It's been nearly 12 years since GTA 5 launched, but Los Santos still feels livelier than most modern RPG sandboxes

With GTA 6 looming on the horizon and GTA 5: Enhanced Edition sporting some cool graphical upgrades (if you can get it to work properly), I’ve revisited Los Santos as it was reintroduced in 2013.

Since I simply can’t do a full replay this year and have zero desire to get back into GTA Online, I’ve been focusing on ‘clearing’ the map as found in a save from a few years ago. For more than a decade, I’ve shouted from the rooftops that few developers have been able to match the truly alive feeling of the second iteration of Los Santos, let alone surpassed it. There are many games like GTA worth playing if you need more mayhem contained within vast maps, yet few which aren’t Red Dead Redemption 2 can replicate the secret sauce that’s kept Rockstar dictating where open worlds are going next for more than 20 years now.

Mind you, I generally love open-world games even if many don’t fully justify their size. I’m loving Assassin’s Creed Shadows and found enjoyment even in Starfield’s largely barren planets. I just dig having freedom in a medium as freeing as video games, and the modern open-world RPG model holds a lot of potential by blending tried-and-tested action-adventure structures with deeper, more complex systems. The better open worlds are the ones which shine thanks to small details and well-oiled Rube Goldberg machines though, and I’ve once again reminded myself that GTA 5 is still better than most in that regard.

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Side (but essential) activities

GTA 5 never felt like a mind-numbing collectathon kind of open-world game when it came to side activities, but it’s hard to deny there’s a lot to do beyond aimlessly causing mayhem and working on an impressive collection of vehicles. At first glance, ‘Strangers and Freaks’ missions seem like the main offering, as they introduce a number of notable characters with little storylines of their own and, more often than not, make Trevor look like a stable guy with correct takes on modern North American society.

Those missions are great ways to discover quick activities that add flavor to the gameplay loop and flesh out the world. They also pack some of the most hilarious scripts and bits of dialogue in the entire game (reason enough to clear them all). More surprising is the amount of care and love put into mundane stuff like playing tennis or helping recently acquired businesses thrive. Whereas most open-world games make such activities feel like content for the content pile, GTA 5 treats them with respect and makes good use of the opportunity to flesh out all three characters through normal, stress-free interactions with the city (and citizens) that surrounds them. They’re never reduced to player avatars outside of cutscenes and scripted sequences even if Michael, Franklin, and Trevor are a perfect encapsulation of what Grand Theft Auto is all about when combined.

I kid you not, I spent almost two hours playing tennis as Michael versus his wife the last time I booted up the game. The chill, post-game vibes are on point, and their new bits of dialogue as they simply do married rich couple stuff while still exhibiting their indelible aggressive traits make the (expertly crafted and engaging) mini-game feel like far more than just that. Rockstar has understood the importance of letting the characters breathe since GTA 4, and even if Red Dead Redemption 2 contains the most mature narrative the developer has put out yet, downplaying GTA 5’s impressive efforts (often done in unexpected ways) on that front due to its looser tone makes me sad.

Unscripted comedy and chaos

While chasing 100% completion (I’m happy to admit I don’t have it in me) and jumping between side missions, races, celebrity-stalking for quick money, and whatnot, GTA 5’s main trick to not feeling repetitive is letting its world be truly unpredictable. For all the impressive tech modern open-world games are built with, the overarching design often is too restrictive and rigid. After a while, you can predict how NPCs will react, how to ‘break’ certain systems, and how to navigate all the content on offer in the most time-efficient ways.

Giant RPGs are especially guilty of this, which often leads to massive worlds losing most of their appeal long before players have experienced most of the good stuff they have to offer. When numbers and extremely defined mechanics are at the forefront and limit the relationship between player and setting (and thus the likely experimentation), you wonder if some games would be better off as more linear (and far less expensive) experiences. There’s a good reason why Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom popped off the way they did and why no one can exactly ‘copy and paste’ what makes Bethesda’s worlds so engrossing to explore and engage with. Those are great examples of reactive sandboxes that expose themselves to players truly doing things their way.

While Rockstar hasn’t jumped into the ‘RPG mechanics’ pool yet (though some would argue the opposite), it’s a studio which historically knows the importance of sandboxes being actual sandboxes. It doesn’t matter that ‘random events’ and things spiraling out of control as AI scripts collide are ‘tricks’ when the end results are so convincing and make every drive or walk through L.S. genuinely interesting and immersive. It’s a fun world to simply ‘reside in’ and it’s hard to predict how much the developers will push the envelope with the sixth instalment of a series that has always existed ahead of time.

Our GTA 6 wishlist combines everything we'd like to see from Rockstar's next crime caper