There was no better feeling than waking up to an unexpected Grand Theft Auto V gameplay trailer showing, you know, honest-to-goodness gameplay footage from the game and showing how some of the mechanics work. If you haven’t checked it out already, please, by all means do, or this article will make about as much sense as a flash flood in the desert. This video shows off a lot of what we’ve all been wondering about when it comes to how Grand Theft Auto V will actually play. There are two main points to touch upon here; how they’ll handle having three main characters and some gameplay mechanics.

Three Main Characters

This is probably the most interesting aspect of Grand Theft Auto V and everyone has been clamoring for more information as to how the mechanic will actually work. Would it be a multi-narrative story where you would play as each character on their own while exploring their stories while all meeting up at the end in some dramatic fashion? Or would it be that there were three main characters and that you would choose one character to play through the game as and stick to that character? The third, improbable option was allowing for real-time switching between characters and to explore multiple story arcs at once.

The crazy part is that Rockstar went with that third option for Grand Theft Auto V and that seems like the best way to do it, as well as the most difficult to pull off properly. The ability to choose which character you are playing as is really a cool mechanic, but also seems a bit confusing and complicated. You’ll fly to the building with one character, drop off your sniper across the way, then you’ll pick the third character to repel down and take a hostage. You’ll switch to the sniper to take out the enemies in the room, then switch to the driver to pull the two guys in the building out. It will be interesting to get a hands on with it, because right now it looks very cool, but like it might get in the way.

Gameplay Mechanics

Oh god the weapon wheel, this is such a necessity and something that I’m glad that we’ll finally see end up in the Grand Theft Auto games. Last night I was playing GTA IV online with a friend and switching from a rocket launcher to take down a helicopter to a shotgun to take out a nearby cop just involved a lot of pushing left or right until you find the right weapon. It worked back then, but the weapon wheel that we saw in Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption is just a superior method of selecting weapons. This will be perfect for Grand Theft Auto V.

At this point I wouldn’t mind if they just took all of the additions from Red Dead Redemption and tweaked them to be more “Grand Theft Auto” in Grand Theft Auto V. It also looks like you’ll get to actually do some planning and make some choices in how to tackle missions, which looks to be far more rewarding and more open world than we’ve seen from past Grand Theft Auto or Rockstar games. It’s not clear how much variance there will really be, but we saw that there will at least be two options to tackle missions and that the kind of loot that you gather will vary due to your choices. You’ll also have the ability to select who actually goes on the mission, which seems really awesome.

Hopefully we’ll see more about Grand Theft Auto V in the near future, but this was just enough to quench the thirst that many had for some information about the game. It also clears up the mystery of how they will handle having three protagonists.


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Dave Walsh

Dave Walsh is a well-known combat sports journalist specializing in Kickboxing and also works as a freelance journalist specializing in gaming and entertainment.
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