8 Video Game Franchises That Reinvented Themselves
3. Grand Theft Auto
Perhaps no gaming franchise has more successfully reimagined itself than Grand Theft Auto, which of course began life as a relatively straight-forward top-down Mayhem Simulator, with a small map and an incredibly threadbare approach to both story and characters.
Grand Theft Auto II was a basically glossier revision of this idea, before everything changed with GTA III, which reinvented the series as a hugely ambitious 3D third-person open-world sandbox with a massive map, a cinematic story, and extremely memorable characters.
GTA III's success influenced an entire generation of open-world action games, while setting a franchise formula that's persisted ever since, Rockstar largely devoting their time to building a more fleshed out world and more believable characters with each new installment.
GTA seems unlikely to undergo a radical gameplay reinvention anytime soon, in large part because Rockstar got it so right with GTA III, and also because the lengthy gap between new titles helps ward off potential franchise fatigue.