Happy 10th, GTA V. Without a doubt one of the most popular games of our time, having sold over 185 million copies. It's most likely my most played game of all time, having played it regularly since the day it originally came out on Xbox 360 back on September 17th, 2013. Most of my playtime has been spent playing GTA Online, which first launched on October 1st, 2013. While my original character wasn't saved due to all the server problems during launch, the character I've used since the day after – October 2nd – has a total playtime of over 90 days (2160 hours) hours. As the next GTA game is yet to be revealed, and with it being the month GTA V turns 10, I thought I'd write a retrospective of the game, go over some of the thoughts and memories I have, all while detailing the game and some of the more notable updates, and also comparing it with prior games in the series.

GTA V is probably the most hyped I've ever been for a game's release. I'd grown up playing the 3D era GTA games, starting with Vice City in 2006 and getting the remaining PS2 games thereafter. When IV was announced, you bet I was hyped for it. I'm unsure of when I became aware of the game, but as I'd yet to get either a PS3 or Xbox 360 by the time the game came out, I spent a lot of time watching stunt videos made in it, mainly from Ben Buja. My dad bought a PS3 with the game sometime in 2009, and I played and enjoyed that game to the fullest. At some point I became aware of Episodes from Liberty City, which was releasing exclusively for the 360, so I saved up and got the console, along with Episodes and another copy of base IV, and I played and enjoyed them immensly. Some time later still, probably through Facebook, I saw it. The first announcement of GTA V. The trailer, showing a city that looked like San Andreas, with cool cars and convertibles that could open/close the roof, a protagonist that people thought were Tommy Vercetti, and amazing graphics. From the start I was hooked, and eagerly watched each trailer as they came out. The gameplay trailer was awesome, and the Online presentation as well. Finally, the game released a year later than planned, and it was the best thing ever. It was the first game I deliberately played blind and the first game I bought a strategy guide for. The story mode was awesome that first time around, and then Online was released. Just being your own character in Online, with your own apartment, and your own vehicle was awesome. And of course, it was GTA with multiplayer, how awesome was that!? I played the original 360 version until it stopped receiving updates in the middle of 2016, and have since bought the Xbox One version and played that over the last 5 to 6 years. As of this post, I've yet to jump over to the Series X version of the game.

Anyway, time to discuss the game. Starting with the gameplay, it's a good amalgamation of every GTA released prior to it. The driving is fairly realistic and a clear evolution of IV, while also harkening back to the PS2 games with it's slightly more arcade-y feel. Starting with the Xbox One/PS4 versions, the damage done to vehicles is scaled back compared to IV, which makes it both less interesting and less frustrating, but it remains one of the coolest aspects of the game. One criticism I have with cars is that they easily explode if you land upside down from a high altitude. It brings some skill to the driving, especially as you can now control the vehicle's rotation in the air, but sometimes you're just spinning with no way to stop, so it just feels lame. They've sort of gotten rid of this feature as basically every car added as DLC doesn't have this problem, but that inconsistency is annoying in-and-of-itself (I'll get into more detail later). Another incosistency is getting ejected out of a window when crashing. It can't happen Online, but it's possible in Story Mode. I don't know why they made that decision, but it's welcome. Getting ejected out of the window can be fun but is mostly an annoyance, especially in V where you almost always die upon ejection. Overall though, driving feels very good. Bikes as well, they have been hugely improved. You couldn't do much with them in the PS2 games as flipping upside down would throw you off, and in IV they didn't have any grip and doing any flipping basically locked you upside down so you always landed on your head. In V, flipping feels great and they stick to the ground. One weird thing about them is that wheelies increases your speed, so getting the most out of a bike can be tough. Still, bikes in V are probably the best bikes I've ever ridden in a game. On that note, bicycles are fun, but not at the same time. I despise that you must tap the sprint button to ride at max speed, but being able to jump is fun. Similarily, blimps are rather useless but it's fun that they exist. Other flying vehicles such as planes and helicopters feel good, but one annoying aspect is that they're never completely stable. The random turbulence doesn't affect much (at least not with high flying skill), but it can be annoying having your controller vibrate all the time. The final vehicle types are the water-based ones; boats and submersibles. They suck. The map isn't designed for boats and the waves on the water make it as unfun as possible to drive them, and submersibles, while cool, are slow and there's almost no point to going underwater. In their case, the more primitive technology found in prior games in the series make for a more fun experience, especially when looking at the Vortex from San Andreas. All-in-all, vehicles are all very fun, but stay out of the water.

