Second Trailer Revealed for Grand Theft Auto 5

Rockstar today revealed the second trailer for Grand Theft Auto 5, the upcoming instalment in the GTA series.

The first official trailer for the game was released earlier this month (November, 2nd) and gave an attractive overview of the game’s world; Los Santos. While it served as a nice taster, the trailer hardly gave anything away and it was unclear whether the voiceover was that of a playable character or not.

With today’s release of the second trailer fans have finally been given a little more about the game they have been waiting four years for. It was recently announced that GTA5 would see us taking control of three characters, during missions you will be able to swap between any of the three to utilise each of their strengths. The three characters are finally introduced to us in this latest trailer.

Michael, an ex-bank robber is the first to be introduced to us. He’s in his forties and has a family that are taken care of from the money he made in his old life. The second is Trevor, he’s an older business partner of Michael’s but unlike his friend doesn’t live in style, but instead in a trailer park with a drug addiction. Thirdly there is Franklin, the youngest of the group, a repo man thrown into business with the other two in “pursuit of the almighty American dollar”.

The trailer consists of a lot of shots of Los Santos, which is said to be a bigger game map than Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas combined. Hopefully, this will mean a long game that will keep us going for a while. It’d certainly be a step towards making GTA 5 worth the long wait. As always the graphics have improved and Los Santos is looking good but not quite to the graphic standard of a number of recent releases. Grand Theft Auto, however, seems to maintain a comic feel, akin to that of Borderlands and Borderlands 2, and it seems that even with the technology available Rockstar would prefer to stick with this iconic look.

The shots of the city show off a number of vehicles that we all know we’ll find ourselves dragging someone out of in an attempt to escape the police at some point. My particular favourite is the Audi R8 Spyder lookalike. There’s also freight trains, your normal selection of cars and even a jeep driving off of a plane mid-air!

A few seconds in the video are dedicated to showing off some of the cool new things that missions will have us doing such as grappling down a wall and performing bank heists.

Each character is set up briefly in the 1 minute and 51 second trailer. We see Michael’s dysfunctional family contrast with his stunning mansion in Rockford Hills, Los Santos’ answer to Beverley Hills. From the few short clips we see of him its easy to get the impression that he’s fed up of what he has and wants more; he wants to get back in the game. Trevor is angry and he doesn’t care who knows it, from beating up someone on the trailer park to committing arson he doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks. Franklin, the game’s only black protagonist, seems to be looking for something new, something bigger. He’s told outright, by who I can only assume to be a girlfriend, “I don’t care how many cars you own, you ain’t changing!”

The three characters are finally brought together in the closing seconds of the trailer with Michael introducing the other two to one another. “That’s Trevor, my best friend. That’s Franklin, the son I always wanted” he says.

A helicopter explosion later and its over.

Until Rockstar decide to release more that is.

The game is due out Spring 2013, and while not a whole lot is given away in either of the trailers we can see that GTA is coming back with a bang. Hopefully it won’t disappoint this time.

Grand Theft Auto 5 will technically be the fifteenth game in the series but will be the 7th major title in the franchise. The last of these to be released was Grand Theft Auto 4 (2008) which was received with mixed reviews. GTA 5 will be a continuation of the universe introduced in its predecessor.