QuantumSquid
Member
I first played through GTA V back in 2013 when it originally released on Xbox 360 and PS3. I loved playing through the story mode, but didn't really get into the side activities of the singleplayer or GTA Online.
This year, I had the pleasure of replaying the game on PC, and I have to say, my thoughts on the game haven't changed one bit. This is still one of my favorite games of all time, and I firmly believe that it is one of the best games ever made. Let's talk about why.
First of all, the story. Every single mission except for one (if you've played the game, you know the one) is enjoyable, and the characters are stupidly well-acted. I feel the same way about the characters in GTA V as I do about the characters in games like The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 - they are so well-acted, and so well animated as a result of motion capture, that I don't even think of them as videogame characters and I just start seeing them as people. It's unreal to me how far we have come in the past 20 years when it comes to this sort of stuff, and I have to wonder how we're ever going to meaningfully improve upon it from here. Of course, the dialogue is also very well-written and successfully sells the three main characters of the story as the terrible people they are. The story creates this weird feeling, at least for me, where I don't really care about the characters' individual well-being, but I care immensely about their relationships with one another. I feel sorry for them for being such awful human beings, to the point where I want to see them be good friends because if these assholes can't get along with each other, there's no way they are gonna get along with anyone else.
The ending (the real ending, as I like to call it) finishes off the game perfectly in exactly the way you would expect from criminals like Michael, Franklin and Trevor. It puts a smile on my face every time I see them finally put an end to the tools who have been giving them the runaround from the very beginning.
Next I'd like to discuss the graphics and the world that Rockstar have created for GTA V. It is abundantly clear from playing the PC version that the 7th generation consoles were seriously holding this game back, because this is still a fantastic-looking game in 2016. There is just a ridiculous level of detail everywhere, from the foliage to the car models to the road textures to the visible difference between materials used on people's clothes. When I'm driving across the desert and I see the sunset in the distance, it really makes me marvel at how beautiful the game is despite being a few years old now, and I feel that way too when I'm cruising along a Los Santos highway on a cloudy day and the rain starts pouring in and you can see the droplets bouncing off the asphalt. It's not the absolute best-looking open-world game on PC (The Witcher 3 and its recent expansion are in the running for that award), but it takes its almost-but-not-quite-realistic style and runs with it, and that approach clearly pays off. I wish I had taken better screenshots during my playthrough so I could properly show you what I mean.
There's so much more to say about this game, but I'll save it. What do you folks think of the game? Did it impress you as much as it impressed me way back in September 2013? I would love to hear people's opinions on this title, positive and negative.
