Past and Present: Grand Theft Auto Series

Since Rockstar Games have been celebrating the 10th anniversary of Grand Theft Auto (their flagship title since their rename from DMA Design) and the announcement of Grand Theft Auto V, I thought it appropriate to talk about the series, its controversies and its merits.

As I mentioned above, DMA Design was the original group behind the Grand Theft Auto series. DMA Design was a small company based in Edinburgh, Scotland and are most famously known for their breakthrough title Lemmings. While they didn't release many games throughout their time, they're most notable work prior to the Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings series' were Body Harvest and Space Station: Silicon Valley on the Nintendo 64.

Under DMA Design, Grand Theft Auto entered the market in 1997 as a top-down action-adventure game in which the player would go to a telephone and receive various missions  to undertake. Missions included killing a specific person, robbing banks and taking people from place to place. There was no shortage of content and with the world being open for exploration, players had free rein over their fun in the game.

Grand Theft Auto was slated for being too violent and too realistic for its time. The Daily Mail called for an outright ban on the title and many morning television shows had clips of gameplay, urging parents to look carefully and not to purchase the game for their children. The game was a resounding success for the company, partly because of the attention it was getting from the mainstream media.

An expansion for the original game soon followed. Grand Theft Auto: London was a title in which players would undertake the same elements of gameplay from the original title but were thrown into a London setting with its own map, cars and missions. The expansion was the first of its kind on a console as it needed the original game to be loaded during initialisation.

In 1999, DMA Design released the follow-up to the original. Grand Theft Auto II was set in a futuristic world where the player would need to balance relationships with rival yakuza gang's. While it retained the top-down aspect and the same style of gameplay as the original, the game was infinitely harder as micromanagement of the gang's was a little game of its own. If you ended up as a hated person, the gang would seek to kill you at every turn.

Grand Theft Auto II didn't reach market saturation like the first title with gamers' showing their dislike for the setting, the vehicles and the gang system. While the game was still a decent title, DMA Design met with issues and were bought by British publisher Gremlin Interactive shortly after the games release.

After a mergence between Gremlin Interactive and Infogrames took place, Infogrames sold DMA Design to Take-Two Interactive where they were renamed Rockstar Games. After becoming an internal label of publisher Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games got to work on their next big hit, Grand Theft Auto III.

Grand Theft Auto III was released in 2001 as the first 3D title in the series. The game was still an open-world action-adventure game but the new perspective leading to critical acclaim from the media and gamers alike. Even though the game was received well, Rockstar faced criticism over the amount of violence and sexual content depicted in the game. The game was blamed for the deaths of Aaron Hamel and Kimberly Bede, two young people shot by teens William and Josh Buckner but was dismissed in court.

Rockstar Games had three spin-off's after Grand Theft Auto III. Those titles are Vice City and San Andreas. Each didn't need the original game installed to play and offered their own city, characters, storyline and missions whilst using the same engine that Grand Theft Auto III had used. Vice City is known as the biggest grossing game of all-time in America.

Grand Theft Auto IV was the first in the series to jump to the next generation consoles. The game was released on the new RAGE Engine and utilised Rockstar's proprietary technologies to render a realistic looking New York City (called Liberty City in-game). The game stuck to its old formula but added proper vehicle physics, a gripping storyline and in-game choices that affected the player's experience further down the story arc.

For the first time ever, Rockstar incremented their own engine into another engine to enhance specific pieces of the game. Natural Motion's Euphoria engine is used in the game to combine artificial intelligence, bio-mechanics and physics to make NPC behaviour and movement adaptive and more realistic.

Grand Theft Auto IV was the first in the series to have multiplayer functionality, allowing people to jump online and take part in various game modes such as Team Deathmatch and Team Mafiya Work.

With Grand Theft Auto V having been announced and a trailer set to hit the world on the 2nd November 2011, everyone is waiting to see where the series is heading to next. There's much speculation that the logo hints towards a return to San Andreas but for now it's anyone's guess.

I'm personally expecting big things to come from the next installment in the series. Rockstar haven't let us down yet and seem to be on-track to bring us another excellent game.

With Grand Theft Auto now a staple of the gaming industry, it's hard not to see how it's influenced the way we play games today. Rockstar Games have helped shape an industry where games aren't only for children but adults too and have brought the industry into the mainstream. Here's hoping they continue to innovate and show that the industry is worth talking about.