Here is a breakdown of the incredible first GTA 5 gameplay trailer.

The trailer showed us a close up of everything from the gameplay mechanics to all the different new features Rockstar has added. Right away, you notice that there is a resemblance to San Andreas, and this is a good thing! For some reason, Rockstar took a step back when it comes to features in GTA IV, a move that puzzled everyone. Why remove so many great features? Though with the new game engine, it was understandable. And overall, GTA IV was still an incredible game.

For me, the greatest thing about San Andreas was the contrast. You started off in a back alley of Los Santos, spent the first quarter of the game helping street gangs and rappers, and riding around in a concrete jungle. Next thing you know you're driving up a mountain after just leaving a trailer park listening to "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man".

Rockstar nailed the atmosphere changes perfectly. Even driving down the highway to the separate cites in the game felt like a slow progression into the country side, desert and city. The music was fantastic, with going along with the environments, and , for me at least, seemed to match the plot perfectly. I still remember driving across the desert listening to "Running Down a Dream".

It looks like Rockstar managed to keep that GTA feel while introducing a bunch of new features.



GTA V is packed with so many things to do, it's mind boggling.. but let's start with how the graphics look, the new RAGE engine and the cinematic style graphics are looking really good, and incredibly detailed. And let's not forget, this probably isn't even the finished product, they will still continue to polish the game until its release, so it could look even better.

The massive game world is beautiful and diverse, you can see it when the camera zooms out to show more of the world, Rockstar is really good at details in games, and this is a perfect example of that. There are animals in the wilderness, underwater areas to explore, and much more. Also I have noticed the "blurryness" of GTA IV is gone, and the graphics look clean and crisp. The blur was one of my biggest problems with GTA IV, so I'm glad they got rid of it! Don't get me wrong, the graphics in GTA IV were incredible, for its time, but there was just something about the backgrounds that didn't gel. In GTA V, it looks completely different, and much more improved.

As the camera zoomed out over what I assume is "Mount Chillad" the biggest mountain in the game, you get a sense of the scope the huge game world has. Imagine base jumping from the top, and online multiplayer at the top of the mountain! And once again just like in San Andreas, it looks like Rockstar has captured the different areas of the game. (Urban wasteland, to the abandoned mountains, and then back to an urban jungle and everywhere in between.)

One thing that has really struck me is the UI. It's beautiful, crisp and very minimal. I was surprised to see a rectangular minimap instead of the usual circlular, I suppose we've become quite accustomed to the radar-esque ellipse.

The trailer also shows us how fluid it is when you are switching between the three (Michael, Fanklin and Trevor) protagonists in the game, and taught us that the narrative is transformed into one story, and the structure of individual missions. We will be able to cut between vantage points to gain advantage over the enemies. Although I loved the missions in previous GTA games, many, if not most, felt repetitive.

Here is a video showing the fluid character switching in GTA V: (Note: Sorry for not just embedding them. too many gifs would cause the page to freeze)



This time around, Rockstar is promising more diversity and intensity in missions, so if you replay the game, you won't have the same result when you replay a certain mission. I just hope that we won't be forced to switch characters, and if we want to stick with one, we can do just that. After all, isn't the GTA series all about freedom? I also noticed that each character has stats that make them useful for different scenarios, a few of the categories included breath, shooting and special.

Vehicle Customization is back! (Sorry for the quality, its a direct screenshot from youtube)

On the topic of features, everything you could think of from San Andreas is back, and then some. Bicycles, mini games (like golf an tennis), planes, ocean diving, customizable cars, animal hunting, bounties, sky diving, parachuting, and more. The gunplay was also shown, and it looks like they improved on the GTA IV shooting mechanics by a lot, and made it a lot more fluid and in depth.

It's nice to see character appearance customization, vehicle modding and small side quests such as stock trading, bounties and animal hunting. I also noticed that they used the Red Dead Redemption weapon wheel, which in my book, is a great move. Switching weapons in GTA IV wasn't too bad, but the weapon wheel would have been a lot more useful. (Thanks to modcaleb from reddit for this image)

Weapon Wheel from Red Dead Redemption

I bet there is a lot they didn't show as well, the same thing happened before SA was released, once we got to play the game, we discovered so many other things Rockstar didn't tell us would be in the game. Remember the jetpack?! And good ol' Area 52.

In the end, it looks like Rockstar took everything good about San Andreas, GTA IV, and Red Dead Redemption and improved on it! And it's great to know that they are trying to make the game more replayable instead of making it linear like GTA IV. Now we just need a good story, improved multiplayer and mission variety as they have shown in this video to go along with all of this and this will easily be a 10/10 game in my book, it's just too bad that this is going to be the longest two months ever!

While we wait, check out some other new GTA V screenshots:

Also here are a few other things from the gameplay video you may have missed.

Stats are back (RPG stats like in San Andreas)

Exploring the depths

• Players can carry multiple weapons
• You can tow things with your vehicles (like a boat)
• Tennis and Golf made an appearance
• Skydiving and parachutes
• Buying properties and clothes
• Diving underwater (and scubadiving)
• GTA Online was teased, but not much information there. Looks like up to 16 (or maybe 32) players online
• Bounties
• Customizing cars
• Trailer was running on the PS3 version

Bicycles Are Back

So what do you think? Is what you have seen of GTA V so far what you expected? Post a comment below and let me know. Also I may have missed some things or made a mistake or two... if I did, please let me know in the comments. ..Thank you for reading!

Update: Now that GTA 5 is out, check out our comprehensive GTA 5 section!