Key Takeaways From Grand Theft Auto V

And with a gravel-voiced narrator declaring “Why did I move here? I guess it was the weather…” Rockstar Games unveiled the first trailer for the San Andreas, California-based Grand Theft Auto V at noon EST today, its existence confirmed by the company merely a week ago. As is their wont, Rockstar plays their cards close to their chest, a deft balance when managing a franchise that has sold in excess of 100 million units, while remaining the premier lightning rod for both controversy and glowing praise. We’re here to break down the key takeaways for what’s been revealed, what’s unanswered and what to expect from the upcoming title.

The period setting is the present day, akin to the previous installment (set/released in 2008), but with Rockstar North trading out the gritty realism of GTA IV’s homage to New York City for glossy realism in the open-expanses and clear skies of San Andreas, Rockstar’s spin on the Golden State. Our previous trip to California in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released in 2004 (listen, if this gets confusing just refer here for the orderly timeline), included three major cities: Los Santos (Los Angeles), San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas), not to mention Vinewood (Hollywood) and large swaths of desert (Death Valley) and countryside (Big Sur). Judging on the locales presented in the trailer, it’s safe to say all locations will be returning, this time with the dense detail and scope of IV. GTA V marks the third time Rockstar Studios has returned to California in the past eight years, perhaps with Team Bondi’s post-war L.A. Noire laying the groundwork for the expansive map and hyper-realistic facial animations we’ll see featured in V.

And oh, the places we’ll go: hiking up the breathtaking Santa Lucia Mountains, jet-skiing through Pacific industrial parks, driving past SoCal’s wind turbines, speeding down Rodeo Drive—even the notorious smog and congestion that overlays the Los Angeles skyline are lovingly-rendered. The fact that the footage clearly all captured in-game, meaning no usage of cinematics or prerendered animations, makes the power of Rockstar’s updated RAGE 2.0 engine all the more impressive and the wait (no release date alluded to—not even 2012!) all the more burdensome to bear (all signs point to a mid-to-late 2012 release, however).

One thing that won’t be returning is the off-the-wall wackiness of GTA: San Andreas, with its jetpacks, DDR minigames and general over-the-top dam-exploding, motorcycle-stunting outrageousness. Sam and Dan Houser, the architects (and brothers) behind Rockstar North and co-writers of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, fashion themselves storytellers, and justifiably so are seeking to tell a compelling, valuable narrative against the backdrop of classic (think “classy” over “crazy”) GTA.

Two officially-unconfirmed but expected story devices we can expect from this new title are multiple protagonists and branching morality. The rags-to-riches empire-building storylines of yore, shown through these singular third-person prisms (of Claude/Tommy/CJ/Niko) will be swapped out for a The Wire-esque multi-tiered exploration of California. Rockstar is tearing down this core vocabulary of our understanding of games—the 1:1 relationship between the player and the onscreen avatar. The Houser brothers must, by this point, see this unquestioned device as a storytelling barrier.

Game designers have tried and failed this previous decade to expand the audience's mind from this core conceit. The Arbiter in Halo 2 was met with frustrated countdowns to playing Master Chief again, and profuse apologies from the company. The criss-crossing war-is-hell storylines in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare devolved into camp and self-parody in Modern Warfare 2.

Perhaps Episodes from Liberty City, the alternate character expansion packs for IV, was a test run for mainlining this idea? What better way to showcase The World (the real main character of any GTA title) than through this tiered journey through the city's variant locations and subcultures? With the inclusion of actual moral decision building to branching storylines, in ways more profound than Red Dead Redemption‘s permanent “wanted” annoyance or GTA IV’s false dichotomic ending, Rockstar could craft an unparalleled experience, allowing the player to orchestrate their very own GTA narrative.

The blogs are all atwitter, of course, with identity speculation as to the characters shown—is that the retiring criminal/aspiring family-man Tommy Vercetti from Vice City? (Probably not, we’d recognize Ray Liotta’s voiceover.) Or perhaps Carl Johnson from GTA: San Andreas we see mugging for the camera? (More likely—it’d be crushing if the fan-favorite wasn’t included in some capacity, especially after fans vocalized their disappointment that IV had little-to-no ties to the greater universe).

Furthermore, what platforms will GTA V be released for? Safe bets are PS3 and Xbox 360 and eventually PC/Mac, there’s little compelling evidence for the title to support other hardware but other guesses include the PS Vita and the forthcoming Wii U.

We look forward to the Houser brother’s dark satirism sprung in full force on present-day California—some glimpses from the trailer include rampant foreclosures, unchecked homelessness, oil drilling within earshot of LA’s downtown and image-obsessed hardbodies flexing at the beach—all coexisting unharmoniously. Finally the logo itself—a subtle but brilliant stroke of graphic design, which shamelessly evokes American currency—the pumping lifeblood of Grand Theft Auto.