The latest addition to the Grand Theft Auto series was expected to arrive this spring but, to the disappointment of fans, the official release date announced today is a few months off the mark.
The highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V will be released on 17 September. “We know this is about four months later than originally planned and we know that this short delay will come as a disappointment to many of you, but, trust us, it will be worth the extra time,” reads the post from the GTA team on Rockstar Newswire.
“GTA V is a massively ambitious and complex game and it simply needs a little more polish to be of the standard we and, more importantly, you require,” the team added.
The ambitious project will be the first major title in the GTA series since the release of Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008. GTA IV broke industry records on its release, selling about 3.6m copies in its first day and grossing US$500m in just one week.
The 15th GTA release takes place in Los Santos, the fictional Los Angeles-like city first introduced in 2004’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The open-world game is said to have been rebuilt from the ground up and features a map larger than GTA IV, GTA: San Andreas and publisher Rockstar Games’ 2010 western video game Red Dead Redemption combined.
The world of GTA V even comes with a fully modelled ocean floor for players to explore and features more vehicles than any other game in the series, ranging from mountain bikes, dirt bikes and cars, to helicopters, jet skis and planes. Screenshots released just before Christmas even show what looks to be a one-man submarine.
Like the rest of the GTA series, gameplay in GTA V will focus on completing missions and exploring the map. Gamers are told to expect more complicated set pieces and heists in this edition, improved car handling and combat.
The game also features three protagonists for the first time and players will be able to switch between characters at any time, choosing between wealthy retired bank robber Michael, his former partner Trevor and Franklin the repo man.
