GTA V contains just under 160,000 lines of dialogue according to developer Rockstar Games. And much of it can only be heard by playing in a very non-GTA fashion. Even in Los Santos, pedestrians get spooked when they see others shoving past and causing mayhem. An accidental tap can throw them off their rhythm, their stories retreating into the game’s algorithm with a slim chance to be repeated. The successful voyeur must walk calmly, keep to themselves, obey traffic signals – easy enough in the real world, but when surrounded by GTA’s trademark sandbox free-for-all, it feels like a stealth mission a la Assassin’s Creed.
Occasionally NPCs break their own believability by talking over each other or providing canned responses. But when these vignettes play out in their entirety, it feels like you’ve snuck a glance at the real Los Santos.
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