Can Rockstar make lightning strike twice?
Grand Theft Auto 5 left a lasting mark on a generation of gamers. Now, its sequel is expected to reach even loftier heights. But to achieve this, developer Rockstar will have to heed the lessons it learned over 13 years of crime, cash and controversy. A look back on GTA 5, exploring how one of gaming’s longest-lasting icons might just push its sequel over the line.
What makes a video game truly generational? Is it something tangible, such as its gameplay, narrative or worldbuilding? Maybe it came out at exactly the right time to leave a lasting legacy on pop culture. Or is there something more, a sprinkle of magic no one can quite articulate? Whatever you believe, Rockstar better be confident in its approach for its upcoming juggernaut, Grand Theft Auto 6. After all, its predecessor made an impression no one’s seen before - or since. Quite the shoes to fill. But how did GTA 5 actually gain its acclaim? Well, to answer that, let’s venture back to a snowy, sleepy Midwest town…
A tale to remember
«Ludendorff, North Yankton, nine years ago.»
This simple line kicks off the iconic singleplayer story of Grand Theft Auto 5. Rockstar sets the tone instantly, throwing you right into a chaotic robbery gone wrong - the first of many you’ll have to fight through. It’s here we meet two of our three protagonists, Michael and Trevor. Their dysfunctional brotherly dynamic serves as the plot’s central narrative thread, keeping the player on track through widely varying locations and character motivations. But for now, as their plan falls apart in a chaotic escape through the snow, they are separated. One presumed dead, the other on the run. And yet, as we shift into the present day, we quickly learn how wrong we are.
Intrigued? Then chances are good you’ll be just as dazzled as a young 13-year old I was on booting up GTA 5 for the first time. To me and many others, the game’s main plot remains its brightest highlight even today, half a lifetime on in my case. Three complex criminals weaving their way through the insanity that is GTA’s world, thinking up crazy schemes alongside even crazier side characters. Lester, Lamar, Ron and Wade, and dozens of other zany lunatics, all written to perfection and captured brilliantly by the cast.
City of Saints and Sinners
Mind you, I still haven’t mentioned GTA 5’s greatest and most fondly remembered character: the city of Los Santos. This sunny west coast metropolis, a biting pastiche of Los Angeles, serves as the central locale most plot points revolve around. The superficial celebrity glitz of Vinewood stands in harsh contrast to the poverty and crime-ridden South Los Santos, home to our third leading man, Franklin. As he rises from low-level street thug to feared master criminal, we see the city through his eyes. And the view isn’t pretty: slimy used car salesmen, two-faced gangleaders, even corrupt federal agents, it’s all on display. Very much like the real City of Angels, the surface-level sheen of Los Santos and its surroundings is only an illusion. Behind the parody lurks a ruthlessly violent underbelly, all the more imposing thanks to top-notch audiovisual work. Incredibly immersive, players can - and have, in my case - spend hundreds of hours exploring the world and still discover new things.
Source: Gamesradar/Rockstar
This is exactly where GTA 6 has to deliver if it wants to dominate gaming for another decade: a winning combo of story and setting. Both are essential. The plot of GTA 5 wouldn’t work without Los Santos as a backdrop, and the world would feel lifeless without its memorable cast. A brilliant symbiosis of parody, murder and heartbreak, GTA 6 will have to work hardest to impress me in this regard.
Online: wondrous worlds of crime
All that being said, we’ve still only covered one half of the experience. Grand Theft Auto 5 provided a fresh entry into the criminal underworld of Los Santos too: a custom character, and the option to play alongside your friends. A longstanding staple of the series, it nonetheless reached its zenith here. The main reason for this is simple: size. Continuously updated over the past 13 years, GTA Online offers a far wider breadth of scope than Story mode ever could. By both improving previously shallow features (races, heists) and adding in entirely new storylines and characters, Rockstar managed to expand the usual life cycle of a GTA title to well over a decade. After all, what good is an iconic setting if you can’t innovate on and modernise it? It’s another point GTA 6 has to ace, perhaps even more essential than the world or characters if legacy’s the long-term goal.
