It took a long time to get to this point. In some ways, GTA Online is the potential of Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto series realized in its most extreme form: all the beauty, ugliness, fun, and bloodshed of the single-player games amped up to 11.

In GTA Online, you hang out with friends in relaxed, social moments instead of going on the single-player game’s stilted, simulated dates combat encounters are more frenzied because they pit you against real people, not AI enemies sunsets appear all the more exquisite because you have someone to share them with. That tension between calm and chaos is only exaggerated in GTA Online, the online multiplayer counterpart to Grand Theft Auto V.

You set out to enact virtual revenge.įor as long as Grand Theft Auto has been presented in 3D, the franchise has been defined by an elegant balance of low-stakes idling and intense, over-the-top action, the latter becoming the incendiary calling card of the world’s favorite organized crime simulation. With more than a little glee, your friend notes the names of your harebrained killers, which just popped up in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

As the screen judders, you scramble to process what’s just happened. What will you do? Play a game of poker? Hike in the mountains? Stage a bank heist? Just as you’re about to decide, a helicopter careens onto the road, swiftly followed by another, causing a cavalcade of cars, including yours, to explode in a series of frame-rate-obliterating explosions. The bright California sun glints off the asphalt as you and another friend tear down the freeway and shoot the shit over voice chat, yo-yoing between real-life concerns and those of Grand Theft Auto Online’s teeming virtual world. It’s another beautiful day in Los Santos.

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