Rumor: Grand Theft Auto V Returns To Los Angeles, Has Multiple Heroes

Grand Theft Auto V was announced early Tuesday and for the past twenty-four hours everyone's been speculating about its setting. The latest rumor is that it takes place in Los Angeles.

Kotaku, citing a "source familiar with the game," says that GTA V will be centered around LA. It's not immediately clear whether the game will depict the "real" LA or a fictional version of it. They took the latter approach with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, letting players wreak havoc in "Los Santos" and two other cities.

GTA IV marked a return to Liberty City, a setting that appeared in the first and third GTA games. Rockstar clearly has no issues with re-using a city, then. They avoided linking the plots of these Liberty City games, though. Hopefully they kick that habit with their second San Andreas game.

Kotaku also reports that GTA V will have multiple playable characters. It's not really clear whether the differences between these characters will simply be a matter of voice/appearance or whether their campaigns will be different, too. As Kotaku notes, Rockstar has long toyed with the idea of multi-thread stories. GTA IV's two expansions, The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned introduced new playables characters and allowed players to experience events from the base game from different perspectives.

GTA V is due in 2012. The first trailer will be released on Wednesday, November 2nd