On the other hand, the on-foot gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Previous games felt very responsive, which made them feel good. In V though, movement on-foot is heavily animation based, so you're always waiting for the start-up or slow down animations to end. You almost always either overshoot or undershoot your movement, making it very hard to stop in the exact position you want to. You can't easily rotate in place either, and a lot of the things you interact with require you to look in a specific direction while standing in a specific spot. The base movement speed is walking (incredibly slow), but you can hold down the sprint button to jog (slow) or tap it to run (decent). An alternative control scheme allows you to jog by toggling the left stick and run by holding it down (painful). I'd like for jog to be default and that you can toggle sprint, but as described later it doesn't work very well in this game. Related to movement, they got rid of crouching from San Andreas and IV and instead added sneaking. It's not as fun and not as useful, so a poor decision was made in my opinion. Another new "movement" option they added in the single player is a button to let you ragdoll at any time. It's not very useful, but it's fun and is something I wish Online had as well. Changing topic to shooting, it feels good, if a bit basic. It's similar to IV where you can easily kill anyone by locking on to them, aiming slightly up and shooting when the reticle is on their head. The only notewrothy addition I can think over IV is the weapon wheel, which makes things feel a bit smoother. Each weapon type has its own slot where you can store all weapons of that type. This makes for a huge inventory of weapons that makes it a slog to scroll through, but it's better than the linear inventory you had consisting of one of each type. The weapon wheel is also the one thing on-foot has over vehicles, as vehicles use the linear system but only displays the weapons usable in vehicles. This often makes you scroll through multiple pistols to get to the SMG's, which you can easily overshoot if you're just spamming. I don't know why they didn't add the weapon wheel when you're in a vehicle; the radio wheel is right there, so it's not like they couldn't do one. Speaking of weapons in vehicles, shooting out of them is improved over IV. They patched in a way to let you aim before you shoot, so while it isn't a huge difference it's nice that it doesn't immediately waste your ammo anymore.

It's time to go over some more miscellaneous features. Parachuting was re-added from TBoGT, and it feels much smoother here. Minigames include darts, tennis, arm wrestling, and golf. They all feel good enough, but they aren't what you're playing GTA for. You can purchase clothing, which has its issues. In story mode, there's a risk that the character you're switching to has changed their clothes from the last time you played them, so there's really no point in changing them by yourself. In Online on the other hand, there is so many options that it's hard to find things. There are like 10 categories for t-shirts and 10 categories for caps, for example. For the next GTA, I hope they can update this to function similar to how it works in Red Dead Redemption 2, where each clothing option has a sub-menu containing all of its color variations. Weapon customization works alright though, some upgrades and some color options. Online has added Mk II weapons that have more customization options than standard weapons, but I don't care much how my weapons look, to be honest. Cars on the other hand... Car customization works great as is, my only problem there is that some of the cars available at launch have customization items that can't be selected. Take the Patriot for example, you can find one on the streets with roof-mounted headlights. While you can mount headlights on the roof of a Patriot, these particular ones can't be added manually, and are removed immediately upon entering a LS Customs. Sadlers can be found in multiple variations, but you can't customize any of it yourself. Minor annoyances like that, but otherwise it's pretty good.

It's time I go over the story of the story mode, but do keep in mind it's been a few years since my last playthrough. The story is about the dynamic between three people: a youngster who wants a better life, a retired bank robber who's forced to return, and an erratic former bank robber looking for the truth. The dynamic between them is good and tense, and make up the best moments of the story. Tone-wise, it's has more in common with the PS2 games and TBoGT than IV and TLAD. A more lighthearted experience, but still pretty serious when it matters. Mission-wise, the game is very focused on setting up heists and pulling them off. The influence that the mission Three Leaf Clover from IV had can be felt throughout this game. While that mission worked great in IV, having this many heists in one game lessens the impact of each one, as it makes for a game with a lot of high energy moments but not a lot of downtime to properly balance it. The ending of the game also comes a bit abruptly, as you're just presented with a choice from out of nowhere. From my current point of view, V isn't a game I really want to replay any time soon. Comparing it to previous games, IV probably has the best story of the series, and that alongside TLAD and TboGT has probably the most unique gameplay. The PS2 games are all over-the-top in a way that make them more fun than V. I've yet to finish a single 2D GTA game, but if I had I'd maybe be more interested in replaying them as it's a completely different type of game. Additionally, Online is basically V but better in a lot of ways, so if I want the same gameplay I'd rather just stick to playing Online. V also has other annoyances that hinder a replay, mainly related to money. You can earn a few million playing the story, but there are properties you can buy, one of which costs $200 MILLION. To maximize your money, you must finish the story and then play the additional assassination missions that want you to invest in the stock market and cash out at the right time. The stock market is an interesting addition to the game, but I don't want to have to deal with that. Besides, if you fail the investments you must gather the money in other ways, which could take forever just going by how much you need. The collectibles were also boring to gather, and aside from them, stranger missions, and some races there wasn't much else to do.

