As someone who considers the 3D era games to be among the best he's ever played and the HD era one huge bore, I'm unsure whether I should breathlessly await a PC release or just not care at all. So I'd really appreciate it if you guys could clear up a few points for me. I'm not asking for reviews or opinions, there are enough of them out there, but for a comparison between GTA 5 and its predecessors. Specifically I'd like to know:

- The 3D games, especially GTA 3, offered very loose missions that allowed for many different ways to accomplish them. In HD GTA, the missions were much more strict and "cinematic". It also seemed to me that they became more uniform and there was more 3rd person shooting going on.

- I found HD GTA shockingly easy. Some of the 3D era missions however were genuinely difficult, at least until one had figuered out a clever way to solve them.

- What's going on besides the main story? Ambulance, Pizza delivery, Firefighter and so forth, or flash game style mini games? Are there actually benefits to doing side missions and finding collectibles like there were in the older games, were you could increase your armor or health or gain fire resistance?

- Is empire building back? Are the stats from San Andreas?

- The HD era cut scenes seemed to drag on forever. I came to hate them. Are they now short and sweet or is there still a lot of "storytelling" going on?

- Are we back to the exuberance and fun of yore, or is GTA 5 just as "realistic" and "mature" as number 4?

- And finally, do the main characters spend the whole fucking game complaining how shit and not fun everything is, like they did in the HD era?

Just so that I might understand any replies you get, would you mind clarifying what you mean by "3D era" and "HD era"? To the best of my knowledge, every GTA game from #3 onwards was in 3D. I also believe that all of them will happily run in 1920x1080 (FullHD). So when you say "3D era", which games are you talking about, and likewise with "HD era"?

Yeah I am also abit puzzled by this.

That's a classification that I think Rockstar themselves came up with. They distinguish between the 2D Universe (GTA 1 and 2), the 3D Universe (GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas) and the HD Univers (GTA 4 and Episodes from Liberty City). I guess technically GTA 5 is part of the HD Universe, too. I adopted these terms because it seemed easier to use them than to juggle with 5 different game titles, but I guess I just made things confusing.

Probably means the last generation of consoles up to PS2 for 3D (game used to be isometric iirc), then HD for 360/PS3, other than that I have no idea.

Yeah, it had me scratching my head. Especially since I can play those "3D era" games in HD. :P

Unfortunately I can't answer your question, I'm all PC here. Though I won't hold my breathe waiting for it, it took years for L.A. noire to come out and there's still no word at all on Red Dead Redemption (We also never got the liberty/vice city stories games or chinatown wars, either). We could see GTA5 in a few months or only after several years, perhaps even not at all.