In the reviews of recent weeks we have never stopped saying it: it is right behind the generational changes that consoles are able to give the best of themselves, squeezed to the last drop by developers now safe after years of working on the same hardware architectures. And if, as in the case of a title like Grand Theft Auto, thanks to the stratospheric sales projections, the developers find millionaire budgets worthy of the best Hollywood blockbusters at their disposal, you will understand that there is almost no limit to what is possible to achieve. This is the case of GTA V, the fifth chapter of the award-winning and never too much chat saga created by Rockstar Games, which after five long years of waiting finally arrives on our consoles: anticipating from now on that what we faced has greatly exceeded long our expectations, we give you our personal welcome to Los Santos!
Was it really worth waiting all these years for the new GTA? Of course yes!
Not the usual script
The big news of this GTA, we have known for months now, is the presence of three main characters. Never has the choice been more appropriate: the three personalities and the superb characterization of the characters - which we point out to be excellent also for non-protagonists and for extras - knows how to satisfy the tastes of any type of player, while giving the plot a variety and a depth never seen before. Here in the editorial office, the GTA fans who were convinced that the charisma of Tommy Vercetti could never be equaled had to change their minds: the three protagonists that we will shortly go to identify collect all the characteristics of the various Tommy, Nico, CJ and on. saying, in an explosive cocktail of situations and moods that keep you glued to the screen until the last available mission.
There are three new faces in GTA V. Franklin, a young black man who makes his living by stealing cars and arranging small heists with the street gang he grew up with; Mike, a retired robber who drowns the frustrations of a not-so-happy family in alcohol and money; Trevor, former companion of Mike's adventures and crazy psychopath who, with the passage of hours of play, you will learn to love for a characterization that was truly unthinkable at first. The game will start with a flashback in which you take on the role of Mike, and then jump forward a decade and allow you, over the course of a few hours, to impersonate the various characters for single missions of your choice. The vicissitudes of the three will lead them to finally see their destinies intertwined, culminating in what is the true backbone of GTA V, the main storyline that stands above the myriad of subplots that we also recommend you follow from the first to the last to not miss even a scene of the complex interweaving masterfully woven by the Rockstar storytellers.
In addition to the masterful characters design of the main characters, the attention paid to supporting actors, especially with regard to the "unknown and crazy" missions, marked on the map by the symbol "?": Bounty hunters, paparazzi and unlikely characters of all kinds should be noted. and social class will entrust you with secondary missions disconnected from the main plot but equally (if not perhaps more) fun and that will never be a mere filler as it happened in the past. You will really feel like you are interacting with real characters, albeit in the form of a caricature, putting yourself in front of real non-protagonists with an impressive charisma.
The three protagonists of the adventure have charisma to spare
Free roaming to the nth degree
Trademark since the days when the graphics had no polygons and the view of the action was shot from above, the distinguishing feature of Grand Theft Auto has been the Sandbox structure and the enormous freedom of action, with free roaming as the protagonist of each chapter of the series. GTA V is no exception and, thanks to a game world with an initially almost unsettling vastness, it allows the player an unprecedented freedom of movement: it is possible to drive any vehicle - and by any we mean cars, motorcycles, boats, planes, bicycles, diggers and any vehicle with wheels - playing sports such as tennis or paragliding, training at the shooting range, hunting, attending flying school, going to the psychologist, the strip club or just to the bar for a drink. We stop here, leaving you the fun of discovering all the playful activities possible in Los Santos, certain that our list has made you understand how much there is to do and how much this new GTA is also developed specifically to push you to deviate from the main plot to wander around in search of the offer of the game world.
Moving on to what is the actual gameplay, however, in GTA V we have witnessed a general refinement of all those mechanics to which Rockstar Games has accustomed us over the years: drive the various vehicles, face the numerous shootings or exit the sections unscathed. stealth without being discovered is as simple as it is satisfying, thanks to a control system which, although it requires a few hours of play before being mastered properly, is all in all intuitive and well thought out. Of exquisite workmanship, and entirely revised, the cover system in firefights, really very simple to use and able to make the shootings more realistic thanks to the numerous makeshift shelters adequately scattered on the ground. The RPG-style skill system is also interesting: each character will have its own characteristics percentages of strength, endurance, aim and ability in driving and in various activities, all to be improved by completing the secondary missions proposed by the game. Trevor, for example, has military training that makes him much better at flying airplanes than Franklin and Mike, for whom it will be better to attend flight school before embarking on aircraft trips than, instead, with the aforementioned Trevor you will have no problem piloting with ease. The same goes for the shots, the possibility of taking damage or inflicting it: every single parameter is unique for each character and the player can decide which and how much to improve it at his discretion before continuing with the main missions.
Shooting, chasing and endless vehicles: an A to Z GTA
As for the latter, we were particularly impressed by the freedom of choice possible in their planning and execution. The most interesting missions are, of course, the robberies: in the role of one of the three characters, we will first be called to decide the objective to rob, how to rob it and the members of the team who will accompany us in the enterprise. you can choose, for example, whether to use strength or intelligence, or which of the available ways to use to reach the goal. Once these decisions have been made, you will need to pay attention to the characteristics of the team members: if you want good coverage, for example, you will need excellent aiming shooters, while to escape safely it will be better to have a good driver, and so on. But be careful: a more skilled member will want a greater percentage of the loot for himself than a less experienced one: for this reason, the planning of the missions will be crucial to allow you to complete them successfully without squandering dollars unnecessarily.