That's the story mode over with; onto Online. As mentioned earlier, I've been playing Online since it launched and have reached level 509 as of writing. I've had some inactive periods, and some very active ones, but I guess it averages out to some hour each week. In this section I intend to talk about what I remember of the game's launch period. The proper word to describe the first few days (or even weeks) is chaos. You were basically unable to play during that first week due to all the server problems. My first character wasn't saved as I said, so I'm technically on my second character. There was also one time I wasn't able to properly save but was able to make purchases in-game, quit, reload, after which I had my money again plus whatever I just bought. I could only buy stuff up to whatever amount I had (around $200k), so not a lot of options, but it was still free* stuff. I did it out of frustration and nowadays I regret that I did it, as it's left a permanent mark on my "cash earned" and "cash spent" stats, but if I've made it this far, hopefully I won't be banned. Anyway, at launch only like 5 vehicles cost $1m or more, the most expensive apartment cost $400k, and the most dangerous vehicle was a tank. I remember being outside a Los Santos Customs once and seeing a tank roll up around the corner and thinking to myself, "how am I gonna get out of this alive?" Staying alive in the early days was tough as everyone was in public servers just messing around. Most of the time everyone was in or around Downtown LS, so not a lot of room for each player. There wasn't a ton to do in the free roam, but it was fun being able to play in a lobby with your own character and vehicles, compared to IV where you're essentially a random character. To earn money, you had to participate in activities: races, deathmatches, missions; the latter of which was truly exciting at the time. Play GTA missions with other people, how cool is that! All of these paid pretty good money, but after exploits and strategies were found that allowed them to be completed quickly, payout was changed to disincentivize fast completions, effectively removing any need to play strategically. Aside from that, you could sell money that you found off the street to earn a bit extra, and you could also store most of the vehicles you found on the street to save some money on purchases. Basically, you didn't earn much money at the start, but there wasn't a ton of expensve purchases at the start so it was okay.

Over the next year and a half they mostly focused on improving the game. Balancing, adding modes, more clothes, vehicles, and weapons, and more. Updates were frequent, so there was always something new to do. One advertised feature had yet to release, however: Heists. It was on the back of the box, everyone was asking for them. They finally arrived in March of 2015, and they were cool. Not only were they cooperative missions, but multi-mission storylines that paid great. Each heist has a few setup missions where you gather the equipment, and then you execute the heist. This update was structured in a way wher you had to complete one of them to unlock the next one, until you completed them all. While the premise of the heist update was good, you quickly ran into issues with it, however. The second heist, The Prison Break, is notoriously difficult to get past as it's the worst heist of them all. In its final mission, you need to rescue someone from prison, take them to an airplane, fly the plane to a location, and parachute to safety. If it's one thing I learned from that mission, it is that you can't do it with random players. I had so much trouble matching with people who could fly or knew how to activate the parachute. What made it difficult thought was that if you run out of lives and someone then dies, you fail the mission. If randoms fail, they seem more likely to end the mission then and there, so that was just awful. Nowadays, no one plays these heists, which makes it that much harder to pass as you can't even gather enough people to begin with. Very good ideas for the heists, troubled execution, but they were definitely laying the groundwork for the future of the game.

