As Franklin, Trevor, Michael, or a customized online multiplayer character, spending time driving, running, flying, and boating around the state is a sublime experience. Regardless of the typically limpid puns that provide the state’s business names (the stock market BAWSAQ or the UPS stand-in Post-Op) and the self-consciously silly dialogue muttered by pedestrians, the art design and obsessive attention to detail makes San Andreas a wonderful place to simply explore. Its plot, which follows a trio of characters whose criminal activities often intersect with one another, remains as frustratingly aimless as before (more on this in a bit), but its SoCal-inspired San Andreas is a more inviting setting than it was in the past. The computer version of GTAV is very much the same game as the one launched almost two years ago. This same mix of ambitious environmental world-building and uneven writing that characterized the original version of the game-and polarized its players’ reactions-is largely maintained by its most recent release on the PC. GTAV as a whole is both enormously successful at executing on one aspect of its design and immensely disappointing in another. The confident storytelling that had come to define the developer/publisher was less evident, though. For those hoping for yet another virtual sandbox to lose themselves in, the game delivered.
Needless to say, the 2013 release of Rockstar North’s Grand Theft Auto V generated a great deal of excitement. Each of its games from this period presented stunning, well-realized environments and narratives that seemed completely sure of what they were trying to say. Noire, and Max Payne 3, Rockstar had developed a reputation for creating not just interesting virtual worlds, but strong stories as well. After releases like Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, L.A.