Grand Theft Auto V

Rockstar North moved its series with Grand Theft Auto V into the fictional Los Santos, a caricature of Southern California, and for the first time in the main series offered three playable protagonists - former robber Michael, street gangster Franklin, and the unpredictable psychopath Trevor - between whom players can switch at any time, even during action, enabling more sophisticated planned bank robberies and heists.

Those heists form the core of the game's structure: each is prepared by choosing an approach, hiring helpers of varying quality, and gathering equipment, and switching between characters during the action itself works like a film cut, letting the player take control of one hero while another covers the retreat. Each character also has a unique special ability, from slowing down time during shootouts to increased resilience in close combat. At release, the open world ranked among the largest and most lively ever made, full of satire on American consumer society, celebrity culture, and politics, and offered an enormous range of side activities from stock trading to golf, tennis, or diving.

The transition to PlayStation 4 in 2014 brought a graphical upgrade, denser traffic and vegetation, and an entirely new first-person perspective, but true longevity for the title came from the online multiplayer Grand Theft Auto Online, which became one of the most profitable products in the history of the entertainment industry and, through regular updates featuring heists, races, and raids, turned the game into a practically endlessly alive world. Radio stations with original hosts, parody ads for fictional products, and a limitless number of small details in the streets of Los Santos still reveal new jokes to players even after years of exploration. Critics gave the game near-unanimous praise for its scope, humor, and technical execution, and the title remains a commercially active phenomenon more than a decade later.