6. Tired Celebrity Targets
Moving the series out West, as fun as it can be, will lead to obvious jokes about Hollywood and celebrity - which is fine, but I can't help but feel the series' cynicism is better when saved for juicier, less safe targets. There will be an obligatory coke-snorting starlet who went to California seeking fame, but is now doing porn. There will be jokes about breast implants. There will be a movie producer who thinks he's a big shot, but who isn't actually as big a big shot he thinks he is. There will be a comedy mission during which a character cries that he didn't win a Golden Globe, whilst your character looks on with a face that says "your pathetic" and yet still goes on to exact petty revenge on his behalf. It seems impossible to imagine GTA V going to Tinseltown and for that not to steal focus from some of the bigger, slightly less predictable themes and ideas played upon in GTA IV. Sure, the New York inspired setting of Liberty City is still rife with cultural cliches and lends itself easily to stealing scenes from Goodfellas and the like, but Rockstar got most of that out of their system in GTA III and the decision to make the game focus around an outsider - a non-American (think about it for a second: how many video game characters are not nominally American, British or Japanese?) put a different spin on things. I'd bet anything you play another gangbanger in GTA V. That's not necessarily bad but it's going to be entirely safe. Why not give us a first female protagonist? Or an grizzled old man with an eye-patch? I have no desire to play a 20-something dude in a vest.