After the heists update had released, content quickly dried up for the PS360 versions of the game, as Rockstar were looking toward the future with the enhanced version for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Two more content updates were released after it, with the last one releasing in July 2015. I didn't play it much longer after that, unofficially putting me on hiatus. Since the enhanced versions release in 2014, I was debating whether or not I was interested in getting the game again for the new consoles. The new features were more animals, better graphics, an expanded tracklist, and first-person mode. Were these additions interesting enough? Didn't know at the time, but I ended up getting the game for Xbox One in late 2015. I transferred my character, officially saying goodbye to the 360 version. Over the next six months I slowly chipped away at the story, occasionally jumping into Online to do something there. Didn't play much Online yet as I didn't have anyone to play with, but the story mode got me familiar with the new additions. It had more vehicles available in the traffic, which was nice after two years of the same traffic. The upgraded graphics were nice and still hold up pretty well to this day. All other additions were superfluous, except first-person. What do I think of it? On-foot it's the superior way to play, but not in vehicles. On-foot, the controls are very responsive. You go where you look, you don't have to wait for any animations to play, so you can easily stop on a dime and turn around in place. Jogging is also the default state when moving, with running being available from a toggle. Shooting feels a bit off, as it's a mixture of the GTA feel and the typical feel of an FPS. Some parts are objectively worse, like hiding behind a cover, as the camera by its very nature hinders certains things. Also, the FOV is way too small. Vehicle control is much worse, as alluded to. It can be nice to drive in first-person, but the camera in a car also has small FOV, which makes it tough to see vehicles around you, not to mention only seeing vehicles in front of you. Some vehicles and modifications also heavily obstruct your view, making it even harder to see. Shooting from a vehicle only allows you to shoot where you can see, so you can barely shoot above you. Good luck trying to shoot down any helicopters that chase after you. Many angles you can't hit, plus if your vehicle rotates too much, your camera is automatically spun as well, leaving you disoriented. All-in-all, a nice addition if only for on-foot gameplay, but one I hope to see much improved for the next game, though that can be attributed to the controls overall.

Late 2017/early 2018 is when I properly returned to Online. Various updates had been released by now that dramatically changed the experience from the 360 version. The Lowriders update added hydraulics and greater customization to select vehicles, which was awesome as someone who loved it back in San Andreas. With hydraulics being the main selling point for me, I was a bit let down. It doesn't move very quickly and you can't do anything too crazy, but it's nice that it exists. The Biker and Business updates added "legitimate" businesses you could run to earn money, all done in free roam. Biker properties are a more passive way to earn money while Business properties are more hands-on, but both require you to be aware of bad faith players attempting to ruin your sale, as these could only be done in public servers. Doing these types of sale missions were stressful but also the only way of doing them, but at least you didn't have to grind any multiplayer modes. Luckily there was a way to create solo public lobbies, allowing you to sell your stock undisturbed. I heavily abused this until it was patched out, but thankfully they allowed you to sell in Invite Only servers a few years later. The Biker properties were always a money sink, but the Business ones are good. In addition, the Business update added the ability to become a CEO, which all other businesses from here on out use (Biker properties use an MC gang for it). Being a CEO also allows you to call on a Buzzard, which is handy. Only members of your CEO can enter it and it can carry 4 people. If it gets destroyed there's a cooldown before you can request it again, but if not you can request it again at any time; just be aware that it sustains any damage received. The Bunker is another business similar to the Biker properties, except better. Only one property means it's easier to focus on what you need, the pay is decent, and you can unlock various things from it. Most of the unlocks are inconsequential things like liveries, but other are great, like upgrades for various vehicles, or new vehicles altogether. The Hangar update also added a business, but it was so boring that I've mostly ignored it. Flying planes is pretty mindless and most of the missions just weren't good. Stunt Races were another new addition, something that changed racing in the game for the better. Street races are fine, but you only have so much land to design tracks with. With this update, you could create any track imaginable with the parts provided. So many creative courses have been made, and including features not possible on the main map, like loops and huge jumps. If there's any multiplayer mode I want to play it's this, followed by unique rulesets like Insurgents Vs RPGs and Cabmageddon. Finally, the Doomsday Heist. I think this was what caused my comeback, new story content and supposedly also based on the cancelled single-player DLC. Three heists, or rather three acts of one story structured similarly to the heists of yore. The story itself was nothing special, and the heists themselves contain some of the worst missions in Online in my opinion, but it was nice to get heists other than the initial five.

