Los Santos Returns

I’d played GTA V for longer than I should admit. Hours in Los Santos, the usual chaos—mugging pensioners, starting gang wars, driving recklessly. The game doesn’t ask anything of you. It’s just a sandbox. That’s all it needs to be.

When the PS4 and Xbox One versions arrived in November 2014, I felt the pull to go back. Better graphics, faster load times, the whole city in higher definition. Same game, but richer.

The trailer showed what that meant—Los Santos rendered more sharply. Better textures, better light. It’s a strange thing to want, a game you’ve already beaten replayed just because it looks nicer. But that’s how it works. You see a world you know in a new skin and suddenly you’re imagining another hundred hours in it.

By January the PC version would be out too, but you know how the cycle goes. The game gets in your head. You’ll come back to it, with better hardware or without.