I'm going to be honest here, I've been excited for GTAV for a while, but I was mostly excited for the world Rockstar was going to build with polished mechanics which would be a big playground to run around in with friends online. I wasn't expecting that much more from the story missions other than a big long tutorial to show me everything to game has to offer and get me settled in, and although it certainly is that, GTAV surprised me by being one of the most entertaining games I've played in years.
Is the narrative a tense gripping emotional cinematic masterpiece? Absolutely not, but I think GTAIV proved that no-one wants the series to be that. What it is however is a big "bro up" between the three main characters and following them on their crazy crime adventures and the even crazier people they meet along the way. I knew less than an hour into this game that Rockstar got what people wanted with the introduction of Lamar and "the employee of the month" scene, which is far from being the funniest scene in the game but instantly got over the fact that the tone has changed from last time around.
Another decision that has to be applauded is the creation of Trevor, the choice to go for three decisions is an interesting one and certainly has its advantages in terms of telling a story, but Trevor could have easily carried this game by himself. He is everything a GTA protagonist should be, unredeemable, crazy, ridiculously capable, scary and perhaps most importantly funny as hell to be around. The writing around Niko Bellics redemption arc was certainly strong in GTAIV, but the fact they even attempted it at all is nuts to me, there is no justifying the actions of a Grand Theft Auto character so you may as well run as far as you can with it and make it as entertaining as possible.
The lack of loading times and cutscenes running on the in-game engine helps the flow of the story along immensely and also makes the sandbox itself more immersive as the storyline actually exists in the world you're in not some hypothetical other dimension locked away behind load screens. The missions are far more varied and less focused around commuting and cover based shooting, even if there is still plenty of that, but the character dialogue carries it through on the trips though.
The thing about GTAV is I was wondering if I should lay into it more because in all honesty there's dozens if not hundreds of nitpicks I could make about the gameplay. Slight control issues, stupid rating systems, bad race AI, really weird and unforgiving fail states for some missions and so on and so forth, but every time I think about that I pull back and realise the scale of what Rockstar have achieved and forget all about it. Of course this game has a lot to nitpick, the developers have shoved their big 10 incher right into the PS3 and forced everything out of it that they can in as many ways as they could think of, there's no way they were going to nail anything. The fact some reviewers feel these nitpicks are grounds to pull the game down considering the other trash that gets perfect scores all round show the level that Rockstar is playing at, it's like we've all instantly agreed this game is an A, now we just agree about how many plus signs we want to put on the end of that.
To go slightly off topic for a conclusion, back in 2005 when the industry was pushing for everyone to get excited for the new hardware with the 360 and PS3 releases upcoming and showing off what it could potentially do, we never got what they promised...until now, and it's called Grand Theft Auto V. A game that took everything we loved about the last generation titles and used the technology available to make it something incredible, which is my word of warning to people getting excited about next gen. There will no major leap up in games for many years to come from the new technology, and the amount of work required for that leap to happen is going to get more colossal. It could be a VERY long time before we get the next gen equivalent of a Grand Theft Auto V.
And all this is before the online even launches.......jeezzz....
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