After an excruciating month of mysterious and tantalizing teasers, Rockstar Games has finally released the trailer for their next epic game, Grand Theft Auto V.

I’m going to go ahead and call it now: this will be the greatest video game ever made.

Here are few tidbits of information gleaned from the trailer that the sleuthy citizens of the Internet have dug up so far:

• The game will be set in a modern-day San Andreas, 20 years after the events of the first GTA: San Andreas.
• There is a very good chance that the game’s protagonist(s) are familiar characters from the GTA series. The voice over in the trailer sounds suspiciously like an older, gravelly Ray Liotta, who voiced Tommy Vercetti, the main protagonist from GTA: Vice City. Perhaps Tommy has moved to San Andreas after the recession hit, and has to turn back to a life of crime to make ends meet. This is only speculation (other’s have suggested that the voice belongs to Dean Winters of Oz and Rescue Me fame), but there’s no denying that Tommy’s return would make for a killer narrative.
• On the other hand, taking into account rumours of multiple protagonists, we may be seeing a return of other former GTA “heroes.” Carl Johnson, the protagonist from GTA: SA, is known to reside in Los Santos — we may even have caught a glimpse of him at 1:06 in the trailer. If the voice over in the trailer doesn’t belong to Tommy Vercetti, it may belong to Claude, the voiceless hero featured in GTA III. We could possibly even see the return of Niko Bellic, the hero from GTA IV, who received a ticked to San Andreas late in the game’s storyline.
• The game world is massive — at least the size of GTA: SA, and will likely include all three San Andreas cities, Los Santos, (Los Angeles), San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas), as well as all the interconnecting countryside, including the now-massive Mount Chiliad. Everything has been completely rebuilt from scratch, remodeled for current gen — or more likely, net gen — consoles.
• GTA V is returning to the vibrantly colourful and seemingly less restrictive kind of open-world mayhem that made GTA: SA my favourite installment of the series. Planes, jet, bikes, boats and a slew of other wild vehicles are back. This is a welcome return to the strictly fun roots of the genre, following the toned-down, slightly more “realistic” gameplay of GTA IV.
• Buying and selling property is back. We’ll finally be able to return to our very own hilltop Vinewood mansions (after disposing of all the dead hookers).
• A whole lot of other hints and clues that I’ll let the Internet sort out over the next few days.

Based on Rockstar’s previous trailer and product release scheduel, we won’t be seeing this game on shelves until at least Christmas of 2013.

Until then, we’ll just have to keep eating up every little morsel of information Rockstar throws at us in order to get a true sense of what we’re in for once the game is finally launched. One thing’s for sure, though: this will be Rockstar’s most ambitious title to date.

And it’s going to be spectacular.

—
Image: Supplied