Grand Theft Auto V is the rare game that justifies its own scale. Rockstar North built a version of Los Santos — a sun-soaked metropolis based on Los Angeles, sitting inside the fictional state of San Andreas — and then filled it with three criminals whose stories keep folding back into each other. It came out in 2013. It is still worth playing.
Michael, Franklin and Trevor
The single-player story follows retired bank robber Michael De Santa (Ned Luke), street gangster Franklin Clinton (Shawn Fonteno) and drug dealer and gunrunner Trevor Philips (Steven Ogg) as they attempt heists under pressure from a corrupt government agency and powerful criminals.
The plot starts in 2004, with a failed robbery in Ludendorff, North Yankton, that leaves Michael presumed dead. Nine years later he is living in Los Santos under an alias, bound by a secret deal with FIB agent Dave Norton (Julian Gamble). Franklin works for a corrupt car salesman and meets Michael while trying to fraudulently repossess his son’s car.
Trevor, living in squalor in rural Blaine County, hears of a jewellery store heist and recognises Michael’s work. He had believed the FIB killed Michael back in Ludendorff. That reunion is the engine of the whole game, and it is the best thing in it.
Heists, a Wanted Meter and Grand Theft Auto Online
Players complete missions — linear scenarios with set objectives — to move the story forward, then roam freely outside them. The map covers the San Andreas countryside, Blaine County and Los Santos, and it is much larger than earlier entries. It opens up fully after the prologue, though story progress unlocks more content.
Combat mixes melee attacks, firearms and explosives, with auto-aim and a cover system. Health regenerates to its halfway point; players respawn at hospitals when it runs out. Commit crimes and a “wanted” meter fills in the HUD. At the maximum five-star level, police helicopters and SWAT teams swarm to lethally dispatch players.
up to 30 players engage in a variety of different cooperative and competitive game modes
That is Grand Theft Auto Online, the multiplayer mode, and it is the part that outlived everything else.
The camera toggle between third and first person, the fixed-wing aircraft added to handle the map’s size, the switching between three leads mid-mission — none of it is decoration. It is the reason the heists land.
What matters most is Trevor. Steven Ogg’s performance is the one piece of this game that could not be swapped out for another. Michael’s family collapse and Franklin’s climb are well-built, but familiar. Trevor is the risk that paid off.
The satire of self-help gurus, starlets and cheap reality TV has aged into something closer to a documentary. The driving and shooting are solid rather than special. But the structure — three lives, one story, and a city big enough to lose all of them in — still holds.
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