Every game in the Grand Theft Auto franchise explained.
Originally hailing from sunny Dundee, Grand Theft Auto was the brainchild of Lemmings developer DMA Design and to commemorate this journey, we’ve organised the GTA games in order with a release and story timeline.
Despite already having massive success with the excellent puzzle-strategy series – the Taysiders knew they had struck gold with GTA and ran with it. They haven’t stopped since, and have provided some of the biggest and best games ever made.
Originally the games were top-down 2.5D affairs, but they yet again changed the industry as we know it with 2001’s Grand Theft Auto 3, which brought the series quite literally down to earth as the player was much closer to the action in its new third-person guise ushering the beginning of what is now known as the 3D timeline. Also new was the cinematic storytelling, with top-notch voice acting which has been a series staple ever since.
In 2002, DMA Design became Rockstar North as we still know it today and went on to produce Vice City and San Andreas with a few spin-offs for the handhelds of the day, the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.
In 2008, the 3D timeline came to an end and the HD began with Grand Theft Auto 4. We’re still in this HD era as the only other mainline GTA entry has been 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 which has seen an innumerable amount of versions released across three console generations. The next outing in this timeline will be the much-anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6.
Though Rockstar has been famous for their technically sound games with excellent production values – the company misstepped with 2021’s Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. Helmed by Grove Street Games, the game was panned at launch for its numerous glitches and bizarre art direction for character models. The game has seen some patches since release, but players report the situation is still far from ideal.
With all that said, we’ve got all the Grand Theft Auto games, when they came out and how to play them in chronological order across its three timelines down below.
GTA games in release date order
- Grand Theft Auto (1997 | PC, PS1, Game Boy Color)
- Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 (1999 | PC, PS1)
- Grand Theft Auto: London 1961 (1999 | PC, PS1)
- Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999 | PC, PS1, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color)
- Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001 | PC, PS2, Xbox, Mac OS, Android, iOS, Fire OS)
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002 | PC, PS2, Xbox, Mac OS, Android, iOS, Fire OS)
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004 | PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Mac OS, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Oculus Quest 2)
- Grand Theft Auto Advance (2004 | Game Boy Advance)
- Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005 | PSP, PS2, PS3 (unavailable), Android, iOS, Fire OS)
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006 | PSP, PS2 PS3 (unavailable))
- Grand Theft Auto IV (2008 | PC, PS3, Xbox 360)
- Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned (2009 | PC, PS3, Xbox 360)
- Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (2009 | Nintendo DS, PSP, Android, iOS, Fire OS)
- Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (2009 | PC, PS3, Xbox 360)
- Grand Theft Auto V (2013 | PC, PS3, PS4, PS5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X)
- Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition (2021 | PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch)
GTA games in story timeline order
An important detail to note is that Rockstar does not consider the 2D, 3D and HD timelines to be canon to one another so as such, we have separated them into the three corresponding timelines so you can play them in chronological order.
Grand Theft Auto 2D timeline
Below are all the Grand Theft Auto titles in the 2D series laid out in chronological order.
Some of the details are hard to pinpoint due to the vagueness of when games such as GTA 2 take place, and the fact that the original had multiple protagonists to choose from, but below is a reasonably sound summation of the facts.
Grand Theft Auto: London 1961
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The second expansion pack for the original title, London 1969 takes place – as you may have guessed – eight years prior to London 1999, but features the same protagonists.
Originally released as a freeware expansion pack for Grand Theft Auto, it saw a special release in the UK that featured all of the GTA London content from both mission packs on the one disc and didn’t require the original game to play.
Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
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The first GTA expansion, London 1969 takes us to the height of the Swinging Sixties and features an appropriately groovy soundtrack to commit all-love-and-no-hate crime to.
There are 8 playable protagonists to choose from with very stylised portraits that evoke British pastiches such as Michael Caine, Mods, Sid Vicious and super spies.
Grand Theft Auto
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The game that began it all – Grand Theft Auto was a smash hit, and it became clear to us all that there were murderous psychopaths lurking deep within all of us.
The House of Lords even discussed having the seminal title banned, which no doubt did nothing more than to add to its appeal.
In GTA, you take on a number of missions as one of eight protagonists across its three cities: Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas during 1997.
Grand Theft Auto 2
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The second in the series and by far, the most different as rather than being set in locales familiar to fans, GTA 2 is set in the futuristic Anywhere-City.
