GTA V!!!!!!!!!!!

GTA V (or five to non-gamers or roman literate people) has been offically announced. The mass excitement that one sentence, and believe me, it is one sentence, saying yes the game that you have expected to be announced is being announced, and the first trailer is next week. Wednesday around 6pm British Time. The excitement it has created is unparalleled to me.

And I mean this, some much speculation when the developer dosent give you anything is a good thing right. The main source of all the discussion mainly is where this new game will be set. The one thing that RockStar North have done well over the year is creating new areas for you to murder, shoot, and blow the fuck out of.

They have always done amazing cities. Liberty City which they recently returned to after around 8 years, and transformed it into an amazing replica of New York City of which it is based. Taking its name from a famous statue.

Originally apearing very early in the series, Liberty City has been a stand out design from rockstar. It was the first city i had the pleasure of tearing a new one for. 10 Years ago as an impressionable 13 year old boy, this was one of the games that helped turn me into the man/gamer i am today. Coming out originally on the Playstation 2, it later released on Microsoft's new console the Xbox. A theme that is going to be later repeated with later titles as you will see.

This was also Rockstar's first foray into a 3d world. Each previous entry in this series was from a top down view in a 2d world.

The next city of rockstar's choosing to recreate was the city of Miami. Yes the South Florida city may not have had the same name, but this is a lot of people's favourite game of all time. Especially the series. Set during a musically superior decade of the 1980's, the game not only had a fantastic radio soundtrack, but looked amazing, with great looking characters, in terms of fashion, the cars were superb, and the city looked great. Taking it's name from a successful Miami based Police Tv Show. Vice City was every bit of enjoyment millions of us had from playing it.

Now Vice City is a little bit like Liberty City in its fact that the few islands that make up the city, are very urban based with little country side based land. Not sure you can class the golf club as non-urban. I'm not entirely sure the guys and gals at rockstar would not want to repeat this theme of a city, straight after Liberty City, (especially with the upgrades to technical and graphical power these days) it could work, but with nods towards titles like Call Of Duty, some gamers are becoming more aware of the same stuff appearing in game series.

A reason for Vice City to make an appearance is that Rockstar North wanted to put a fair bit of countryside into Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV, but declined to and worked really hard on the city element. And boy did it pay off. Now remember a few lines above I told you that Vice City had a distinct lack of country side in the original game based there, this could be an good reason for them.

The Last new entry in the GTA Series was in 2003/04 and took us from the East Coast of the U.S.A to the West Coast. Instead of one city, Rockstar gave us 3, and massive amounts of countryside to fill in the time.  Set around California, we were given Los Santos, (Los Angeles) San Fierro, (San Francisco) and Las Venturras ( Vegas baby) and each city had its own part of country side to enhance each island/city. The Vegas island had a more desert theme, San Fran had its own mountain in it, and LA had more little villages and scenic routes for you to drive through.

Now if for reason stated above, rockstar wanted to concentrate on the city aspect for gta iv, this might turn them off. Some Gamers criticized the size of San Andreas, saying it was too big to find everything in it. I loved it Personally, and still have the previous generation of games in this series to this day.

Again if they want to allow themselves a massive area, Can you imagine three Liberty City style city with the level of detail they showed in iv. I cannot, think it would be too much detail to do.

One area of massive contention though is one city in particular from San Andreas, Los Santos. You see, rockstar's last game was called L.A Noire, and required them to scan pretty much the entire city so they could recreate 1940's Los Angeles. Meaning they had/have an entire city for them to mess around with, or even recreate los santos into. (I still remember that city off by heart from the old game) now with an already scanned city, there's still a lot of work, and would they venture into a real world setting, (remember LA may not like the way it could portrayed by Rockstar)

If i was a betting man, i would say the last option seems the front runner. Now if it were up to me i would go for a vice city game, while having half my staff working on a san andreas map to see if it were possible. that is just me though.

Either way, or option, this debate shall rage through the night and coming days till all is revealed come wednesday evening.

Keep Gaming and producing moments of grand awesomeness they shall reign on this blog.

Regards Mason Cooper 42.

Notes: There will be a new writer joining the blog, Joe Feery. He is currently on a piece for Heavy Rain and why you should play it, so look forward to that.