Gameplay Each game in this series allows the player to take on the role of a criminal in the big city, typically an individual who ends up rising through the ranks of
organised crime through the course of the game. The player is given various missions by kingpins and major idols in the city underworld which must be completed to progress through the storyline. Assassinations and other
violent crimes are featured regularly. Occasionally,
taxi driving,
firefighting,
street racing,
bus driving, or learning to fly
helicopters and
fixed-wing aircraft are also involved in the game. In later titles, notably those released after
Grand Theft Auto 2, the player is given a more developed storyline in which they are forced to overcome an unfortunate event (e.g., being betrayed and left for dead), which serves as motivation for the character to advance up the criminal ladder and ultimately leads to the triumph of the character by the end of the storyline. The
Grand Theft Auto series belongs to a genre of
free-roaming role-playing video games called
open world games, and grants a large amount of freedom to the player. Traditional action games are structured as a single track series of levels with
linear gameplay, but in
Grand Theft Auto the player can determine the missions that they want to undertake, and their relationship with various characters are changed based on these choices. Influenced by the earlier game
Turbo Esprit, the cities of the games can be roamed freely at any point in the game, and are examples of
open world video game environments which offer accessible buildings with minor missions in addition to the main storyline. There are exceptions: missions follow a linear, overarching plot. These missions are required to complete in order to unlock new areas in the game.
Grand Theft Auto III and subsequent games have more voice acting and radio stations, which simulate driving to music with disc jockeys, radio personalities,
commercials,
talk radio,
popular music, and American culture. The use of vehicles in an explorable urban environment provides a basic simulation of a working city, complete with pedestrians who generally obey traffic signals. Further details are used to flesh out an open-ended atmosphere that has been used in several other games, such as
The Simpsons: Hit & Run, which has less emphasis on crime or violence, and
Lego City Undercover, which reverses the roles of police officer and criminal, although the player goes undercover in gangs for a portion of the game. Criminal activities in
Grand Theft Auto games do not go unnoticed by the police. As the player engages in these in-game illegal activities, they may gain a "wanted level", represented by a maximum of five or six stars. A small crime, such as running over a
non-player character, may create a one star wanted level situation, while shooting an officer may earn more stars. As the number of stars increase, the amount and strength of the response will increase; a single star might have a few police cars chase after the player, while at 5 or 6 stars, tanks and attack helicopters will chase down the player. Many in-game missions will automatically give the player a wanted level after completing a certain event which they must then get rid of before the mission is complete. Often, trying to keep away from the police while wanted will cause the player to gain even higher wanted levels. The player can remove their character's wanted level by avoiding detection or spending in-game money at specific locations to elude the police (such as a mod shop to repaint their car). Alternatively, if the player-character dies, they will
respawn at a hospital and the wanted level will be removed, though the player may lose money, guns, and other benefits they had before being chased. The "wanted level" gameplay concept has become common in
similar open world games.
Setting Most
Grand Theft Auto games are set in fictional parodies of well-known
United States cities, in a number of different time periods. The games are split into three different universes (2D, 3D, and HD), each with their own reinterpretations of previously established settings. The universes share the names of cities, several brands, and background characters who never make physical appearances in the games (with a few exceptions), but are otherwise considered to be separate continuities. The city encompasses three main islands, which are gradually unlocked as the game's storyline progresses: Portland (based on the industrial areas of
Brooklyn and
Queens, with additional elements from Manhattan and
Long Island), Staunton Island (based mostly on Manhattan), and Shoreside Vale (loosely based on
North Jersey,
The Bronx,
Staten Island, and
Upstate New York). The islands are connected by road bridges and an underground tunnel system. A tunnel leading out of Liberty City can be found in Shoreside Vale, but it is impassable by the player. This particular version of Liberty City returned in the prequels
Grand Theft Auto Advance (set in 2000) and
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (set in 1998), albeit with several changes to reflect the different time periods. The city was also mentioned in
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and was the setting of a mission in the latter. A third version of Liberty City was featured in
Grand Theft Auto IV, its expansion packs
The Lost and Damned and
The Ballad of Gay Tony (all three set in 2008), and the handheld game
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (set in 2009). This iteration closely resembles New York, and consists of four main boroughs, which become available to explore as the story progresses: Broker (based on Brooklyn), Dukes (Queens), Bohan (The Bronx), and Algonquin (Manhattan). The placement of these boroughs mirrors that of their real-life counterparts: Broker and Dukes occupy a large landmass in the southeast, while Bohan forms its own, smaller island in the northeast, and Algonquin acts as the city's central island. The setting also incorporates three smaller islands—Charge Island (
Randall's Island), Colony Island (
Roosevelt Island), and Happiness Island (
Liberty Island)—and a fourth landmass, Alderney, which is located west of Algonquin and regarded as its own independent state (similarly to New Jersey). Alderney is absent in
Chinatown Wars. All islands, barring Happiness Island, are connected by road bridges, underground tunnels, and a
subway system; none of which lead out of the city.
