IT is a franchise that has become as entrenched in pop culture as Star Wars, The Sopranos and Harry Potter.
On September 17, thousands of people around the world will queue for the midnight release of Grand Theft Auto V for the Play-Station 3, Xbox 360 or PC.
But The Sun has had a sneak peek early — and it will not leave those fans disappointed.
Nor the 25million people expected to buy the game during its lifespan, making it the biggest in history.
Released every few years since 1997, the games have become increasingly complex, with massive worlds of bank heists, car jackings and brutal shootouts.
Yet despite the fact each game contains a story straight out of Hollywood, they are 100 per cent British — created by Edinburgh-based Rockstar North, a firm that began life as DMA Design in Dundee.
Their latest offering, GTA V, covers a vast area in a fictitious depiction of California. The map takes a good hour to drive around in one of its 60-odd cars.
But if you prefer, you can fly over it in a helicopter or plane, sail on a boat or scream through on a motorbike. You can even scuba dive across an entire ocean floor.
The huge game contains an 18-hole golf course you can play on, tennis courts, yoga classes, therapy sessions and the chance to buy loads of pricey properties.
And the soundtrack is probably the biggest ever seen. Alongside 20 hours of incidental music sit more than 240 licensed tracks from artists as diverse as Queen, Kelly Rowland, Pet Shop Boys, Snoop Dogg and Def Leppard.
The story itself is a satire of the American dream with you playing as three characters. Michael is a gangster unable to deal with retirement, Franklin is an African-American kid in the car repossession business and Trevor is a crazed ex-crim from a trailer park.
The complex tale weaves them all together as they pull off dramatic bank heists, jobs for a corrupt government body and cause chaos.
Los Santos — which includes mountain ranges, forests and a whole desert — becomes a playground for the gamer.
The witty scripts have also become a hallmark of the games, with scriptwriters penning hours of scenes poking fun at US culture.
But the massive popularity of the series suggests Americans do not mind too much — and Rockstar is hoping GTA V provides a fitting swansong to this generation of consoles.