Grand Theft Auto: Past, Present and Future

With the first official trailer for Grand Theft Auto V hitting the internet last week, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the series so far and examine both the weak and strong points of the past games and make some hopeful predictions about what we could see when Grand Theft Auto V is released. For simplicity’s sake, I’m only going to talk about the main games in the series, leaving out most of the expansions and handheld releases. If you have a particular connection to any of the games that I skip over, I’d like to hear about it, so feel free to mention them in the comments.

Grand Theft Auto

I think it’s safe to say that for a pretty sizable segment of Grand Theft Auto fans, 2001′s Grand Theft Auto III is essentially the first game of the series, but for the rest of us, the original Grand Theft Auto was our introduction to the violence, the humor, the destruction and the ‘go anywhere’ feel that’s made the series famous. Although it’s sort of ugly and awkward compared to the later games, Grand Theft Auto (Released in 1997) was inventive and funny, both of which made up for the obvious deficiencies (Which are particularly noticeable looking back). The base game was set in three fictional cities, each with a name that would become much more well known in the later games over the next several years; Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas. It was followed by two expansion packs that changed the setting (in both time and space) of the game: London 1969 and London 1961. The original game is still available from Rockstar Games for FREE. You can get it here.

Grand Theft Auto 2

While I had played a bit of the original Grand Theft Auto, GTA2 hooked me like few games ever have. The second game plays very much like the first, you run around answering phones, doing work of an unsavory nature from a top down view of the city, but the graphics and controls were cleaned up quite a bit from the first game, making the game as a whole feel more solid. This game also increased the vertical growth of the city around you, adding ramps and staircases that can lead to some of the rooftops around the city.

Arguably though, the best part of this game was the way the gangs worked. As you played through the game, you work your way through three different maps, each representing a different district; industrial, residential and downtown. Each of these maps had three different gangs, each of which controlled a different area of the map. You could do jobs for any of the gangs in each district, as long as you had a good reputation with them. The problem is that as you did jobs for one of the gangs, your level of respect would drop with the other gangs in that district. It was fairly easy to increase the respect again though. Just turn on your former employers by going into their territory and opening fire on them. The missions were more varied than you’d think, given the technical limitations of the game. It’s not all just driving and shooting. As I recall, one mission for the Russians in the industrial district was to find cheap meat to feed their troops. Funny thing about finding meat. If you drive a bus and make regular stops, meat just seems to find you. Next stop, hotdog factory!

This one too is now completely free from Rockstar Games. Get it here.

Grand Theft Auto III

Grand Theft Auto III was a hugely ambitious project at the time of it’s release and it still holds up today. I distinctly remember seeing early screens and thinking “There is no way this game is going to be as good as it sounds.” GTA2 was still fresh in my mind and from playing through it, I knew how big of a game it really was, so it seemed impossible that the jump to a 3D, third person view, as fun as it sounded, would ever work for an open world game like that, at least not without drastically cutting back on the size of the city or the variety of the vehicles or something. Nevertheless, partially fueled by my pride in being such a huge fan of such a relatively obscure game as GTA2, I bought GTA III on the first day it was released and as I played, all of my doubts vanished. Not only had they done what they said they would do, they added so much new stuff that GTA III ended up eating all of my video game time for the next year. I finished the main story relatively early, but between searching for hidden packages, stunt jumps, completing the stolen cars lists and just generally running around causing chaos, it stayed in my regular rotation for much longer than expected. I never got to 100%, but I got pretty damn close.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

With the massive success of GTA III, a follow up was a no-brainer, so the next year saw the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. For the first time, the main character of the game had a name and a voice, and that voice was none other than Ray Liotta. He wasn’t the only celebrity to do a voice in the game, either. GTA III had a fair share of well known actors, but perhaps as a result of the success of GTA III, Vice City was able to feature a host of established actors, several of them playing caricatures of themselves, or at least caricatures of roles that they’re known for. The in game radio stations too were filled with well known songs in Vice City (as long as you’re familiar with ’80 music, that is), while the GTA III soundtrack, though good, was mostly made up of relatively unknown artists. Starting with this game, the vertical reach of the city again became a point of attention, since this game added helicopters and seaplanes to the vehicle pool.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

I could really write an entire article on GTA: San Andreas, so I’ll try to keep this brief.