Later in 2018 was when After Hours update was released, adding nightclubs to the game. This was likely the first update since the 360 days where I was an active player during its release. Nightclubs felt like they were the most requested addition to the game, and with it finally being added it almost felt like it would be the final update to the game. Boy was I wrong, but in a way it marked the end of the old release schedule where they had multiple updates per year, and after this updates only came out roughly every 6 months. Personally I believe that After Hours is one of the best updates they've done. The new business is one of the best in the game. Not only was it the first way to earn money legally from one of your businesses, but its "side business" utilizes previously released businesses to passively build stock to later sell. Since the business is mostly passive, you can spend the time you normally would spend hunting for supplies on other things and still earn money. Selling your stock is also improved over prior businesses as selling stock will only ever require one vehicle, allowing you to do it solo no matter the stock level. The update also brought the Oppressor Mk II; a bane in any public server, yes, but it's an extremely good vehicle to have in your possesion for any kind of mission.

The update after After Hours was Arena War. Take heavily modified vehicles and various vehicle game modes and that's the update. Plenty of cool but irregular vehicles, with some okay game modes, all restricted in this Mad Max arena. You've got Rocket League, races, deathmatches, bomb run, and Monster Trucks vs Small Cars. Not the worst, but I don't play GTA for the multiplayer modes, so I rarely touch these. Moving on to 2019, when they finally made use of the unused casino. Well, they replaced the model, but they added a whole casino with various betting games (slots, horses, blackjack, poker, roulette) and a wheel you can spin daily to win rewards. The games are what you expect, you win some you lose more, but the lucky wheel is interesting. You can earn rewards you can't get anywhere else, and each week also has a new vehicle you could possibly win for free. You can easily exploit the wheel to win whatever you want, but you still have to grind for it. Still, pretty nice. Later in the year they also released a heist focused on the casino. This is the most involved heist yet, with various different setups and outcomes, but overall I found it to be too involved for my tastes so I haven't played it too much. The heist concept itself is pretty fun, I'll give them that. The heist update also added an arcade as a business, to which you can purchase several arcade games. The games themselves are basic, some fun some boring, but I enjoy being able to play games within a game. This update also added the first new vehicle class since launch, being Open Wheel (think Formula 1). The damage from crashes severely impacted how these handled so you need to drive carefully, but their performance in peak condition is hard to beat. The races added for these also have different behaviour from typical races, so you really get that F1 experience. Not for me, but it's nice that it exists.

In 2020, Covid struck and you could feel it in GTA as well. The summer update contained new content and various changes, in addition to missions for the Yacht, but otherwise only expanded on existing content. No new properties, heists, or businesses. The arcade received two new games, including QUB3D from GTA IV which was nice. Open Wheel received two new vehicles to add to the two existing ones, and more races were added. Not a huge update, but the next one more than makes up for it. The Cayo Perico update was released during the winter, adding a new Heist to the game. To access the Heist you need to own the Kosatka submarine, a very good purchase as it was THE way to make money at the time. You could do the entire Heist solo in around an hour and go again shortly thereafter, earning $1-2 million each time. Prior to this update I'd had $10 million at most at any given time, but after a 2x week on Cayo Heists I managed to get to $40 million and have stayed around there since, only recently surpassing $50m and even $60m with the bonuses of the last few weeks. With this much money I rarely do any missions anymore as I prefer playing in free-roam, so it was worth grinding it short-term for long-term "profit". They've since made it harder and increased the cooldown between runs to decrease how much money you can earn from it, but it's still likely one of the best heists in the game. Besides, you want to own the Kosatka regardless, as you can purchase a Sparrow for it. This helicopter is one of the best purchases you can make in this game, as it can be called on from anywhere and it almost always spawns right beside you, which is very convenient for any kind of travel. Crashing it doesn't cost any money either, and it's only a 2 minute cooldown from when it was last returned/destroyed to when you can call on it again.

2021 saw the addition of some updates that brought me back to the mid-00's. First up, Tuners. Various heavily modifiable cars based on popular street racing cars were added alongside a new "Tuner" vehicle sub-class, with these also getting their own kinds of races. Mini-heists (shorter, less rewarding) were added with this update as well, which was a welcome addition. LS Car Meet was added too, adding a way for car enthusiasts to meet without risk of getting blown up. The car meet also added another way to purchase vehicles and allows you to test drive those vehicles, which comes in handy nowadays. All-in-all a decent update that brought back some nostalgia. To close of the year, they added a new heist based featuring Dr. Dre (who also briefly appeared in the Cayo Perico heist), alongside the Agency property. The Agency is basically only used for this heist, which wasn't so much a heist as it was a story about returning Dre's work-in-progress album to him, similar to the Doomsday Heist. Anyway, the DLC introduced Franklin to Online, which was neat. Additionally, the DLC featured a three mission storyline featuring Franklin and Lamar, and you actually got to play them! That was some fanservice, as the dynamic between these two easily brought some of the funniest moments in story mode. Their story in Online calls back to some of the more memorable moments, plus it serves as a nice epilogue of sorts to Franklin, as we get to know his current living conditions.

