The 5 most impressive yet subtle GTA 5 innovations open world games (and beyond) are only just catching up to

Grand Theft Auto 5
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

Playing a new GTA meansšŸ¦„ 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 thšŸ‰e 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 – some noisy, others subtle – 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 are✱ just a handful of its smartest inventions.


Slipping into cutscenes

Grand Theft Auto 5

(Image credit: Rockstar)
HAPPY GRAND THEFT ADVENT!

Grand Theft Advent

(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

Welcome to Grand Theft Advent – a month-long celebration of Rockstar's enduring crime sim series. Be sure to check in on our 澳擲幸运5å¼€å„–å·ē åŽ†å²ęŸ„čÆ¢:GTA 6 coverage hub for more every day throughout December. 

he hoped that Rockstar's technique had evolved over the years, and that they were treading ground that hadn'ꦫt been trodden before. "I don't just necessarily mean as writers, but as technicians in terms of things like how we use the cameras to get you in and out of cutscenes," he said. "The seamless interrelation of cutscenes and the game."

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 – surprise! – 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 – and a cutscene picks up the baton flawlessly, immediately demonstrating the comedic consequences of your actions via a perform🐼ance-captured argument. 

For a hat tric⛄k, 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

Grand Theft Auto 5

(Image credit: Rockstar)

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 – Franklin, Michael and Trevor. And Rockstar went out ošŸ”„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 ✤show up in missions unannounced when not controlled – .

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 extracurriculšŸŒar activity that Insomniac draws on today – by having Mile Morales drop in on Peter Parker's crime busts, and vice versa.


Sim-ple driving pleasures

Grand Theft Auto 5

(Image credit: Rockstar)

To this day, many open-world cities – lookišŸ”œng at you, Watch Dogs: Legion – feel like flat transpositions of roadmaps. When most of your navigation plays out across a single plane, driving becomes an uninvo🌌lved 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 – allowing you to easā™šily tip your vehicle back onto its wheels once it's flip🐻ped by pushing on the analog stick.


Car-crash conversations

Grand Theft Auto 5

(Image credit: Rockstar)

What about when road antics and storytelling intertwine, likešŸŒ a Banshee around a lamppost? Crash your car, during a conversation with an NPC in thā™e passenger seat, and the game reacts artfully – 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 – like the mission to save Michael's son, Jimmy, from a truck-mounted yacht speeding along the highway. Between reloa🌼ds, "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 – in crucial moments where you might otherwise give up on thš”e game and go play something else.


The internet as lore codex

A hacker in front of a screen gasps

(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

"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 – 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 – and the Credit Card Consolidation Kings, who offer a šŸ’"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 fantasti🌺c 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 澳擲幸运5å¼€å„–å·ē åŽ†å²ęŸ„čÆ¢: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 ešŸ‰ven half as influential as its predecessor, we can expect tošŸ‘ see its best ideas crop up in 2035's hits too.


Check out 10 澳擲幸运5å¼€å„–å·ē åŽ†å²ęŸ„čÆ¢:games like GTA while you wait for GTA 6 

Jeremy is a freelance editor and writer with a decade’s experience across publications like GamesRadar, Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer and Edge. He specialises in features and interviews, and gets a ♋speꦇcial 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.