Spoilers for all HD Universe entries of the Grand Theft Auto series preceding this one, including Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony and Chinatown Wars will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Grand Theft Auto V is the fourth Numbered Sequel and 11th overall entry in Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto series, released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 17th, 2013, with an Updated Re-release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One released on November 18th, 2014 alongside (after a handful of delays) Windows PCs on April 14th, 2015, an "Expanded and Enhanced" edition released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on 15 March 2022, and finally, a port of the "Expanded and Enhanced" (with more graphics options) to PC on March 4th, 2025, offered for free for anyone who had the previous PC version.
The game is set in the Los Angeles pastiche of Los Santos and its surrounding countryside of Southern San Andreas based on the greater Southern California, primarily the Mojave Desert. In a first for the series (unless you count Grand Theft Auto IV's Episodes from Liberty City adding in new characters), the game features three playable protagonists as opposed to just one, all from different backgrounds. They are (in order of unlocknote ):
- Franklin Clinton, an ex-gang banger-turned-street hustler in his twenties who works a dead-end job as a repo man for a shady car dealership, and lives with his misandrist, self centered aunt in Strawberrynote . He feels trapped in the ghetto by both his job and his friends, particularly wannabe gangbanger Lamar Davis, who in turn see him as having grown "soft" and disrespectful of his roots. After a botched job repossessing the car of 20-year-old deadbeat Jimmy De Santa, Franklin meets the guy's father...
- Michael De Santa note , an ex-bank robber from the Midwest in his late forties who, after a job gone bad, decided to retire, claiming to be part of the FIB's Witness Protection for those that know he's alive. He is now living in a mansion in Rockford Hillsnote with his unfaithful wife Amanda and their disrespectful children Tracey and Jimmy as he struggles with boredom and frustration with civilian life. Try as he might, he's soon forced back into crime after the stress of his dysfunctional home life and his own midlife crisis causes him to lash out, inadvertently angering a local crime lord. Michael has a long history with...
- Trevor Philips, a Canadian-born ex-military pilot in his mid forties. The Canadian Air Force permanently grounded him due to his severe mental instability. Left without a cause as a drifter and on-and-off cargo pilot in the Midwest, he soon met and befriended Michael, which led them to be partners in crime. Unlike Michael, Trevor never retired. Instead remaining a career criminal, and developing a meth habit, living out of a trailer in the small desert town of Sandy Shoresnote north of Los Santos, where he tries to single handedly take over the drug-trafficking and gun-running industries in San Andreas. After he learns that Michael is not only alive, but residing in the city nearby, he decides to track his old buddy down.
Together, They Cause (or Are) Crime. Players can switch between the three at any time once they meet the characters (with a few mission-related exceptions), and a major part of gameplay is heist missions in which all three characters take part. On the fly, the player can switch between, say, the guy taking hostages inside the store, the guy sniping cops outside, and the guy rappelling down the side of the building, while the game seamlessly takes over control of the character just vacated.
The first teaser trailer, released in November 2011, can be found here
and a second trailer was released a year later in 2012, with three new trailers released on 30 April 2013. More info here.
Less than a month after GTA V's initial release, Rockstar launched Grand Theft Auto Online, this game's MMORPG-esque multiplayer component. GTAO was marketed as a standalone product separate from GTAV, although it took until the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 releases of the game for them to actually sell them as completely separate products.
A numbered sequel, Grand Theft Auto VI, is currently in production.
