It’s been a long time coming but finally last week Grand Theft Auto V was officially confirmed as being on the horizon with the announcement that a trailer reveal will hit the web tomorrow, Nov 2nd.

That was the first significant official announcement we’ve heard on Grand Theft Auto V since 2008′s extremely successful release of Grand Theft Auto IV, as Rockstar have just allowed rumours and speculation to spread and not confirming or denying much, instead insisting on staying quiet on their future plans.

This of course has always been the Rockstar way. Let others speculate whilst they get on with creating the best games they can. As Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick put it back in September 2009 ago;

“We’re not going to announce it, we’re not going to announce when we are going to announce it, and we are not going to announce a strategy about announcing it or about when we are going to announce it either, or about the announcement strategy surrounding the announcement of the strategy.”

But we humans are an impatient lot aren’t we? Rockstar staying quiet and not revealing anything just makes us more and more curious. Since we wrote the Grand Theft Auto 5 article last week we’ve had a lot of traffic find us by asking questions into Google regarding the game, the majority of which we can’t really answer at this stage because Rockstar are staying so quiet, but we’ve clashed our heads together and come up with something of a guide to answer them the best we can at this stage.

Of course after tomorrow we will know a lot more but right now, here are the facts & rumours…

 

Where Can I Watch The Trailer

You can watch it here, tomorrow, when the countdown ends.

 

When Will It Be Released?

IGN have consistently stayed adamant that Grand Theft Auto V will be released next year and this seems to be backed up with the trailer coming tomorrow (Nov 1st). Rockstar wouldn’t start teasing a new GTA title this early if it wasn’t coming next year, so you can probably assume a release in September, October or November of 2012.

As something of a guide, Grand Theft Auto IV was released April/May 2008 (but after a six month delay), Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released October 2004, with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City coming around the same time in 2002.

 

Which City Will It Be Set In?

The first rumours in the summer of 2009 (and they’ve never really gone away since) suggested that Grand Theft Auto V will be set on the U.S. West Coast with Los Angeles heavily thought of as being the locale. This would make GTA V the first of the games to use a real life city, though they could always just as easy make an original city that has just been influenced by L.A.

A rumour yesterday stated that Grand Theft Auto 5 would be a direct sequel to Grand Theft Auto IV and would re-use San Andreas but this would seem to go against Rockstar’s etiquette of a new locale/new characters for each game.

Some of us are of course still holding out for London but the dollar bill style logo seems to have ruled that out completely.

 

When Will It Be Set?

Grand Theft Auto I, II and III were all set in modern day settings but Rockstar had the genius idea of moving the fourth game into the 1980′s. Calling it Vice City and heavily influenced by Miami Vice, the game was a revelation and obviously had that killer soundtrack. San Andreas went for a mid 1990′s setting, and this started a precedent of expecting the next game to go back in the past too. Would they go back in time to a kick-ass and brutal 1970′s (though that was covered in The Godfather, although obviously not up to Rockstar quality) or go even as far back as the 60′s? They couldn’t go as back as the 40′s as that’s L.A. Noire territory. Or will they go modern day again?

A recent IGN poll suggested that a large portion of GTA gamers want the title next title to go into the future but that seems to be unlikely and for this author, very much unwanted.

 

What Is The Logo?

The only official still we have from the new game features what appears to be a dollar bill logo.

 

Will MotionScan Technology Be Used?

With Rockstar’s uber successful published L.A. Noire featuring breathtaking facial animations using the new MotionScan technology, many pundits are expecting that to be expanded upon for the new game and we are betting it will feature.

Officially, only Team Bondi co-founder Brendan McNamara has gone on record teasing that Rockstar would be interested in using the technology for GTA V but are proceeding with caution;

“Yeah, I think they’re looking at it for every game. As much as L.A. Noire is a huge game, Grand Theft Auto is incredibly huge, so you’ve got all the problems of how big the cast would be and how many lines would you have to record and all that kind of stuff. Obviously we’d like them to, and they’re more than welcome to use MotionScan, but if they decide it’s not right for that and want to use it for another game, then that’s fine too.”

 

Who Will Be Doing The Voice Acting?

Rockstar is well known for being able to attract Hollywood sized casts for their projects. The likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds and Peter Fonda have voiced major characters in the GTA series to date and Ricky Gervais and Phil Collins have even cameo’d as themselves.

L.A. Noire expanded on this with photo likeness of actors and with Rockstar likely paying better money per title, the likes of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as being rumoured appearing in the GTA V may not be so far fetched.

 

Of course in on November 2nd, in just a day’s time we will know a lot more about Grand Theft Auto V when that first trailer hits. It is expected just to be a teaser but we are sure the city reveal will be present, along with a title and a look at our main character/period setting.

We will keep this Q & A updated as we embark on the (likely) year’s journey of Grand Theft Auto V that hopefully will be in stores around this time in 2012. In the mean time feel free to leave your thoughts, questions and queries on the game.

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