Rockstar announces Grand Theft Auto V, but where does the series head next?

At around lunchtime yesterday, Rockstar officially confirmed the existence of a game many of us assumed it was working on in any case: Grand Theft Auto V. It’s more than three years since GTA IV, a game which managed to sell more than six million copies and gross more than $500m in revenue. In most senses of the word, that fourth entry was a videogame blockbuster, making a fifth GTA all but inevitable.

Now, two things surprised me about Rockstar’s announcement. The first was that it seemed so muted and casual – the official website features nothing more than a title graphic and a launch date for the first trailer, 2nd November. These morsels of information aside, nothing more has been officially announced.

The second surprising thing was the mixed reaction among some people on Twitter – in many cases, the response was complete apathy. The usual jokes and sarcasm aside, the consensus among many was that the series had hit its peak with San Andreas, and was provided with better storytelling and visual fidelity in GTA IV.

The sheer completeness of GTA IV does pose an important question: if it’s not to repeat itself, where does Rockstar take its sandbox crime simulator next? After all, the revolutionary Grand Theft Auto III, which took the series from its top-down beginnings and into the format we now recognise today, is now almost a decade old.

Since GTA III, the series has inarguably undergone a process of refinement rather than revolutionary change, along much the same lines as the Zelda franchise has after the great leap forward that was The Ocarina Of Time back in 1998 (one could argue, in fact, that GTA III relied on some of the innovations that Ocarina introduced, but we won’t go into that here).

Given that this latest GTA is a full-blown sequel rather than a colon-subtitle expansion like Vice City or San Andreas, Rockstar must surely have a definite setting and roster of characters in mind that will set GTA V apart from GTA IV. But will it simply warm over the usual fetch-and-carry missions, shoot-outs and criminal exploits of its predecessors, or strike out with something new and unexpected?

What’s significant about GTA V is that, according to current rumours, it’ll be released in 2012, meaning that, barring any shock announcements from Microsoft or Sony, it’s being developed for the current generation of consoles. If this is really the case, what more can Rockstar wring from the aging architecture of the 360 and PS3? Grand Theft Auto IV was such a stark improvement on GTA III in part because of the technical possibilities the then-relatively-new generation of consoles could provide.

In 2008, Liberty City felt more like a living, breathing metropolis than in any game before it, and simply driving around and taking in the sights became an addictive pastime in itself. But that was three years ago, and we’re intrigued to see whether Rockstar can capture our imagination in the same way twice, and on the same generation of consoles.

The other possibility, though, is that GTA V will become the first big release for Sony’s PlayStation Vita. Rockstar have shown support for handheld devices before, with both Chinatown Wars and Liberty City Stories providing great, miniaturised approximations of the GTA experience. Could GTA V become the Vita’s first killer app, and the first major, full-blown GTA sequel on a handheld? It’s not too likely, but it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility, either.

And then there’s the Wii U, Nintendo’s next console. That’s due out next year, too – could it be that GTA V will be a major launch title for that system? Its touch pad control system could provide the developer with some intriguing new possibilities, at the very least, and its presence on the Wii U would provide a strong signal to core gamers that Nintendo are finally courting their interest again.

All this, of course, is conjecture – something that’s all over the Internet in the absence of anything official from Rockstar. There have been excited whisperings about alternate cities, time periods and returning characters, and even the rumoured possibility of play switching between more than one protagonist. The new GTA logo, with its dollar-bill inspired five numeral, may hint at a post-financial crisis theme – Rockstar has never shied away from satire in the past, so such a theme isn’t an unlikely one.

With a rumoured budget of around $100m, GTA IV was among the most expensive games ever made, and the critical adulation surrounding it also meant that it was among the most acclaimed games ever made. Rockstar, then, will have to do something truly special if they’re to generate the same level of hype and dizzying revenue.

Right now, there are two things we do know for sure: one, that next week’s trailer will answer at least some of the questions we’ve been asking; and two, that Rockstar are great at building huge sandbox worlds. Red Dead Redemption was proof enough of that.

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