GTA V: interactive fiction vs putting toys in the sandbox?

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I have *just* finished GTA IV, so I can finally see what made Niko Belic such a divisive GTA anti-hero. For his sins, I found him a maudlin but compelling protagonist, and his perspective on Liberty City was fascinating compared to the thinly-characterised cyphers and psychopaths of previous games.

I don’t know how you played GTA IV, but I related to Niko’s motivations in a way I hadn’t with the typical GTA narrative of ‘the American Dream gone wrong’. Niko didn’t want to rule the city, he just wanted to use it for a very primitive, singular purpose, and I bought in to this quest to such an extent that I would sometimes make decisions in the game not out of convenience or even enjoyment, but because it served Niko’s ends.

The surprise came once I finished the story and I realised what a hollow existence Niko has lead, and what little he’d left to do in the city. Where previous games see you claiming real estate, storing cars and amassing weapon rooms, Niko lives a mostly vagrant life through the game, abandoning apartments whenever they become too untenable or on fire, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when GTA IV’s post-game amounted to little more than assassinations, car thefts and low level drug deals.

It made me wonder what we can expect from GTA V - with its map the size of GTA IV, Red Dead and San Andreas combined, and three protagonists who appear to have motivations that are as distinct to Niko’s as they are from each-other’s. This grand canvas is nothing if you don’t provide enough content to fill it (and judging from the latest trailer there will certainly be a lot more to do in GTA V) but that focus on narrative makes me wonder how far GTA has departed from the world of timed rampages and spontaneous paramedic excursions.

Are current-gen GTAs such a different beast to the more ‘gamey’ PS2 incarnations that we should put aside these childish things in favour of a deeper narrative experience, or can GTA V marry an involving story with the freedom and variety of options that fans expect from an open-world sandbox?

In short: what are you expecting from GTA V?