Source: GTA Wiki/Rockstar
However, the Grand Theft Auto 5 experience was far from all sunshine and roses. Online in particular was plagued by problems, bringing us neatly to the experiences I desperately hope Rockstar avoids come 19 November.
Griefers and hackers and cheats, oh my!
Picture my excitement: I’d just powered through about 30 hours of stunning story, impressionable mind brimming with fantasies about what I would get up to in Los Santos. Then along comes GTA Online. A dream scenario, right? Well, reality was swift and merciless.
To my immense disappointment, GTA Online’s toxic and self-centred playerbase made setting up group missions with randoms nearly impossible. But since playing with mates wasn't an option to a friendless gamer like myself, I had nowhere else to turn. My excitement for the multiplayer-only heists in particular was extinguished by endless connection issues and incompetent mission partners. I’d get either an earful at the slightest misstep, or no communication whatsoever. I felt like Rockstar was intentionally teaching me a lesson: “Wanna have fun gaming online? Tough. You suck, everyone else hates you, run back to your precious singleplayer, loser.” And even that only applied once in a blue moon, when the servers didn’t boot me back to those endless loading screens - or worse, back into singleplayer!
Source: Rockstar
Even free-roam exploration - one of the highlights of the singleplayer experience - felt impossible due to the constant griefing I encountered any time Passive Mode wasn’t on. Need I remind you of the pre-nerf Oppressor? Sure, this is part of the GTA Online experience: you will get killed randomly and repeatedly for no apparent reason. But the endless hackers plaguing almost every server did push me past my breaking point. I and many others left Online jaded and disappointed. A shame, since the few missions I did get to experience were quite fun. However, if you scare your players off with stability and toxicity issues, they’ll never get to experience the content in the first place.
Granted, these issues were dealt with eventually (although some remained a nuisance well into the 2020s). Furthermore, throwing a naive kid into servers filled with screaming strangers might well sound like a recipe for disaster already. And yes, I was yet to brace the trenches of DotA 2 multiplayer, so I hadn’t grown the thick skin many claim is mandatory for online gaming. But at a certain point, Rockstar has to do better. If rumours are to be believed and GTA 6 Online drops in early 2027, the experience has to be polished from the get-go. Avoid all those loading screens and connectivity issues. Make setting up missions quicker, and implement better communication options to facilitate teamwork. It’ll keep so many more players online and spending money on microtransactions. Oh yeah, remember those?
Source: Atrocious Gameplay/Rockstar
Jumping the Shark
Ah Shark cards, those virtual plastic strips representing virtual currency, available for purchase with real-life money. I mean, where’s the problem? By 2013, in-game purchases and microtransactions had become established as common practice for making money off online games. However, as so often happens whenever the cash starts flowing in, greed takes over. To the Online community, this manifested in two major drawbacks.
First, a common problem: with every new content update, more and more vehicles, properties and other treasures became locked behind massive in-game price tags. Any players who were after them felt forced into a choice: pay through the nose for Shark cards, or spend hours slowly racking up enough cash for that fancy new hypercar - by which time a whole new range of goodies dropped. On top of that, ever more missions required certain unlockables. That’s worse than pay-to-win, it’s pay-to-play - a slap in the face, given players had already shelled out 60 US dollars for the game to begin with.
Source: GTA Wiki/Rockstar
The second issue fits more broadly into the debate around microtransactions since their inception: how they take advantage of younger gamers. There’s already plenty to debate around how children are affected by violent games such as GTA, more on that shortly. But the problem’s more obvious with microtransactions. Kids simply lack an understanding of the real life value of money. Combine that with access to an adult’s credit card and lax parenting, and the results can get expensive in a hurry. Yes, the problem isn’t exclusive to GTA whatsoever. But it’s still unethical, whichever way you slice it.
