I’ve been replaying GTA 5 thanks to the PS5 remaster and it’s wild how much a game released in 2013 poops on modern open-world titles from a great height (at least open-world games set in a contemporary urban environment). The streets of Los Santos feel alive, and every district in the city has its own vibe.
When I originally played it at launch, I appreciated Los Santos as a virtual space, but I’d never been to LA. I’ve been there multiple times between then and now, and it’s so impressive how Rockstar captured the soul of the place, from the hustle and bustle of Venice beach to the winding roads up in the Hollywood hills.
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It’s not just the city as a concept though. It’s not just how it feels lived-in because of the NPCs and systemic interactions you can have with them, or that they have with each other. It’s the city itself, from the dustbowl to the freeways.
Drive down the streets of Los Santos and you feel every bump in the road, every flaw of the infrastructure. This is where a lot of developers miss – their recreations of modern cities are too clean, too pristine. Once Franklin outgrows the hood, he moves to a house in the hills. The price for this is spaghetti roads leading up to his crib, all blind corners and hairpin turns. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t arrange roads like this. A game designer wouldn’t arrange roads like this. Hundreds of civil engineers probably would.
Driving in GTA 5 isn’t just thrilling because the handling model straddles the perfect line between arcade and realism – and it’s not just because a muscle car feels wholly distinct from a sports car – it’s because of those twists and turns, the dips and the bumps. A tiny hump can throw you off, forcing you to wrestle your vehicle back under control. You’re grounded in the world by a complex physics simulation.
Rockstar naysayers often complain about the clunky character movement, but it’s all part of the illusion of piloting a real human meat unit. Humans are clumsy – like the city, they’re flawed – and GTA 5 understands that. How many other games include falling over as a mechanic?
Falling over is funny! There are whole TV shows dedicated to people falling over, and YouTube channels focused on ‘epic fails’ (some actually house GTA 5 clips, incidentally). It’s funny here too – especially when a co-op partner fumbles a parachute jump in GTA Online. Accidents are just another thing that adds to the overall illusion.
Of course, this is backed up by Rockstar’s dogged attention to detail, with sweat forming on characters’ backs when they run or during hot weather, bespoke interactions for behaving a certain way, the way flip-flops actually flip and flop, and how your vehicle GPS loses signal in tunnels.
People often focus on the crass humor and the dated jokes when talking about GTA, but even those are in service of the same thing – it’s America turned up to 11. When a cartoon artist paints a caricature of someone, they highlight the ugly or prominent features. The person is still recognizable, despite becoming an abomination. That’s what GTA 5 is to LA – all those character flaws and imperfections exaggerated out to form something as grotesque as it is compelling.
It’s these aspects of GTA 5 that make the world more convincing, almost like a funhouse mirror version of reality – the American Nightmare. There’s a reason this nightmare is recurring (GTA 5 is now live across three console generations) – it’s because no other urban open-world comes close, almost a decade later.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
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