What The Latest Game in “Grand Theft Auto” Series Does Differently
Published at | Updated at
Rockstar Games(NEW YORK) — Grand Theft Auto V, one of the year’s most eagerly awaited video games, was released Tuesday for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
A GameStop spokesperson told ABC News that more than 4,000 of its stores had midnight releases, with 1,500 of them going so far as to have a midnight launch party with prizes and food trucks.
Even before the latest game came out, the series had already sold more than 125 million total copies worldwide.
But other than being the latest entry in a successful video game series, what does GTAV bring to the table that’s new? Players will see the improvements in the gameplay, like how a gun shoots or how a car handles. But perhaps the biggest change is that players are given not one but three characters to wreak havoc in the fictional city of Los Santos.
Jim Sterling, the reviews editor for video game news outlet Destructoid.com, said that developer Rockstar Games also put more emphasis on the playable characters themselves, rather than have them passively or stoically react to the world around them.
“It’s more like the supporting characters react to the heroes than the other way around,” he said.
One of those characters, Trevor, will certainly elicit reactions from both the denizens of Los Santos and activists in the real world critical of video game violence. According to Sterling, he epitomizes every negative thing that anti-video game activists see in the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
“He’s a depraved, psychotic, omnisexual sociopath,” he said. “I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t ruffle a few feathers.”
Sterling sees it as reflective of pop culture today.
“There is a real flavor of The Sopranos or Mad Men in this game,” he said. “In American television, there are a lot of shady characters with questionable motivations.”
However, plenty of pop culture references are explicitly made within Los Santos itself.
“There is also a meth cook named Chef that looks like Walter White from Breaking Bad,” said Sterling.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio