As we realized through the course of this review, GTA V is almost unlimited. Built with magnanimous scope that has been realized to perfection, the game has all the makings to etch for itself a landmark in history books and more importantly, in the hearts of us gamers. Just like a kid who’s so confused about what flavored ice cream to buy that he wants them all in one, this game makes you want to do a plethora things at a time. Something so extravagant and massive has been thrown our way by Rockstar Games that it’s a task to handle.
Grand Theft Auto 5 speaks a lot about the developers’ sheer courage to do what they will to. As they put it, the protagonist would have looked quite silly if all the personality traits which Rockstar wanted to explore were to be granted to just one character. Hence, the decision to bring in three unique faces was taken. Michael and Trevor are middle-aged retired bank robbers whose lives are like two opposite sides of the coin. While one is living in a mansion with his dysfunctional family in a high-class neighborhood, the other spends his miserable life inside a trailer and makes money by selling methamphetamine. Franklin on the other hand, is a levelheaded kid who despises and wants to break away from the gang banging lifestyle he’s unwillingly being pushed into by his friends.
These three sketches may be extremely peculiar in terms of their character traits, but thanks to their archetypical lifestyles, they fit perfectly into the extravagant landscape of San Andreas which Rockstar has created this time around. Trevor’s anger issues provide for some of the most disturbing situations video games have ever seen. Playing as him infuses you with an internal conflict of whether to love or hate yourself for your (his) actions. His special ability too is based on his anger problems, allowing him to deal double the usual damage and take half of the same. Michael’s weakness is his family which he wishes hard to drag back out of ruins, but is helpless in the task. Franklin is working in the automobile repossession business, and is unsatisfied by the amount of paper he earns.
The driving point for the actions of these three characters is, as Rockstar rightfully puts it, the pursuit of the mighty dollar. It doesn’t take long for their existences to start depending upon one another, and GTA V then invites you into playing out their lives piece by piece, switching from one to another on the fly. During missions or otherwise, you can instantly shift from one character to another, and find them probably drunk, or getting thrown out of a strip club, or engaged in a police pursuit, or enjoying a smoke by the pier before you assume control of them. As much as it’s innovative, this three-protagonist formula is an extremely handy one as well.
Switching between characters provides a team-based environment, and it also lets you cut through those languid aspects of missions such as long drives and exhaustive shootouts. You either switch characters at will or are required to at some points, but in either which way, the game’s versatility increases twofold if not more by the three-protagonist approach. Grand Theft Auto 5 is by far the series’ most ambitious exploration of non-linear storytelling. Although your choices have little (wait for the credits to roll) to no impact on the final output, individual missions have been blessed with quite an open-ended approach. For instance, cutscenes will start off differently depending on which character among the three you trigger them with. Moreover, some missions also give you the choice to tackle them stealthily. That’s not all, you might miss out on a large amount of money if you’re too late on collecting it, and the game has three different endings depending on your actions.
As much as Rockstar has innovated, it has borrowed from its past games as well. The gun mechanics and an awesomely executed cover system shoot straight out of Max Payne 3 and so does Michael’s individual ability to go bullet time. Franklin’s special ability to slow down time while driving is something blatantly similar to Rockstar’s Midnight Club: Los Angeles’ Zone feature. Furthermore, Strangers missions from Red Dead Redemption become Strangers and Freaks in GTA V. These side missions are complemented well by the game’s dynamic optional objectives that appear on the map as you drive. You can choose whether or not to bring back someone’s stolen wallet. Whether or not to break open a cash-ridden police truck. Whether or not to pick up hitchhikers and either drop them at their homes or deliver them to a cannibal cult for money (only as Trevor). These distinctive random objectives might sometimes stray you away from your main missions, but even they’re at times too rewarding to give a miss. Strangers you help can be recruited to your heist clan, and at times they can result in a large amount of money being earned.
Grand Theft Auto 5’s prolific rendition of Los Santos and the surrounding country side is a class apart. The sprawling desert, the soaring mountains, the perfectly populated neighborhoods, all contribute towards turning this world into a pragmatic environment that shines from day to night. Navigating though this world isn’t a pain in the butt as well. Rockstar has made sure that moving from point A to B by air, by sea or by road is by no means a dull experience. The vehicle mechanics have received a complete overhaul for addressing complaints from GTA IV, and it’s hence that they feature faster accelerations, realistic damage and other enhancements, making them a treat to handle. However, it goes without saying that you’ll need to invest some time in order to get a hold of the vehicle handling in this game.
The main campaign of the title promptly intertwines heist missions with other objectives. The intricacies that these robberies bring with them only signify Rockstar’s genius at work. Heists are team-based, and hence you need to decide upon a crew to accompany you on them. Your choices should be based on a recce of the targets you’ll be conducting prior to every big score. Who you choose to handle particular tasks can be a matter of life or death for them, and this can result in that crew member being lost forever. A bigger choice furthermore is whether to embark on your heists in an all-guns-blazing fashion or head in stealthily. Both will have entirely different implications on your heists. These heists appear on the map periodically, and serve as the epitome of the game’s madness. They are the best showcase of Grand Theft Auto 5’s three protagonist formula.
