Rockstar's latest version is hailed for its vast 'next generation' design and is predicted to become Britain's fastest-selling game

For gamers, it's the equivalent of a new James Bond film or JK Rowling novel. The launch of Grand Theft Auto V at midnight on Monday will see long queues snake down high streets at daybreak as the first copies go on sale.

The video game series is as controversial as it is successful. So far, it has sold more than 100m copies since it was developed in Edinburgh in 1997.

Players take on the role of a criminal in a fictional US city and rise through the ranks of organised crime with action-adventure and shootouts.

The latest version – known as GTA V – is the biggest and most ambitious yet, with an imagined world larger than the rest of the series put together, and follows three criminals as they steal, shoot and shop their way through the fictional city of Los Santos.

It has taken Rockstar – the firm behind it – four years to develop at a cost, according to one analyst, of about $137.5m (£87m) even before you include its marketing budget.

Rob Crossley, associate editor of gaming news site CVG, predicts that GTA V may sell twice as fast as Call of Duty: Black Ops, which in 2010 became the fastest selling game in the UK with 1.4m copies sold in one day.

"Rockstar has reportedly allocated 3m copies for the UK launch," he says. "It's unlikely all will be sold on day one, but it's an astonishing figure nevertheless. Put it this way, that launch allocation accounts for a quarter of all combined Xbox 360 and PS3 owners in the UK."

The central plot revolves around retired bank robber, Michael de Santa, returning to a life of crime with a young protege, Franklin, and his psychotic cohort, Trevor. But the appeal of the game is as much to do with the extracurricular detail. The world of GTA is full of diversions – from shopping malls to strip clubs and sports events, all open to the player.

"Fans appreciate the sheer amount of thought that goes into the GTA games," says Nick Underdown, founder of fan site Rockstar Resource. "A lot of the things people are looking forward to don't involve any criminal activity at all – a lot of the fun will come from the racing, parachuting, playing golf or tennis and all the other sports on offer – and it seems like a small thing, but the soundtrack is so important, it plays a massive part in the setting."

GTA V has more than 200 tracks for players to listen to while driving the game's miles of streets and motorways, from country classics to leftfield electronica and chart hits.

It's a key part of the appeal – the 2002 title GTA: Vice City featured seven CDs of 80s pop, which enhanced the game's narrative homage to that decade's film and TV shows such as Scarface and Miami Vice.

"Lots of my customers have told me they've booked the day off to play it," says Gareth Rowbotham, owner of the Playtime chain of video game stores in Nottingham, Sheffield and Doncaster. "I'm not being derogatory, but our customers aren't high-flying ABC1s with two cars and three holidays a year. They're on minimum wage, working 40-50 hours a week. They'll come in, buy GTA and play it for 12 hours straight. It's a way of escaping the banality of normal life."

Jevon Farr, a fan of the series who helps run community site GTAnet.com, explains the game's appeal. "It's the freedom, the humour, the atmosphere, multiple concurrent protagonists, a gigantic and detailed world map, a dynamic economy, elaborate customisations and a multiplayer mode that becomes self-perpetuating with user-generated content … however, one of our team just said, 'I want to hurl cars down the mountains.'"

GTA V is more than a car game or a shoot-em-up, say industry experts and gamers. Photograph: Rockstar

For Adam Saltsman, a game designer, it is the sense of a living, dramatic world that gives the game wider cultural significance and appeal. "The Grand Theft Auto series is the closest thing games have to a prestigious HBO or BBC series – it is like really high-end TV. There is lots of visceral low art – and I do not use that pejoratively, but there's also lots of high art too. The game is very large and very rich, not just geographically, but almost vertically. It has the gangster story and the sandbox stuff, but then it has all these satirical radio stations, and even weirder, deeper jokes and commentary."

Jesper Juul, a video game theorist and author, says the great expectations are down to GTA V being "better than 99% of the cinema or novels. It is better for giving players a chance to consider what they would do in a fictional world."

The game's co-writer Dan Houser has described it as a satire on Los Angeles, and more specifically a modern Hollywood fading into insignificance in an era of outsourced production. GTA V is filled with failed actors, drug-soaked producers and various hangers-on. Every aspect of the society it creates was researched, mostly through first-hand interviews.

"We just wandered around LA," said Houser. "Our researchers did an incredible job of finding us some of the strangest people: retired cops, former FBI agents, entrepreneurs who'd retired on a massive fund of money at 28, people who specialised in knowing the underworld of LA – and everyone in between. We'd just hang out with them for a few days to see what happened."

GTA V is available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. There are rumours an enhanced version will be available on the next-generation consoles, which launch in November. But many already see GTA V as a "next generation" game. It hints at a future in which games become more like virtual holidays, a form of all-encompassing escapism.