The Call of Duty franchise catches a lot of flack for its yearly iterations, few of which have introduced much in the way of game changers over the past six years until Treyarch really shook up its campaign structure in Black Ops 2 last year. In the previous generation, Grand Theft Auto had three games in a two year span and managed to go noticeably bigger and better each time out. I would assume that point of reference has something to do with unrest regarding Call of Duty.
That said, GTA V, coming five years and change after we first entered GTA IV‘s high-definition Liberty City, is an evolution for the current-gen GTA universe about on par with Call of Duty‘s over the same span. And the most immediately noticeable way it has evolved is the result of Rockstar finally implementing an idea Infinity Ward had a decade ago: multiple player characters.
Locking a story into a single perspective isn’t a bad idea, but it is what we’ve gotten for most of our gaming lives. Call of Duty has often shoved us into various bodies all over the world, and I’ve found that experience to be quite compelling. Having that occur within a GTA game is bliss, it turns out, in no small part due to the player options being so utterly distinct from each other. Franklin is a petty criminal working for a scam artist car dealer; Michael is retired professional stick-up man with a family to fight with and protect, perhaps what you could imagine Tommy Vercetti is like these days; and Trevor is a meth dealer who makes Walter White look like a chill bro, and also a representation of what Fox News pundits think the average GTA player is like or will be someday. The game really takes off when Trevor is introduced, I should point out, as his first few missions are essentially a drug-fueled war on his competitors in the deserts that is quite thrilling, even while it’s despotic.
The way Rockstar swings you around from man to man during combined missions, particularly when each of them has completely different tasks, really aids the narrative. You don’t need to have one guy who does everything in a big mission now, and that aids believability and simply makes a big score seem way more cool.
The plot is familiar, with small crimes leading to bigger ones and government agents getting their hooks into the protagonists before they eventually take charge of their own destinies. But the dynamic of having three protagonists instead of one makes it feel like a more fresh experience than it truly is. In that way, they satisfy the more anal contingents in the fandom who want the game to be the same as it was before, and it helps bring along those who prefer forward momentum.
There are some other aspects of the game that further contribute to the aforementioned evolution, too. Specifically, there are six big heists in the game, and each of them has two varied approaches, and you can choose “rent-a-hoods” to help out, with who you pick dictating how well it turns out and ambient events, including random Red Dead-style “he stole my money” things as well as some cool scripted ones.
One example of a scripted event came when I was traveling through the woods and came upon a bunch of dead bodies arranged in such a way as to suggest they had a Mexican standoff that went poorly for everyone. Nearby was a case containing $25,000 next to a dying man who warned me against taking it. A few minutes later some Chinese gangsters jumped me and took me out. Amazing. Los Santos and Blaine County make up a living world in which things are actually happening that have nothing to do with the main plot. Things like these, one would assume, will factor greatly into GTA Online.
But beneath the new stuff is the same old GTA. Worse, though, is that Rockstar’s jokey social commentary has seemingly jumped the shark while also strangely missing some really obvious beats. It has always been just this side of taking that leap, but here it has gone from laughing at everyone to being angry at everyone as the last remaining bit of subtlety has been abandoned. Meanwhile, one mission has you plant a bomb that blows someone up on live television, and yet in a story in which a PMC is operating on American soil and tanks are deployed against you during a bank robbery, there is no reference to that act as terrorism.
In its own pocket of the world, however, GTA V‘s drama is mostly successful, and I admire the way our heroes seem to accumulate opponents without resolving one conflict before moving on to the next. By the time we near the end, there are basically four antagonists. Though truly the real the real conflict is among Michael, Franklin and Trevor themselves.
Looking back on my week with the game, it’s clear that GTA V isn’t really moving the medium forward or altering the way we look at games, but that’s not what blockbusters do. What they do is provide big action and good drama, and GTA V delivers on those and provides a world that seems as if it will make for a compelling online experience next month.
Final Verdict
8.5 out of 10
A copy of the game was purchased by the reviewer at retail.
