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The curtain has been lifted from Grand Theft Auto V, but how much can we really get from one minute and 24 seconds of pans over palm trees?
Quite a bit, it turns out, if you're willing to pick through the thing for details like a school nurse with a lice comb.
Los Santos stories
- GTA V will take place in Los Santos, the very same caricature of Los Angeles which appeared in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It's tough to tell whether the game's landscape will be limited to the city and its neighborhoods or if it will have a much wider scope, like the previous California-centric GTA.
- The city seems to have had a similar transformation as Liberty City did between Grand Theft Auto III and IV, with the environment much more closely resembling its object of mimickry/mockery.
- Again like GTA IV, the time period seems to be modern as opposed to the early `90s motif of GTA: SA.
Fly the fatal skies
- Planes are back! A notable exclusion from GTA IV, the Shamal in particular seems to be pictured swooping low over the Los Santos skyline. No guarantees that it will be playable, but it would be a serious faux pas to play it up without letting players climb into the cockpit.
- A few scenes of huge vistas show the terrain as very different from the oft-claustrophobic alleyways and skyscrapers of Liberty City. Mountainous terrain and far-stretching farmland should give players a good amount of use for their rediscovered pilot wings.
- Natural Motion's Euphoria system, which gave the characters in GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption their partially procedurally-animated animations, seems to still be in effect. Only a handful of titles have capitalized on Euphoria since its release, but whenever I play a serious shooter belief-suspended by bizarre ragdoll physics I can't help but hope it takes off.
American dreams deferred
- The trailer has a single narrator and doesn't dwell on any one character for more than a few scenes. Judging by his voice and a few close-up shots, it seems a safe bet that GTA V will have the above middle-aged white male as a protagonist.
- Fleeing from a life of crime to try to find some semblance of normality is a bit of a rut for Rockstar Games. So more than a few eyebrows were raised when it became clear a lead character would once again don the American-dream-seeker's mantle worn by Max Payne, Carl Johnson, John Marston, and Niko Bellic.
- Notice that I never called the pictured protagonist the main character? That's because some are hoping Rockstar will take a cue from the success of Episodes from Liberty City and play out multiple narratives in the space of the main game. At least one other character, a young black man, appears at multiple points in the trailer doing some distinctly player-like things.
Social sandbox
- Rockstar has never been afraid to rip a few story arcs from the headlines. GTA V shows no sign of abatement as its first, brief trailer takes plenty of time to flatly juxtapose the glamor of the LA lifestyle with the victims of its exploitation.
- Shantytowns, migrant workers laboring in detestable conditions, and foreclosed homes all make an appearance where exploding helicopters ought to be in most trailers.
- Those who hoped Rockstar would drop the bleakness presented in GTA IV for the more fun-focused world view typical to earlier games in the franchise might be barking up the wrong tree.
See anything of note in the trailer I didn't catch? Wondering why just when you think you're out, your wacky criminal friends always pull you back in? Let me know in the comments and we can obsess over it together — at least until the next bit of info is meted out by the teaspoon.