A farewell return ahead of GTA 6 finds the thirteen-year-old satire as sharp as ever — a high bar for a sequel whose arrival has been long and hotly awaited.
One last drive through Los Santos before the sequel lands. Thirteen years after GTA V first released, TechRadar's writer went back expecting a nostalgia lap — and found the city biting just as hard as ever.
The heart of the piece is a judgment few games of that vintage could earn: GTA V stands, more than a decade after its initial release, as a shocking, stylish and superbly realised satire of 2010s America. That is the outlet's own framing, and it sets a high bar for any successor. Satire is supposed to decay. Jokes pinned to one decade's preoccupations tend to curdle within a few years, their targets fading into period-piece quaintness. The claim here is sturdier: Los Santos has lost none of its edge, and the game's skewering of American excess reads as sharply today as it did at launch.
Surprise is the rarest commodity in a world players have walked for over a decade. That Los Santos can still produce it is the writer's central observation — and, arguably, the most impressive thing about coming back. Replays usually reward habit; this one, per the piece, rewarded attention.
Timing gives the reflection its weight. GTA 6, the hotly anticipated sequel, is on the way, and this return is framed deliberately as a farewell: one final visit before the franchise turns the page. That framing converts a routine replay into something closer to a stocktaking. What endures, and what a successor must now measure itself against, is a thirteen-year-old city that refuses to feel old.
The closing verdict is simple enough. A game built to skewer one decade has kept its bite well past it — and Los Santos, on this last look before GTA 6 arrives, still surprises.
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