While the “Grand Theft Auto” series started with 1997's “Grand Theft Auto,” the franchise’s modern incarnation began with 2001's “Grand Theft Auto III.” Here, most of the series’ contemporary features debuted: open-world cities, third-person shooting and broad sandbox gameplay.

Beyond their ability to stoke controversy, the first trilogy of “Grand Theft Auto” games also highlighted Rockstar’s broad narrative ambitions, although they repeatedly ran headfirst into the brick wall of technological limitations. Even with voice actors like Burt Reynolds, Ray Liotta and Samuel Jackson, their impact couldn’t help but limited when their characters had the same range of motion as a Lego figurine.

With a new console generation, Rockstar finally had a platform that could support its aspirations and the drive paid considerable dividends with 2008's “Grand Theft Auto IV.” But what do you do for a follow-up? Despite being a series built on satirizing American exceptionalism and consumerism, the inadvertent credo behind “Grand Theft Auto V” is as American as it gets: why not make it bigger?

The inadvertent credo behind “Grand Theft Auto V” is as American as it gets: why not make it bigger?

“GTA V”’s San Andreas has been a focal point for every review from The A.V. Club to Unwinnable, but given the technical prowess here, it bears repeating: the San Andreas of “Grand Theft Auto V” is one of Rockstar’s best achievements as a developer.

From the sprawling hillsides of Mount Chilead to the bustling freeways and streets of downtown Los Santos, the level of detail in San Andreas lends it a valuable lived-in feel.

With its Google Maps-like zooming and panning, the character switching mechanic bolsters this quality. Trevor, Michael and Franklin aren’t simply locked into place when your console is off — they’re living their lives as they lounge in pools, practice yoga or go on drunken benders.

Rockstar’s eye for detail also presents itself in subtler ways. Walking around Franklin’s neighborhood early in the game, I’d see smashed forty bottles on the ground and hear police sirens in the distance. In Franklin’s new neighborhood, those get replaced with suburban families and the occasional foreclosed house. San Andreas isn’t simply a backdrop for the in-game anarchy — it’s as much of a character as Franklin, Trevor and Michael.

Beyond the technical details, “GTA V” shares the same lofty goals of Rockstar’s past titles. In an 2011 Guardian article, Rockstar described one of the game’s major themes as being “the pursuit of ‘the almighty dollar,’” and in an interview with the New York Times, Rockstar’s Dan Houser highlighted the post-crash economy as another point of reference.

If Rockstar is pushing the question, it’s only fair to ask: what’s “GTA V” about?

Whether it’s the pulpy noire roots of the “Max Payne” series or the hardboiled Westerns of “Red Dead Redemption,” Rockstar’s focus on a “Capital-’I’ Important Story” has been a consistent through-line in its games. But if Rockstar is pushing the question, it’s only fair to ask: what’s “GTA V” about?

In a September online piece, New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum highlighted the issue of the “bad fan.” As Nussbaum explains:

They’re the “Sopranos” buffs who wanted a show made up of nothing but whackings (and who posted eagerly about how they fast-forwarded past anything else). They’re the “Girls” watchers who were aesthetically outraged by Hannah having sex with Josh(ua). They’re the ones who get furious whenever anyone tries to harsh Don Draper’s mellow.

If you create a TV show, you’re probably required to say something in response to these viewers along the lines of, “Well, you know, whatever anyone gets out of the show is fine! It’s not my place to say. I’m just glad people are watching.”

For “Grand Theft Auto” fans, the “bad fan” theory has some unfortunate carryover. They’re the forum member who posts a poll asking if “R* should make it possible to rape women in GTA ?” They’re the commenters who argue that Trevor’s not thaaat bad of a guy and deflect any criticism of the game with the blanket defense that “it’s, like, satire.”

Rockstar knows these fans and in Trevor — the game’s murder-committing/cynical/sociopathic/potentially cannibalistic id whose critical response falls somewhere near “Kramer on a meth bender” — they have a platform for meta-commentary. Side missions like Trevor’s Rampage events are both red meat to these fans and ways to guilt them.