2022 was a good year for the game overall. It was the start of a promising future, as this is the year they started focusing more on adding Quality of Life (QoL) updates. For starters, the K/D ratio is no longer affected by kills made in Freemode, which disincentivizes griefing to an extent. Vehicles called in from the mechanic were quicker to spawn, phone contacts could do more things, and could also be removed (useful for those who don't provide any services). Most businesses got a side business where you could earn additional money without spending any and additional ways to increase your stock, and all passive income got increased storage capacity, with the Nightclub also recieving a boost in daily earnings. Businesses can now also be fully interacted with in any type of server, eliminating the need of public servers for people like me who play mostly solo. Other improvements were made, all of which enhanced the experience and are changes I hope get brought over to the next GTA. In addition, The Drug Wars update later in the year also added the best business to date, being the Acid Lab. It functions similarily to the Bunker but sales are worth twice as much, and the sales only require one vehicle (the nimble Manchez Scout C bike) for missions that are relatively short and easy. However, this update also brought one of Rockstars worst decisions: Time-limited vehicles. At the start of the game, cars were added instantly on the day of an update. At some point, they started to be drip-fed over a longer period of time, usually one a week until they were all released. With this update, some cars were added and later removed, only to be available again some time later, again for a limited time. Definitely an attempt to increase FOMO, which is awful, but I assume it was a failure in some way as they haven't used that approach for their latest update, and the time-limited Drug Wars cars are all currently available in the in-game stores at all times. However, that didn't stop them from attempting something even worse in the latest update.

The only update released in 2023 so far is San Andreas Mercenaries, and since they won't release another update in the coming month, you can call this the GTA V 10 Year Anniversary Update. They added an option to "Hold to Sprint", which also sets the default move speed to jog. While nice, the character movement in the game isn't built for constant jogging, so it vastly complicates positioning as your character always overshoots where they're supposed to go. A nice gesture, but one that can be much improved in the next game. Anyway, the "even worse" decision they made: Removing hundreds of vehicles from the in game stores. Anything from unused vehicles to some of the best in the game, gone. They're still in the game of course, if you own any of them you still own them, but you can't purchase them any time you want. What they're doing now instead is making them available through other means. You can find some of them each week in Simeon's Dealership, some in the Showroom, some in the LS Car Meet, and one on the Lucky Wheel. There's also a GTA+ exclusive option with some other vehicles, but these are the only ways to get them, and who knows when they'll be available next. You could argue that "if you haven't bought the car by now, you never will", but in my case I buy cars all the time, I just usually wait for discounts. As they were always available, I could afford to be patient. Now though, that's impossible. Buy it at whatever the current price is, discount or not, or risk it being lost forever. That's what Rockstar wants, but it's a shitty decision. "Happy 10th GTA V, to celebrate we're removing most of your vehicles." Gee, thanks. They also seemingly nerfed some older vehicles to incentivize you to buy the newly added vehicles, which is also kind of shitty. That's similar to what people are saying Apple are doing with older iPhone models; significantly shorten the battery life of the phone to get people to buy the new model.

Aside from that, though, the game is undeniably in the best state it's ever been. Earning money from businesses is easy (though you must of course own them), the QoL changes has greatly improved the feel of the game, the amount of garages you can own almost guarantees you have a slot for every car you're interested in. I do wish garages were easier to manage, though. Unless I'm missing something, the only way to move cars from one garage to another is by driving the vehicle to the desired garage. Realistic to be sure, but a pain in the ass. Speaking of vehicles, I find it very odd that there are so many vehicles from past games that they have yet to add to it. Vincent, PMP600, Savanna, Admiral, Freeway, just to name a few. GTA Online easily has the most vehicles out of any GTA, but each update only adds 1 or 2 returning vehicles, the rest being brand new names. Cars that are present in IV are the biggest mysteries as to why they haven't been added, but I guess the fact that most vehicles added to Online are super/sports cars may have something to do with it. That they're consistenly updating the game with new content for free is nice in and of itself, though Online's long shelf-life undoubtely having affected the release of the next GTA for it to STILL be as far away as it is is a bit annoying. I'm a variety gamer, I rarely play games longer than the story mode lasts. I appreciate that Online has gone on for as long as it has as I've really gotten mileage from every copy of the game I've bought, but I've been ready for a new GTA since forever. Really hope the new game brings a nicer gameplay experience, as V and by extension Online are a bit slow/unresponsive on foot and always have been.

