The 5 most impressive yet subtle GTA 5 innovations open world games (and beyond) are only just catching up to
Grand Theft Advent | The lessons the gamāes industry is still learnā ing from 2013's biggest hit

Playing a new GTA meansš¦ getting to dunk your head in the future. Only Rockstar operates at the highest heights without bending to the changing winds of shareholder and executive opinion. The company is unique in commanding thše highest budgets and largest teams while retaining an authorial voice that enables it to lead the industry, rather than follow its trends.
When we finally play GTA 6 in 2025, we'll be treated to dozens of new innovations ā some noisy, others subtle ā that will catch Rockstar's peers off guard and leave the industry scrambling to catch up for many years afterwards. How do we know? Because that's exactly what happened last time. GTA 5 has lived as a contemporary game across three console geneꦦrations because in many ways it was a full decade ahead of the curve. Here areā± just a handful of its smartest inventions.
Slipping into cutscenes
Welcome to Grand Theft Advent ā a month-long celebration of Rockstar's enduring crime sim series. Be sure to check in on our 澳擲幸čæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„询:GTA 6 coverage hub for more every day throughout December.
It sounds like a dry point, but that seamlessness has been enormously influential. It's perfectly demonstrated in an early GTA 5 mission, Complications, in which Franklin repossesses a bright-yellow SUV from Michael's garage. As you drive the car to the dealership, a slight zoom brings Michael into focus as ā surprise! ā he sits up in the backseat with a gun, kickstarting a cinematic sequence without taking away player control. Soon afterwards, as Franklin, you accelerate straight through the glass window of the dealership ā and a cutscene picks up the baton flawlessly, immediately demonstrating the comedic consequences of your actions via a performš¼ance-captured argument.
For a hat tricāk, Rockstar then smoothly transitions froź¦m back-and-forth camerawork into a fistfight with the dealership's owner. You barely notice you've switched character in the process. It's the kind of self-assured narrative smoothing that Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 regularly uses to usher in new missions while you're swinging through New York.
Switching between lives
While we're on the subject of multiple protagonists, where do you think Spider-Man 2 got its blueprint? GTA 5 hinged its entire story on the interplay between three lead characters ā Franklin, Michael and Trevor. And Rockstar went out oš„f its way to ensure that none of the three were simply on standby while you were off playing with other toys. Not only do other protagonists ā¤show up in missions unannounced when not controlled ā .
Don't be surprised to find Franklin holding back childhood friend Lamar from yet another street fracas, or Michael leaving the cinema with a complaint about "American mainstream movie making" on his lips. And if Trevor appears to be patting down the last shovelful of dirt on a shallow grave out in the desert? Best not to ask questions. It's a suggestion of extracurriculšar activity that Insomniac draws on today ā by having Mile Morales drop in on Peter Parker's crime busts, and vice versa.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly dišgests, tales from the communities you love, and ź§more
Sim-ple driving pleasures
To this day, many open-world cities ā lookišng at you, Watch Dogs: Legion ā feel like flat transpositions of roadmaps. When most of your navigation plays out across a single plane, driving becomes an uninvošlved exercise. Los Santos still feels like the exception in this regard, with its uneven tarmac and undulating lanes that threaten to throw you off balance. There's a level of physics simulation at work that ensures you notice whenever you mount a curb, or roll over a road sign you've just knocked horizontal. It's not SnowRunner, but it certainly keeps you awake during a street race.
Thankfully, Rockstar knows where to draw the line in a knockabout sandbox game too ā allowing you to easāily tip your vehicle back onto its wheels once it's flipš»ped by pushing on the analog stick.
Car-crash conversations
What about when road antics and storytelling intertwine, likeš a Banshee around a lamppost? Crash your car, during a conversation with an NPC in thāe passenger seat, and the game reacts artfully ā pausing their dialogue with a stunned silence or short yelp, depending on the severity of the accident, before resuming the voiceover from the beginning of the interrupted line. It's a small detail, but one that goes a long way towards preserving the tonal sense of the game.
Even better are the subtle variations in dialogue that emerge when repeating tricky scenes ā like the mission to save Michael's son, Jimmy, from a truck-mounted yacht speeding along the highway. Between reloaš¼ds, "Anything happens, I got a piece in the glovebox, I'll cover you," becomes, "I got a piece in the glovebox. They give you shit, I'll take them out." These minor novelties are countless and help stave off the inevitable frustration of repetition ā in crucial moments where you might otherwise give up on thše game and go play something else.
The internet as lore codex
"And through LifeInvader, GTA's Facebook-esque social networkš, characters comment on the upheaval you've caused in recent missions, hinting at the wider ricochets of your actions"
In a game world where everybody is their worst selves, GTA 5's internet is about as abhorrent as you'd expect ā the screaming, unregulated underbelly of Los Santos. It's the home of the suggestive anime parody, Princess Robot Bubblegum, featuring a sensei named Master Hentai ā and the Credit Card Consolidation Kings, who offer a š"single low monthly payment that future generations of your family will be paying off for centuries to come". It's the place to join one of two spiritualistic pyramid schemes vying for your money and indoctrinated support. Yep: online, you can find the nastiest contortions in Rockstar's funhouse mirror reflection of humanity.
It's also a fantastišŗc tool for worldbuilding. Those pyramid schemes give you an early warning about the cults operating in the city, who show up in side quests. And through LifeInvader, GTA's Facebook-esque social network, characters comment on the upheaval you've caused in recent missions, hinting at the wider ricochets of your actions.
It's an approach 澳擲幸čæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„询:CD Projekt Red has embraced with Cyberpunk, which features a slew of in-game websites that optionally expand on the game's lore. And if GTA 6 is ešven half as influential as its predecessor, we can expect toš see its best ideas crop up in 2035's hits too.
Check out 10 澳擲幸čæ5å¼å„å·ē åå²ę„询:games like GTA while you wait for GTA 6
Jeremy is a freelance editor and writer with a decadeās experience across publications like GamesRadar, Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer and Edge. He specialises in features and interviews, and gets a āspeź¦cial kick out of meeting the word count exactly. He missed the golden age of magazines, so is making up for lost time while maintaining a healthy modern guilt over the paper waste. Jeremy was once told off by the director of Dishonored 2 for not having played Dishonored 2, an error he has since corrected.