find a fully-fledged San Fierro or Las Venturas. However, that’s more of a statement about how utterly special GTA: San Andreas’ map really is, rather than an indictment of GTA V in any real way.
That is, GTA V’s map remains a stunning achievement. It’s a world that – even after 13 years – I’m still spotting signs, storefronts, and subtleties that I don’t think I’ve overtly noticed before. Like all the best developers, Rockstar understands that true immersion emerges through accumulation: a single graffiti-tagged wall, bill-covered pole, or interesting piece of architecture might not be hugely remarkable on its own, but combined they become something else altogether. Funnily enough, a world full of thousands of such details can make an entire city so realistic you essentially stop noticing it. It’s almost counterintuitive; things don’t stand out, because they look so authentic, lived-in, and normal.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-v-the-legacy-review