Moving on, GTA V has this new ability which lets you replay all your completed missions almost anytime. As a motivation, the missions even have medals for how you fare in them, thus adding an Assassin’s Creed touch to the whole affair. Rockstar Games has taken long to learn from its past games, but it has finally added checkpoint saves that make life a lot easier for all Grand Theft Auto buffs. If you die in the middle or miss out on an objective, there’s no need to make that long drive back to the mission’s trigger point, as the game will save your progress at checkpoints, allowing you to start from the closest point from where things went wrong.
Rockstar’s open world balances insane as well as realistic in a discreet fashion. In fact, the massive scope of the game has been given a whole new dimension by the developers’ decision to focus on realism. The characters may no longer writhe in the same clothes all the time; they change their threads themselves when you’re not controlling them. Moreover, running too much makes them soaked with visible sweat. Their selfie-capable phones which feature replicas of iOS, Windows Phone and Android operating systems are constantly littered with texts, calls and emails. Even more realistic are GTA V’s exorbitant hospital bills which take blatant potshots at United States’ healthcare issues. And if you ever complained about the pure foolishness of the cops from previous Grand Theft Auto games, this title has covered that complaint as well.
The police in Grand Theft Auto 5 strictly mean business. Run over a civilian, and they’ll be out looking for you; try to get them off your tail by forcing them to crash in traffic and they’ll do the same to you; breathe easy that you’ve lost them and they’ll be right on to you the next moment. Cops are both a nuisance and a challenge in this new game. Even the smallest acts of random violence during free roam mode attract police attention, which is a hindrance to trademark GTA ethos. In fact, if there’s one gripe we had with this title it has to be the obstructions it endows to its freedom. You mark a point on your GPS to reach a place to perhaps go parachuting, or hunting, or racing for that matter, and by the time you reach the distance there are high possibilities of you having died at the hands of cops at least once, or having been run over by speeding vehicles on the highway or just having ended up reaching a completely different location in your bid to shake off the police.
It’s hence that we say that all the realism in Grand Theft Auto 5 comes at a price. But over time, you learn to get over these impediments, particularly because the game is so irresistible. Rockstar has infused character into each and every thing it has put into the title. The radio shows are at their hilarious best, while even the pedestrian chatter provides deep satire on the issues that face the United States. Dark humor and social statements exist in almost each and every aspect of San Andreas that the developers have covered. Rockstar’s GTA V is an absolute battering of post-recession era American stereotypes but the irony lies in this fact that even as you smirk at these stereotypes you are actually playing as three of them.
Creating an atmosphere that is both believable and extravagant at the same time is a feat the developers of this game have managed to achieve in an unbelievable fashion. The stunning graphics which manage to stay unscathed even in this massive a build-up of a game world make you wonder why it has taken this long for developers to extract such performance from current-gen machines. This game is a proud accomplishment in the technical department for Rockstar; its stable framerates, bug-free gameplay and cleverly incorporated tutorials ensure maximum enjoyment.
Grand Theft Auto Online
And then there’s GTA Online, an overly ambitious yet excellently executed multiplayer component which fits into the open world universe of San Andreas like water in an ocean. As an outsider entering the crime-filled streets of Los Santos a few months prior to the story of GTA V, you are presented with an aim of climbing up the crime charts and earning more and more money. There’s a genetics-based character building system which finalizes the player’s looks, but all the time you spend doing that seems to go to waste as the characters end up looking weird at the end of day, with their clothes being the only factor worth investing time in.
Once you enter the vast open world – which is the same one from the main game, albeit with some minor restrictions – you have the option of free roaming or indulging in the various different types of missions that are available out there. These range from racing vehicles, competing in deathmatches, cooperatively tackling campaign-like objectives and much more. You play these missions for leveling up, and you enter free roam mode to enjoy the benefits of having leveled up. Your earned money can be splurged on stuff like buying cars, purchasing homes and the likes. This is enough motivation to have you jump into mission after mission of the chaos that’s brought about when 16 people are allowed to populate the massive world that GTA V presents us with.
Other than anything, GTA Online is about scope; it’s about the possibilities that can follow the current ones. Although its initial launch was nothing short of a disaster, with characters disappearing, cars vanishing and what not, once stable, this multiplayer madness became a treat to revel in. The players too took time to understand the potential of this constantly evolving mode. The amount of discipline – leaving aside a few hooligans who still play spoilsport nonetheless – has increased a great deal. The atmosphere in GTA Online is as conducive to bringing you back into it as it is in the main game. As we continue our character’s progress through this developing ecosystem, we’re only seeing more and more fun on the horizon.
Final Verdict: GTA V is a big leap forward for the series in terms of storytelling. The three lives that Rockstar allows us to live are intense and complicated. Yet, their amalgamation results in a narrative that’s gripping and peculiar. And the witty writing just holds it all together like superglue. The massive sandbox world of San Andreas that Rockstar has created is an intelligent and maturely humorous portrayal of American ethos. And while there are minor hiccups brought about by some hindrances to the player’s freedom, the gameplay effortlessly manages to establish the three-protagonist formula as a success. Grand Theft Auto 5 is one of this generation’s most accomplished games, and you just cannot afford to miss out on this one.
Graphics: 10/10
Sounds: 10/10
Environments: 10/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Story: 10/10
Overall (not an average): 10/10