Side missions like Trevor’s Rampage events are both red meat to these fans and ways to guilt them.

Sure, you could spend your in-game time investing in real estate and going golfing, but Rockstar? They know that you’d rather be mowing down crowds of enemies with a minigun and their contempt for you is thinly veiled. Like Jimmy De Santa, the portly teenage faux-gangster who plays video games and smokes pot all day, Rockstar thinks that you’re the kind of inbred sheeple who does nothing but watch reality TV and stare at your smartphone.

Trevor’s outlaw characterization also supports and admonishes the player for identifying with him. As with the carousel of white male antiheroes past, he’s an extension of those latent wish fulfillment tendencies— Trevor’s not playing by society’s rules, he’s showing them phonies who’s boss! — but at the same time, Rockstar also dissuades you from sympathizing with Trevor.

When he murders Floyd and his girlfriend midway through the game, the moment isn’t played for the same screwball black comedy of Trevor’s earlier set pieces. From Trevor’s blood-stained shirt to the smears of viscera revealed with a pan to the apartment’s window, it’s intended to be genuinely off putting… at least until moments later, when Wade confuses the blood for strawberry syrup.

Moments like these aren’t uncommon and the thematic whiplash speaks to the game’s larger issues. Even if the satirical bite in “GTA V” is often toothless, the funhouse mirror nihilism through which Rockstar’s takes on 1980s excess and 1990s race relations were filtered remains a concrete point of view.

But the reality-breaking nature of a character like Trevor is also representative of Rockstar’s attempts to graft this perspective onto its narrative ambitions. You can be “Jackass” or “The Godfather,” but you can’t be both at once.

In a Guardian profile, Rockstar’s Dan Houser argued that the lack of playable female characters was because “the concept of being masculine was so key to this story.”

To a degree, “GTA V”’s commentary on that traditionally masculine framework (get paid and survive) and how it can be perverted holds some water, but the game’s structure can’t support its rhetorical weight.

Take the characters of Tanisha Jackson and Amanda De Santa, for instance.

Both are introduced early in the game as emotional counterpoints to their significant others. Franklin and Tanisha broke up over Franklin’s inability to make something out of himself, while Amanda and the rest of the De Santa family bears the brunt of Michael’s emotional impotency. For the player, Jackson and De Santa are potential outlets to flesh out Michael and Franklin as characters: what were their lives like before the game started? How do they motivate both men?

But how prominent are they in-game? Jackson doesn’t make an in-person appearance until the end of the game and De Santa —outside of Michael’s reconciliation storyline with his family—is a tertiary presence at best. The dearth of, literally, any significant female characters who aren’t hyper-caricatured harpies in “GTA V” isn’t simply an issue of making the game be less of a sausage party, either.

Because the game rarely looks past the bubble of Franklin, Michael and Trevor, the trio remain static as characters. Like with Tanisha Jackson, Rockstar doesn’t want to hold the player’s hand, but if you want the player to understand the shared history between those characters, a few text messages and dialogue snippets simply aren’t enough — you need to earn those moments.

We receive spectacle, but rarely the needed legwork to make you care about these characters.

Without any significant non-expository characters, there’s never a sense that your actions have any impact on the world beyond the plot’s immediate needs and this deflates the effectiveness of Trevor, Michael and Franklin’s arcs as characters. As much as the game wants us to believe that they change, the narrative can’t move beyond the episodic nature of its heists.We receive spectacle, but rarely the needed legwork to make you care about these characters.

But for scenes where the game pulls it off? They’re both phenomenal and maddening.

Events like the infamous torture sequence, Michael and Trevor’s showdown and their respective optional deaths were easily some of “GTA V’s” best independent moments. They’re, without qualification, impeccably constructed cinematic moments that enthrall the viewer. Set against game’s larger narrative issues, though, they can’t make up for its failings.