2004′s GTA: San Andreas was set in 1992 in a fictional state containing three separate cities, Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas, each one an analogue for a real west coast city, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, respectively. Grand Theft Auto III focused mostly on the east coast mafia world, Vice City was about the cocaine influx in Miami in the ’80s and San Andreas followed the story of C.J., a young man in the crime ridden streets of LA during the height of gangsta rap and crack cocaine. Despite a story that was sometimes hokey and sometimes straight up goofy, San Andreas was easily the best of the series at the time, and maybe still is. Even with all of the additions of the previous games, San Andreas was the first of the series to really show me what might be possible for the future of the series. The additions to the already familiar formula were numerous, a wide array of fully functional aircraft, barbershops, tattoo parlors, gyms, casino games, wilderness areas between the cities, small towns here and there, turf wars, and for the first time, your character could swim and dive. And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I’ll admit, there was a time when I really thought I’d never need to play another video game ever again. It had pretty much everything I needed in a game in one place.

The game continued to change as you played, the focus and the goals of the character driving you from one city to the next, before eventually circling back to C.J.’s home neighborhood in the final game missions, during the infamous LA riots. What I’m getting at, is that this game is a masterpiece of the genre. I wish I could say that you can get this one for free from Rockstar Games too, but it is down to $14.99 on Steam, which is not a bad price at all for a game that will keep you entertained for years if you let it.

Grand Theft Auto IV

In the four years between the release of San Andreas and the release of GTA IV in 2008, I had spent hours picturing where they could go from the last game. There was a mountain in San Andreas! There was a redwood forest! There was base jumping! GTA IV was going to be released on the next generation console, so the possibilities were endless. It could be an entire Grand Theft Auto country this time around! Maybe I set my expectations as bit high, but still, I was disappointed with GTA IV. It’s not a bad game, there are a lot of things I liked about it. For one thing, I liked the main character, Niko Bellic, maybe more than any of the other previous main characters. While he’s capable of crime and violence just like his predecessors, he’s the first one to really seem remorseful.

This game was also a massive improvement over the previous games, graphically speaking. It was almost as much of a jump in graphic quality as the change from GTA2 to GTA III. It was clearly a next generation game. The problem was that all of the stuff that they had been adding little by little with each of the previous games was stripped out. It was almost as if the game was focusing less on the fun that that the series had become known for and instead focused on the story and the grittiness and realism of the newly designed Liberty City. GTA IV was met with positive reviews at release and at first, even I was singing it’s praises, but it didn’t take long before I just wished I was playing San Andreas again. Again, it’s not a terrible game by any means, but it does stand as the only GTA game in this list that I didn’t finish the main story. I just got bored, which is something one should never be able to say about a GTA game. There were two expansions released for GTA IV and while I’ve heard that they definitely helped the game, I haven’t played them. I still have my copy of GTA IV, so maybe one of these days, I’ll jump online and give the expansions a try.

Grand Theft Auto V

Which brings us up to last week and the Grand Theft Auto V trailer. Direct Geek’s own Zak Grim recently provided a first look and an analysis of the trailer here. There’s no official word yet on the game’s features and changes, but there’s a lot in the trailer to get excited about. For one thing, the trailer and presumably the game, is once again set in San Andreas.

The return to San Andreas could be a sign that Rockstar Games is taking a step back into more familiar territory. It’s no secret that San Andreas is the fan favorite of the series, so what else could be returning? Judging from the mountains and outdoor shots, there’s also a possibility that there might be some more of the open wilderness that was such a fun place to kill time in San Andreas. There are also a few shots of airplanes, which could mean we’ll once again be able to fly the friendly skies. I can’t believe I just used that stupid phrase.

This is all speculation of course, but if it’s true, it should mean good news for GTA fans, but also the loss of months upon months of their real lives to this world of criminals, addicts and psychopaths.

I can’t wait.