see deal Grand Theft Auto V - PlayStation 3 $19.99 on Gamestop

One of the interesting things about Rockstar’s Manhunt is that, in some ways, it was actually our first taste of Grand Theft Auto:

“ Good ideas have a history of finding their way into the GTA series.

Loading

“ The result is a GTA as you know it but spliced with the field-tested DNA from a fistful of Rockstar’s existing hits.

Of course, there were no sharks in Red Dead Redemption...

It may be an old example (Manhunt was released in November 2003; it wasn’t yanked from shelves in Australia until September 2004 so, yes, we did play it!) but it’s a relevant reminder of how good ideas have a history of finding their way into the GTA series.GTA V cranks this philosophy up to 11. The way in which both minor and major elements from the rest of Rockstar’s stable have snowballed inside GTA V is brilliant. The result is a GTA as you know it but spliced with the field-tested DNA from a fistful of Rockstar’s existing hits.It’s when you begin to feel these somewhat familiar systems working in tandem together in GTA V that you appreciate just how heavily honed everything has been. Suddenly you’re prone on the wing of an aircraft, changing guns with a weapon wheel that cut its teeth in Red Dead Redemption and rolling onto your back in one fluid movement to fire at pursuers, just like Max in Max Payne 3. One minute you’re drifting around a bend in a car you’ve personally customised, appreciating the new, more nuanced handling and utilising Franklin’s special ability to temporarily slow down time to pull off insane driving manoeuvres (extremely reminiscent of Midnight Club: Los Angeles’ ‘Zone’ ability). The next you’re narrowly avoiding an animal grazing by the roadside – an animal that may or may not have appeared in GTA V were it not for the work already achieved with wildlife in Red Dead Redemption.

Allowing several of GTA V’s key pillars to be informed by gameplay elements of many of Rockstar’s already successful games makes for an experience where no one thing feels marginalised or ignored. What you don’t get, for instance, is a situation where the shooting is great but the driving is phoned-in, or a situation where the vehicles are top fun but the on-foot action is ropey. You get a game that feels like it’s firing on all cylinders at all times.

“ No one thing feels marginalised or ignored... You get a game that feels like it's firing on all cylinders at all times.

We're just excited to fly over Los Santos again.

“The player should easily be able to pull off cool moves so they feel really part of the action. For example, driving has been completely reworked so it’s much more responsive and direct, allowing controllable handbrake turns and adding in a little bit of wheelspin at exciting moments, whilst still allowing the player to keep full control. The same is true of shooting, core locomotion and pretty much every system in the game.“Lots of time and effort went into the combination of shooting, targeting, animation and camerawork: Grand Theft Auto is about spontaneous, classic action shootouts. We think players will appreciate being about to run and shoot comfortably from the hip, and the new transitions in and out of cars and in and out of cover. There are a range of new customisable targeting options as well.“Every refinement – from the physical reactions to being shot, to much more intelligent combat A.I., to the depth and variety of the ambient world, to gunplay mechanics, to player climbing and vaulting in the world – should add up to a ton of large and small changes to the way the game plays and feels. We’re excited to see what gamers make of everything!”

Combined with the endlessly emergent possibilities of GTA V’s richly detailed and thriving world, the combination of these reworked mechanics and the unpredictability of the game’s world simulation makes GTA V a real coiled-spring of fun potential.

“With a game like GTA, you can’t really force those kind of spectacular moments on the player,” says producer and lead mission designer Imran Sarwar. “What you can do, is design a mission to create the possibility for them to happen.”“There are days we come into work wishing we made games in corridors, and only let the players use a really limited toolset, but GTA isn’t like that. We build these big open worlds with bikes, and cars, and trucks, and planes in it and we want the player to use them and mess around with them and hopefully create these really amazing moments themselves.

“As a gamer, I always feel a bit cheated when you’re forced into something, or a big set piece moment is just a quick time event. We have big set piece sections of gameplay but it still feels organic and the player will feel in control. It always feels so much better if you’ve created it yourself, so that’s what we tried to do here. There are so many systems at work in the missions with the player at the centre of them, acting unpredictably – we tried to create a world in which these moments can arise naturally, and we look forward to seeing what players do with these systems when they get their hands on the game.”

And the guns, of course.

The end result is something that, to myself, feels more "next-generation" than most of the titles coming out on PS4 and Xbox One later this year. IGN UK’s Daniel Krupa will be going into more detail on this topic in the coming days but, to me, there isn’t really anything in the PS4-Xbox One launch line-ups that matches the gameplay scope displayed here in GTA V.“When we started we knew the scope of GTA V was huge and incredibly ambitious,” says Hooker. “Fortunately from completing GTA IV we had a team that was already very familiar with the hardware.“Every aspect of the game had to be better, richer in gameplay and more fluid and knowing we were launching on the same platforms meant we could focus on extracting the most out of those consoles and making the game as fantastic as possible.

“In the end we surpassed our own expectations and during development I think everyone working on the game has been astounded by improvements to the graphics, or new mechanics, or AI, or mission scope along the way. Hopefully the gamers will see all of these improvements at once in one go, compared to GTA IV this definitely feels 'next generation' to us.”

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on IGNor on Twitter, or chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia