What is GTA ?

hi

For a lot of people living in the Greater Toronto Area, “the GTA” is what you say to other Ontarians when you’ve given up on describing the small town you’re from.

Or saying you’re from “the GTA” to a non-Ontarian and then having to clarify that no, you don’t mean the video game Grand Theft Auto.

GTA TO TORONTO

Basically, it means living somewhere you can hop on the GO bus or train after work and make it to a 7:00 PM summer Blue Jays game, the Christmas market, or a concert downtown. People from the GTA have one thing in common: we love Toronto (and sometimes hate to admit it). Win or lose, we loyally cheer for the Leafs, Raptors, and Blue Jays.

We love Queen Street and the Eaton Centre for shopping. We love the Ex, big concerts at Molson Amphitheatre (or the Budweiser Stage as it’s now known) and small shows at the Drake or Rebel Nightclub.

We love taking pictures of the busy streets and streetcars (but we’re often too intimidated by the TTC to ride them – better take an Uber so we don’t get lost, right?).

OUTSIDE THE ‘CITY’ IN THE GTA

Most people that live in the GTA enjoy the best of both worlds; we get the city and the country.

Even bigger cities in the GTA offer residents tons of natural beauty like Hamilton and its waterfalls or Scarborough and the bluffs which give residents the “country” atmosphere – like smaller cities and towns such as Port Perry and Courtice.

Lots of GTA cities are located right on Lake Ontario which gives us even more great views.  Yet, they’re still a stone’s throw away from all the big-city action in Toronto.

WHAT THE GTA MEANS TO US

The GTA means rocky, Lake Ontario beaches, smiling when we see the CN Tower lit up at night, getting lost in Union Station, and having no plans but somehow a full day of activities in the city. It means wonderful visits, but sleeping in our own quiet bed at night.

GTA has been around for 15 years and it’s no surprise it’s pulled in massive amounts of money. Last year Take Two Interactive revealed that the franchise sold 125 million copies to date.

They jumped 11 million units from the previous year and it doesn’t look like the franchise is slowing down anytime soon. This puts GTA ahead of other franchises like Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, and FIFA.

More family-friendly games like Mario, Pokemon and The Sims have topped the GTA franchise, but with GTA V soon to be released to the masses, it may surpass the latter as well.

The hilarious radio stations in the GTA series play everything from resident DJ Lazlow to comedic political shows that butcher American culture. It’s beautifully written – all 9 hours of it! Throughout the games there is 9 hours and 27 minutes of talk radio stations. Will Lazlow return in GTA V? We can only hope!

The "Grand Theft Auto" series of action/adventure video games is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed series of video games ever released, but it is also one of the most controversial.

GTA always maintains their quality of strong voice acting throughout the series and it’s always been praised for that. It’s great they keep their standards up to par, but kudos to the script writer of GTA IV which contains a staggering 80,000 lines of dialogue.

Let’s just compare for a second: Mass Effect 3 has 40,000 lines and Fallout: New Vegas has 65,000 – which was a world record for role-playing games at the time. But with all the passerby’s talking on cell phones you need to have a lot of dialogue in GTA.

It’s unclear how much dialogue GTA V will have but with the map already being double the size, it’ll most definitely top this.

The "GTA" series has drawn the ire of many special interest groups, parents and government officials who have called for changes to the content, rating and even outright bans on the sale of the games due to the depiction of violent crimes, racial stereotypes, and sexually explicit content to name a few.

Not many gamers attempt to speed run a game like GTA, however a YouTube user by the name of MSuraev posted a speed run of GTA III the beginning of this year and got through the game in 1 hour, 12 minutes and 10 seconds.

Grand Theft Auto" games, players assume the role of a criminal who performs a wide variety of missions that involve criminal behavior and violent crimes that can include auto theft, robbery, extortion and much more.

Killing enemies without prompts, power-sliding and knowing every traffic pattern only proves he‘s at the height of his game. It’s alright; we won’t ask you your completion time because he clearly will put you to shame.

The list of games in the "Grand Theft Auto" series includes an overview of each of the 11 games that have been released for the PC from the original "Grand Theft Auto" in 1997 to "Grand Theft Auto V" in 2015.

Although GTA rakes in hundreds of millions within days of launching, it’s not too shocking that the game costs just as much to make. GTA V reportedly cost in the range of $137 million, which is slightly more than blockbuster movies Watchmen and Prometheus

"Grand Theft Auto" was the first game in the "Grand Theft Auto" series of games which was originally released for MS-DOS and Windows-based PCs back in October 1997. In the game, players take control of a criminal who travels freely through the three main cities of the Grand Theft Auto series that have been the subject and settings of subsequent games.