Eight-and-a-half years on from Grand Theft Auto 5’s release at the twilight of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, the world has changed. Games have changed, humour has changed, the public has changed, the developers have changed – not just those who worked in GTA5 but, more than likely, the makeup of developer Rockstar North itself. And in the ensuing years of service-game evolution and osmosis, the game’s more visible half, GTA Online, has changed an awful lot too.
Against all that, GTA5 itself – the base game, its story of post-financial crisis American impotence and ennui, and its peevish, sporadically offensive world – seems oddly static, a stoically flash-frozen slice of time, pickled and jarred and perfectly preserved, waiting for you to return.
The temptation, justifiably, is to look at GTA5’s dated, equal-opportunity-roasting approach to humour, the uniquely teenage smugness and simplicity of its worldview – the kind we all probably had at some point, where everyone but you’s a fool or a sheep, especially your parents, your teachers, the politicians, the cops – and reduce the entire game to just that. To start and stop with the way it chases Scorsese and misses The Sopranos (Michael’s mid-life angst is clearly inspired by Tony S, but GTA5 itself often feels like Anthony Jnr. after he discovers Nietzsche and responds to getting caught driving his parents’ car with: “God is dead.” The Joey Barton phase of existential philosophy).