Yet despite all the criticism surrounding its practices, I doubt Rockstar will change its approach. GTA Online simply made too much money for the company to care. What does it matter if these tactics drive a tiny percentage of players away? According to leaked financial data, GTA Online still brings in over a million US dollars a day.The developer will make do - and then some - thanks to big spenders and kids who don’t know any better. Still, I’d love to be proven wrong. And maybe recent rulings will be able to move the needle just enough.
Controversy - a Grand Theft Auto staple
Finally, why not reminisce on what Grand Theft Auto has always done best: causing outrage. Where better to start than that old chestnut, excessive violence in games, especially wherever kids can see it. The main target for the ire of many parents’ groups in GTA 5 was the now infamous torture scene. In it, everyone’s favourite psychopath Trevor is tasked with making an alleged terrorist talk in ways only he knows how. Cue car batteries, waterboarding and just a few pulled teeth. An orgy of violence, only made worse - according to critics - by the fact it couldn’t be skipped.
Source: IGN/Rockstar
Still, the entire debate felt a bit worn out by 2013. The “torture” controversy left way less of a lasting mark on GTA 5 than the Hot Coffee debacle did on San Andreas. Sure, pundits and interest groups went through the expected talking points for a few days. But no rating changes, government inquiries or lawsuits came from the backlash. Might this point to a change in society, no longer as prudish and fearful around how violent video games will turn all your children into mass murderers? I’d certainly say so. And if GTA 6’s trailers are anything to go by, it appears Rockstar agrees. Sure, I can virtually guarantee the new game will stir up some kind of controversy on release. But come on, it’s Grand Theft Auto! Isn’t that part of the charm?
GTA 5 shaped gaming – and vice versa
But let’s stay on that point. In all the excitement around Grand Theft Auto 6’s release and how good it may be, we can’t forget just how much gaming and society in general has changed since 2013. Back then, Barack Obama had just started his second term as President of the USA. The Harlem Shake was the viral internet trend of the year. And the term AI was (mercifully) still limited to science fiction,
Even 13 years on, Franklin still hasn’t got rid of that old yee-yee ass haircut…
I’m not saying this to make anyone feel old. Hell, I was practically raised on GTA Funny Moments videos, and even I’m feeling time’s cruel embrace. No, I merely want to emphasise how different the current cultural atmosphere is now, in 2026. Gaming’s simply more widely accepted as an artform with entertainment value. Many non-traditional gamers played and enjoyed GTA 5. In terms of mass-market appeal, it’s closer to FIFA and Call of Duty than any other entry in the series. More than that, GTA genuinely shaped the current gaming landscape, more than most titles this century - controversy and shady practices be damned.
To me, this cultural omnipresence in particular will prove decisive. And thanks to it, I believe Grand Theft Auto 6 will have one of the most successful debuts in gaming history, if not the most.
Conclusion
The irony of this final point isn’t lost on me. By exploring GTA 5’s murky history for points where Rockstar has to deliver come 19th November, I’ve only reinforced the most likely cause for its success. After all, Grand Theft Auto isn’t just a game series about driving around, mowing down pedestrians. It’s a cultural touchstone - a truly unique achievement, one GTA 6 will benefit from more than any of its predecessor’s successes.
In summary, even if Rockstar repeats every misstep it made over the past decade and doesn’t heed any of my recommendations, I’m still convinced it’ll succeed in ways no game has before. Even if the story, setting and characters turn out terrible. Even if Rockstar crams every microtransaction it can think of into GTA 6 Online. Guess what? I’ll still be there on release to witness the fireworks. So good luck Rockstar! I really don’t think you’ll need it.
Source: Reddit/Rockstar
Patrik sponges up anything new. No matter how niche, he needs to immediately know everything about it. It’s hardly surprising his hobbies range from board and video games through linguistics all the way to rock and metal. And it doesn’t end there. He plans on living in London, striking a balance between his life as a musician and a linguist.
This is a subjective opinion of the editorial team. It doesn't necessarily reflect the position of the company.
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