As I finished watching the GTA VI trailer for the hundredth time, I felt the old familiar itch of wanting to dive back into a grand GTA map again. Over the past decade-and-a-half, I've been through every street and alley in Los Santos, I've looted every bank more times than I can count, and I've bought and destroyed more cars than I've shot out of my own weapons. So, before mindlessly reinstalling GTA Online once again, I stopped for a second, and decided to go back to Liberty City, instead.

Back when GTA IV came out, it's no secret that it ran horribly on PC. Add to that the fact that I didn't have a discrete GPU in my PC until 2010, and the game simply never ran for me until 2011, when finally was able to get around to it. Now, armed with a gaming PC my childhood self could only ever have dreamed of, I finally decided to revisit Grand Theft Auto IV. My first realization was how surprisingly engaged I remained throughout the game, and my second, bigger realization was just how much Rockstar has changed as a company over the past 17 years.

Seriousness in Rockstar's tales has been replaced by flashiness

GTA IV's bleak tone is light years away from the vibrant but satirical Rockstar today

Playing GTA IV after 12 years of GTA V and a full year of watching GTA VI breakdown videos feels like... a weary sigh. Think about Nico Bellic's journey — it's a deeply grounded tragedy, and there were plenty of times where I almost felt uncomfortable watching it — like peeping into someone else's misery.

After about 15 hours into the campaign, all I see is a man who survived war, arrived in America chasing after a pipe dream about wealth and women, only to find out that this new world is just as corrupt and rotten as the one he left behind. Much like Night City from Cyberpunk 2077, Liberty City really couldn't care about someone like Nico Bellic, and it makes sure Nico realizes that at every turn.

Compare that to something like Los Santos, where the whole fictional LA-based city was satirical, vibrant, drowning in sunlight, and felt easy to explore — a carnival of exaggeration, if you must. It doesn't take a lot to know that GTA VI is following suit, mocking influencer culture with its Miami-based Leonida. Take just two steps back to GTA IV, though, and it feels like a heavy brick someone just threw at the DJ station at a party. It's deliberate, it's slow, and it's concerned with the decay of the American Dream.

In 2008, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto was out here trying to tell a story about morality, war, and survival. Just 5 years later, they completely switched gears to give us loud and flashy cities in the franchise, and left the more serious storytelling for their Red Dead Redemption franchise. Now, with GTA VI, they're about to give us the loudest, flashiest Vice City ever, drenched in neon and satire.

Look, I'm not saying that either of those approaches is "wrong". It's just interesting to see how far they've swung over to the other side on the spectrum of tone and flair.

The atmosphere of Rockstar's worlds has completely changed

Liberty City is a wet towel compared to Los Santos or Leonida

The wet towel comparison, I think, is spot on. In Liberty City, the sky is gray, the rain is constant, but it feels heavy instead of windy, and the streets are rife with pedestrians ready to hurl insults at me any minute. This map is suffocating, with its foggy bridges and heavy traffic.

Strangely, everything I just mentioned about the GTA IV map is also what makes it so impressive, because that's what lends such incredible depth to this game. By today's standards, the open-world map is definitely small, and yet, every block you visit has a life of its own, with every corner perfectly doing its job of making the city feel oppressive.

Contrast that with GTA V's Los Santos, and its wide-open highways and sun-kissed beaches, with mountains and country stretching out for miles. The shift is immediately clear, and Rockstar traded immersion through density, for immersion through scale. The same goes for GTA VI, which looks like it will continue leaning in the new direction the studio took with the fifth mainline game.

Grand Theft Auto VI seems to be merging both approaches

Leonida will be a vibrant playground with swampy backwaters and bustling nightclubs, yes, but the reason it's taken over a decade of development is because Rockstar seems to be merging their two approaches with GTA IV and V. The different types of immersion could come together in GTA VI, with a massive number of accessible buildings and a lively open-world that will set the bar for the next generation of large-scale games, all while the sheer scale will remain awe-inducing.

Rockstar switched realism with blockbuster accessibility

A gritty GTA game is a thing of the past

I'd honestly forgotten just how clunky GTA IV could feel until I picked it up again. The driving makes every vehicle feel like a tank, the gunfights are... messy, and I found myself fighting the cover system more than I fought enemies. And yet, I love it. Everything feels so tangible, because Niko isn't a superhero. Every punch, bullet, and drunken stumble in GTA IV feels like it has consequences. The drunken stupors of Michael or Trevor, or the feeling of decking someone in the face from GTA V? They genuinely feel watered down by comparison.

Was GTA V infinitely more polished than its predecessor? Absolutely. But it also polished all that realism away, and that's a trade-off I lament only now, after revisiting 2008's Liberty City. Driving became smoother, gunplay became faster and easier, and movement became so much more forgiving. It's universally more fun now, but the messy humanity? That's gone, and I can't see Rockstar changing things back for GTA VI, considering how the upcoming title is inarguably going to be their most popular, accessible, and sold title yet.

Modern Rockstar feels much more interested in making sure everything flows like a movie in their games, eliminating the element of player struggle. Are blockbuster, cinematic games in any way bad? Absolutely not, they're incredibly exciting to play through, but in the larger scheme of things, Rockstar has seemingly shifted from a focus on realism to over-the-top, blockbuster accessibility that teeters on the edge of satire.

Rockstar's evolution as a studio is incredible to watch

The studio's storytelling ideals have changed, and they're never changing back

The biggest difference between the Rockstars of then and now is perhaps how they focused on two incredible story-driven expansions for GTA IV, both of which pushed the main game's world in bold new directions. By contrast, it's been 12 years since GTA V, and it never got a single story expansion, because GTA Online happened. After that, all the experimental and fresh DLCs went away, and the studio became laser-focused on keeping the GTA Online money machine rolling.

In that shift, something fundamental about Rockstar changed. Now, GTA VI is being built in a post-GTA Online world, and the stakes (and budgets) are higher than ever. Today, Rockstar is a carefully-managed, stakeholder-backed blockbuster factory focused on maximizing reach, and that's okay, too. GTA VI is going to be simply incredible and there's just no denying that, but it simply won't be coming from the same Rockstar Studio that gave us the bleak brilliance of GTA IV.

Revisiting GTA IV felt like a revelation about how much Rockstar has shifted. It also felt like a great standalone experience I could enjoy with no online elements to bother with, and god, it felt incredibly enjoyable to explore Liberty City, even if the word 'rancid' comes to mind at every turn.

Both versions of Rockstar are brilliant in their own ways, but the studio that made GTA IV seems long gone now. GTA VI will undoubtedly make me feel something different. It may be excitement, it may be awe, it may be thrill, and it may very well be all three.