Something I didn't mention among the update talk is that they've added multiple radio stations to the game through the updates. It was never something I expected back in the day, but it's been very welcome and brought about some of my favorite stations. It's also caused re-runs of songs from prior games, like Joe Jackson's Stepping Out featuring in both this and Vice City, and even having two versions of Sharivari and Everything She Wants in the same game. The only downside is the lack of variety, as mostly EDM and rap music has been added, but aside from that I'm not complaining. Another point I want to bring up is all the "advanced handling flags" they've added to vehicles over the years. These are flags placed on vehicles that activate certain behaviours, depending on which ones are active. Some are good, some are bad, but the worst thing is the inconsistency. For example, curb boosting is a phenomenon in this game. Something about the car's suspension when repeatedly going on and off a curb makes the car go faster. Rockstar have tried to tackle this issue in several ways, and my understanding is that one of the flags solves the problem. However, they haven't added the flag to all vehicles, so only a few vehicles have the flag, severly affecting their performance when compared to other vehicles. There's another annoying flag that cause vehicles affected to go further in the direction you're already going, like Vamos and Nebula Turbo. Drive alongside a curb, turn right to hit it, and your car turns even more to the right making you easily lose control, making the driving experience horrible, again severly impacting the performance of the car and only the cars that have the flag. Not all flags are bad, but the fact they're not all enabled or disabled on every car just makes them feel inconsistent, and not in a typical "heavy slow car vs light fast car" way but in a weird behaviours way. Vehicles added in later updates also frequently lack the same level of detail that many launch cars have. For instance, the Sparrow's landing gear is very stiff, making smooth landings difficult to pull off, while the flexibility of Buzzard's landing gear allows for pretty hard landings to still feel relatively smooth. In the same vein, many new vehicles have barely any visible dents from crashes, while the Tornado can be squished to an extreme degree.

Another thing that bothers me is the vehicle diversity in Online's traffic. As mentioned with the enhanced versions, the story mode in the Xbox One version has more vehicles available in traffic than the 360 version. Online's spawnable vehicles is the same it always has been, being the same vehicles since the 360's launch. Actually, some vehicles have been added to traffic, but there's only like 10 additional ones, all released during the first year of updates, and they only spawn at like 3 different locations on the map. You can't even store them in your garage, even if they can be bought for less than $100k. In theory I'd be okay with that as long as they increased the vehicle variety, but those additional vehicles are so old at this point (and most of them have even been removed from stores!) that I don't see the problem with being able to store those. Anyway, I don't see why they couldn't add fitting DLC vehicles to the pool of spawnable vehicles unless it's technical, but I hope it's something they eventually manage to fix, even if it's in the next game. I'm just saying, a larger variety of vehicles would really help make the world feel fresh again. Even just those early additions help so much, so imagine what the addition of 10 years of updates could do.

Anyway, despite its many flaws, the game still plays like none other. I have yet to play a game that combines all the aspects found in GTA and execute them on a comparable level. The first few Saints Row games come close, but in the end I'd say they are more in line with Rockstar PS2 output. IV and V are on a whole other level, and I can't wait to see what they've got in store for the next entry. Red Dead Redemption 2 may not have been my favorite game, but its Online had so many good QoL changes from its Story Mode. Faster movement and faster animations made the game feel so good to play compared to single player. Even the clothing stores are improved, and I hope that carries over to the next GTA. As long as it feels better to play than V does (which it will based on RDR2), then I'll be happy.

Will the next GTA be able to pull off what V did before it with Online? They must know what works and what doesn't, so I assume it'll launch in a more feature complete state than V's Online did (it's been a decade since V, after all). The question is if anything will carry over from V into the next. Most likely not, but it all depends on how expansive they make the next Online I guess. In any case, hopefully it won't be too far off. For now, happy 10th to GTA V and it's insanely popular Online mode... for better and for worse.