San Andreas San Andreas, based on
San Francisco, is one of the three original cities introduced in
Grand Theft Auto. It is the second setting available to the player. The locale encompasses two landmasses: a large northern portion, which is divided into fifteen districts and generally considered to be the city's core, and a smaller island in the southeast, consisting of only one district, which acts as the city's docks area. The northern landmass is further divided by Aye Valley, which cuts through the heart of the area from the east to the west. A reimagined version of San Andreas was featured in
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (set in 1992), as a state rather than a city. Based on
California and
Nevada, the state encompasses two landmasses, separated by a river and surrounded by a large body of water. The southern portion of the map features the cities of Los Santos (based on
Los Angeles) and San Fierro (San Francisco), separated by vast forest and mountain areas. By contrast, the northern portion is one large desert region and incorporates only one city, Las Venturas (
Las Vegas). Both landmasses feature additional rural settlements, which are less inhabited than the three major cities. The cities are connected by a train track system, and each one features an airport, which can be used to
fast travel from a city to another. At the beginning of the game, players only have access to Los Santos, with the rest of the map being gradually unlocked as the story progresses. A third version of San Andreas appeared in
Grand Theft Auto V (set in 2013), again imagined as a state. The game features only the southern portion of the state, which is depicted as a large island. The southern portion of the island is occupied mostly by the city of Los Santos (which resembles Los Angeles much more closely than its
San Andreas counterpart), while the northern portion, known as Blaine County, is less inhabited, featuring vast areas of desert, forest, and mountain, and only a few small towns. This version of San Andreas is currently the only setting in the series that does not feature any map limitations, allowing players to explore the entire island at the beginning of the game. Los Angeles was extensively researched for
Grand Theft Auto V. The team organised field research trips with tour guides and architectural historians and captured around 250,000 photos and hours of video footage during these visits. Since the release of the game, hundreds of in-game buildings have been identified as being based on real-world landmarks.
The New Yorkers Sam Sweet notes that, with sales of the game reaching thirteen million copies, "there will be more people living in the imaginary state of Los Santos than in the real city on which it was modelled."
Vice City Vice City, based on
Miami, is one of the three original cities introduced in
Grand Theft Auto. It is the third setting available to the player. The city encompasses one large landmass, divided into eight districts which form the city's core, and a smaller island, Vice Beach, in the northeast. Like its real-life counterpart, Vice City is depicted as a tropical city, easily distinguished from the other two in the game by its beaches and palm trees. A redesigned version of Vice City, located in the state of
Florida, was introduced in
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (set in 1986). The city consists of two main landmasses, Vice City Beach and Vice City Mainland, separated by a large body of water and connected to each other and to two smaller islands, Starfish Island and Prawn Island, by a series of road bridges. At the beginning of the game, the player only has access to Vice City Beach, with the rest of the city being gradually unlocked as the story progresses. The same setting would be later used in the prequel
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (set in 1984), albeit with several changes to reflect the earlier time period. A third version of Vice City will be featured as a main setting of the upcoming
Grand Theft Auto VI (set in the present) and will again be based on Miami. It is also being re-imagined as a major city in the fictional state of Leonida, based on Florida, and as the county seat of Vice-Dale County, based on
Miami-Dade County. In addition, unlike previous iterations of the city, Vice Beach (known as Vice City Beach in the 3D universe's depictions of Vice City) will be its own separate city complete with its own police force, much like the real world
Miami Beach.
Other settings The
London 1969 and
London 1961 expansion packs for
Grand Theft Auto take place within a fictionalised version of
London during the 1960s. As such, they are the only games in the series to be set outside of the United States. The portion of the city used in the games is based on
Central London, although heavily condensed and mostly geographically inaccurate. It consists of two landmasses, separated by the
River Thames and connected by several road bridges. A fictionalised version of
Manchester is also featured in the games.
Grand Theft Auto 2 is set in Anywhere City, a fictional US retro futuristic metropolis with no apparent inspiration from any real-life city. The setting consists of three areas, which the player will switch between as the story progresses: the Downtown District, the Residential District, and the Industrial District. Each district is depicted as its own individual island. The game is set in an unspecified time period—conflicting sources suggest anything from "three weeks into the future", to the year 2013, while the game itself features several references to the "new millennium" that is coming, implying that the year is 1999. The 2020 update for
Grand Theft Auto Online,
The Cayo Perico Heist, introduced the eponymous fictional island, a "tropical paradise" off the
Caribbean coast of
Colombia privately owned by notorious drug lord Juan "El Rubio" Strickler. The island is used as both a
transshipment base and a partying place by El Rubio, and draws inspiration from
Norman's Cay and
Hacienda Nápoles. Cayo Perico is the first setting in the series not located in the United States since London.
Voice acting The series has included a wide variety of
voice actors. The original
Grand Theft Auto, its
mission packs and its
sequel, as well as
Grand Theft Auto Advance and
Chinatown Wars did not feature any voice credited to specific roles. The first game in the series to do so was
Grand Theft Auto III which, despite a limited budget and the series' low profile at the time, featured several notable actors from film and television. These included
Frank Vincent,
Michael Madsen and
Kyle MacLachlan, who all had prominent roles. At the time it was rare for a video game to use such high-profile actors, and
Grand Theft Auto III is considered a pioneer in doing so. The next game,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, featured more film actors, including
Ray Liotta as the player character. Although the following title,
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, also featured many notable film actors—such as
Samuel L. Jackson,
Peter Fonda and
James Woods—it had been decided that the use of such actors should be reduced, particularly for leading roles. As a result, many of the prominent roles in
San Andreas were voiced by lower profile actors or rappers. From
Liberty City Stories through to
Grand Theft Auto V, the series has continued using lesser known actors to voice main characters, but still uses celebrities and real-life radio personalities to voice the DJs of the many radio stations featured in each game. Some games also feature celebrities portraying themselves, such as
Lazlow Jones,
Phil Collins,
Ricky Gervais,
Katt Williams, and
Dr. Dre. == Controversies ==