But if you think it's over here, you're wrong, because for GTA free roaming is also something else: the protagonists will have a mobile phone with which to receive messages and e-mails from the other characters. But it will also be possible to call and meet non-protagonists discovered wandering around Los Santos, like girls or members of their families, to organize various recreational and playful activities with them. And we haven't told you the best part yet: Rockstar has created a real social network like Facebook - in the game called Life Invader, with the usual sharp irony that distinguishes GTA - and an Internet network to use to buy vehicles, items and play. on the stock exchange. Always in order not to dwell too much - a really difficult task in the review of such a pachydermic title - we allow ourselves a small digression to tell you about our gaming experience regarding a fact that will serve to understand the incredible potential that this fake Internet within the game offers to the player: during the gameplay we managed to buy some properties, including a transport company, an oil company and a local; some of these places were listed on the stock exchange, so with our mobile phone and the virtual money accumulated from the shots we bought the shares. Finally, it was enough for us to go to the competition with some explosives to bring other companies to their knees and see our shares soar in the stock market, bringing us other gains. We stop here otherwise we would risk going on writing for hours telling you every single and amazing facet that the term free roaming can take on in GTA V, certain (you too will agree) to find ourselves in front of the most total freedom of action ever seen in a game of this caliber.
In case you have not yet understood, in short, the password of GTA V is freedom: whether you want to face a shootout among passers-by as Trevor, go out with Mike's wife (or one of the girls), or managing a beach bar with Franklin, Rockstar has really thought of everything, allowing you to switch from one character to another with a simple gesture and almost seamlessly, accompanying the few seconds of transition with a very pleasant satellite view that quickly zooms in on the chosen character. As already mentioned we find it very difficult to describe in black and white the immensity of the virtual life that the player will find before, but we assure you that we have touched the state of the art of free roaming.
The territory to explore is truly boundless: get ready to see some beautiful ones
Between fiction and reality
Having ascertained that the gameplay of GTA V is the best we have ever tried in the series, certainly the technical sector is not far behind: as already said several times, the game world is immense and very detailed, with square kilometers of cities , mountains, deserts, forests and oceans, all to be explored down to the last centimeter available. The attention to detail borders on maniacal, so much so that you will not be able to resist a sailboat ride just to take part in a dive on the ocean floor and, once back on the surface, you will be able to enjoy the sunset. Here and there we ran into small technical inaccuracies - trees that suddenly sprout on the horizon in the wider valleys or dressed up in the characters in some cases a bit plastic and unrealistic - but it's really a matter of nitpicking with respect to a product that blows the fans of consoles nearing retirement like never before, consuming every last hardware resource available and pushing the possibilities beyond all limits: the world of GTA is a living world, with people on the street, animals in the woods and in the seas and traffic that changes according to the time of day or night, in a representation of reality that, if you remove the small compromises necessary to make the gameplay fluid - accidents and collisions between vehicles take the right poetic license so as not to make the gaming experience frustrating - they really reconstruct a palpable reality, so much so that it will not be difficult for you to recognize our Los Angeles among the busy streets of the fanciful Los Santos.
But how can we not talk about the sound sector too? Leaving aside the effects, of excellent workmanship but still not too far from those of the previous chapters, in GTA V we were most struck by the dialogues: literally millions of words and excellent recitations (in our Bel Paese, fortunately, the original dubbing was kept. with only Spanish subtitles), both for the main characters and for the secondary characters or for the simple extras. All taking into account accents and nationality: listen to the (bad) English pronunciation of Lamar in the first minutes of the game and you will immediately understand our amazement in witnessing a truly maniacal care also for the sound sector.
The technical sector will surely leave you speechless, as well as the dubbing (English)
In conclusion
Our advice regarding this fifth chapter of Grand Theft Auto is only one: buy it now. Even if you haven't played the previous chapters, or if you have tried them without particularly loving them, we assure you that the Rockstar product has so much to offer that if you own a console and want to see it perform its swan song before moving on to the next generation , GTA V is an absolute must have: an immense world that rewrites the definition of free roaming, a multi-platform technical sector that makes the recent Sony and Microsoft exclusives tremble and, above all, an obsessive attention to detail in the creation of a world in able to reflect and - as usual Rockstar recipe - denounce the violent and corrupt Western civilization with disarming cynicism through the videogame medium. We would like to advise against it only for well-meaning players or the most impressionable, who may not be comfortable in the face of violence and bad language typical of GTA. Everyone else is safe: tackling all the campaign missions and even just part of the secondary ones (we highly recommend all the "unknown and crazy", crazy and very funny missions) will take you several hours, the limit of which will virtually tend to infinite once you start GTA V Online, the multiplayer sector with new missions and new tasks to complete, of which for (obvious) reasons of space we will talk in more detail in a separate venue. In the dictionary, “free roaming” has a new definition: GTA V, Rockstar's absolute masterpiece.
