When the first Grand Theft Auto arrived in 1997, there was little indication that the top-down driving game would evolve into one of the defining series in entertainment.<\/p>\n
Developed in Dundee by DMA Design, the studio that would later become Rockstar North, the game offered something unusually permissive. Players could steal cars, work for criminals and abandon their objectives to simply cause havoc around the city.<\/p>\n
That freedom became the foundation of GTA. Grand Theft Auto 3 transformed it into a three-dimensional open world; Vice City and San Andreas demonstrated how distinctive those worlds could become; GTA 4 pursued greater realism; and GTA 5, supported by more than a decade of GTA Online, grew into one of the most successful games ever made.<\/p>\n
Ahead of GTA 6<\/a>, here is how the series reached that point.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto (1997)<\/b><\/p>\n Before GTA became the gaming behemoth it is today, it was a project called Race ‘n\u2019 Chase. DMA Design initially imagined a game in which players could take the role of criminals or police officers, before discovering that playing the criminals was considerably more entertaining.<\/p>\n The finished game contained three locations that would become central to the series: Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City. Missions were collected from ringing telephone boxes and the action was viewed from above, but GTA’s essential formula was already there: provide players with a city, vehicles and objectives, then give them considerable freedom in how they approached them.<\/p>\n The controversy surrounding its violence also established another recurring part of GTA’s history. Criticism from politicians before its release helped draw attention to a game whose provocative premise was already part of its identity.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and London 1961 (1999)<\/b><\/p>\n GTA briefly left America with London 1969, an expansion that transplanted the original game’s top-down formula to a caricature of 1960s Britain, complete with period cars, music and local slang.<\/p>\n A smaller follow-up, London 1961, was released as a free PC download later that year. Together, they remain anomalies in GTA history. No subsequent instalment has been set primarily outside the US, while their period detail anticipated the way games such as Vice City would later use music and culture to define an era.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)<\/b><\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto 2 refined, rather than reinvented, its predecessor. It retained the overhead viewpoint but introduced a more developed gang system, with completing jobs for one faction potentially damaging the player’s standing with another.<\/p>\n Its industrial setting, Anywhere City, also stood apart from GTA’s later reliance on fictional versions of recognisable American locations. It was the final main instalment built around the original top-down format.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)<\/b><\/p>\n This was the game that changed everything.<\/p>\n Released for PlayStation 2<\/a> in October 2001, Grand Theft Auto 3 transformed the series into a fully three-dimensional open world.<\/p>\n Players controlled the largely silent Claude as he moved through Liberty City’s criminal underworld, but the plot was almost secondary to the novelty of inhabiting the city. Cars could be stolen almost anywhere; police responses escalated with the player’s wanted level, and missions could be interrupted simply because something more interesting was happening nearby.<\/p>\n Radio became equally important. Licensed songs sat alongside talk shows, fictional advertisements and satire, helping turn time spent driving between missions into part of the experience.<\/p>\n Its influence reached far beyond GTA. Large 3D worlds built around missions, exploration and emergent chaos became one of the dominant structures of 21st-century gaming, with GTA 3 providing an early blueprint.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)<\/b><\/p>\n Only a year later, Rockstar showed that an open world could have a personality as distinctive as its characters.<\/p>\n Set in 1986 and influenced by Miami Vice, Scarface and the excesses associated with Florida in the 1980s, Vice City replaced Liberty City’s greys with neon, beaches and an expansive licensed soundtrack.<\/p>\n That soundtrack became one of the game’s defining features. Songs from artists including Michael Jackson, Iron Maiden, Blondie and A Flock of Seagulls played across its radio stations, helping reinforce the period setting and making simply driving around Vice City feel more immersive.<\/p>\n It also introduced GTA’s first fully voiced protagonist, Tommy Vercetti, played by Ray Liotta. His rise from recently released prisoner to criminal kingpin gave the story a more cinematic structure.<\/p>\n Motorcycles, purchasable properties and revenue-generating businesses expanded the formula further.<\/p>\n The results were enormous. Vice City sold 1.4 million copies within two days and became the best-selling game in the US in 2002. It ultimately sold more than 17 million copies across platforms.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)<\/b><\/p>\n If Vice City gave GTA personality, San Andreas gave it scale.<\/p>\n Carl \u201cCJ\u201d Johnson returns to Los Santos in the early 1990s after his mother’s murder, but the game soon expands far beyond one city. Rockstar created an entire fictional state encompassing Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas, inspired by Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Its ambition grew with the map. CJ could eat, exercise, gain or lose weight, improve weapon skills and customise his appearance. Players could gamble, modify cars, take over gang territory and explore the countryside between cities.<\/p>\n San Andreas also became one of the defining games of the PlayStation 2<\/a> era. Its size, freedom and sheer range of activities encapsulated what made the console’s library feel so ambitious at the time, helping cement the PS2 as a must-own system. The console would eventually sell more than 160 million units worldwide, making it the best-selling games console of all time.<\/p>\n Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005)<\/b><\/p>\n Liberty City Stories was an ambitious attempt at a portable<\/a> GTA.<\/p>\n