Rather than choosing a protagonist, players take the role of Claude Speed and take on missions from the many crime syndicates who call Anywhere-City their seedy home.
It’s unclear when exactly the game is set, but clues in-game suggest that it could be anywhere between 1999 and 2013.
Grand Theft Auto 3D timeline
The 3D era of Grand Theft Auto is arguably where the game found its stride and changed gaming forever.
The production values were stratospheric compared to prior releases and featured characters and storylines with big-name actors.
In keeping with tradition – the games were not short of controversy that made the 2D titles look like were made for children with San Andreas’ Hot Coffee scandal being perhaps – still to this day – one of the most notorious episodes in gaming history.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
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Taking place two years before the events of Vice City, the players take control of Victor Vance who is dishonourably discharged from the military due to being set up and framed by his sergeant plunging him into the criminal underworld.
Teaming up with his brother Lance, Vic shortly finds himself in charge of a crime family that looks to upset the status quo and take Vice City for themselves.
Many of the side characters of Vice City are recruited and by the game’s finale – the player finds out how it all goes down before the events of Vice City.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
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Releasing in 2002, Vice City follows the exploits of Tommy Verceti, an unsavoury yet extremely likeable gangster from Liberty City voiced by the late-and-great Ray Liotta, who has been dispatched to Vice City to oversee his boss’ business dealing as a reward for serving time for the family in a story that borders on copyright infringement with Scarface
Before the action even begins for the player – Tommy runs afoul of his employers when a drug trade goes bad and sees him losing both the money and product.
Tommy is given the opportunity to right this wrong and buddies up with Lance Vance to take on Vice City and get his revenge. Soon, Tommy begins to gain influence and commands a burgeoning crime syndicate of his own, and his employers don’t take particularly kindly to this.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
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One of the best-selling games of all time, San Andreas takes the series back to the ’90s, with San Andreas acting as an analogue for California and Nevada, and references major events of the era such as the Rodney King Riots and the feuding between the Bloods and the Crips.
Featuring Carl Johnson, known as CJ to those around him, San Andreas upped the drama and scale even more and features a huge map with three cities: Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas, and huge swathes of countryside between them.
CJ looks to reunite the Grove Street gang upon returning home, after leaving in the wake of the death of his mother, but quickly finds himself dragged into something much bigger with crooked cops, rival gangs and betrayal all looking to stop Carl.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
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Taking place in 1998 and acting as a prequel to Grand Theft Auto 3, Liberty City Stories revolves around the exploits of Tony Cipriani, a main character from GTA 3. Cipriani is on the run from the Italian Mafia after killing a Made Man and finds himself working for his previous employer, Salvatore Leone.
During the game, Cipriani rises through the ranks of the Leone Family by killing rival crime bosses and helping Salvatore Leone to further his good standing with Liberty City’s mayor and the game concludes with the stage set for the events for Claude in GTA 3.
Grand Theft Auto Advance
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Also acting as a prequel for Grand Theft Auto 3, Advance is set during the new millennium in 2000 in an altered Liberty City, as a result of the limitations of the Game Boy Advance hardware.
In GTA Advance, the player follows a gangster known simply as Mike who, along with his partner Vinnie, wants to leave Liberty City behind them. It wasn’t to be so, as Liberty City wasn’t done with them and Vinnie is killed by a car bomb, setting Mike off on a mission to avenge him.
Many characters from GTA 3 make an appearance such as Asuka Lasen, King Courtney and 8-Ball.
Grand Theft Auto 3
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Despite being the first of the 3D era titles, it’s actually chronologically the last game as it takes place during 2001.
GTA 3 surrounds the exploits of Claude (who bears no similarities to Claude from Grand Theft Auto 2) after he is betrayed and left for dead during a heist by his girlfriend, Catalina.
Claude is arrested, but manages to escape incarceration after the Colombian Cartel raid the prison convoy trying to free someone else.
Claude finds his feet and works his way up the criminal underworld of Liberty City, seeking vengeance against his former lover.
Grand Theft Auto HD timeline
After the suitably cartoonish and silly antics of the prior two timelines, Rockstar looked to ground its series in something more akin to reality, but it still featured everything that had made the prior games so fun and all wrapped up in some seriously impressive graphics.
Powering the visuals to this day has been the RAGE engine, which was first seen in the surprisingly excellent Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis in 2006.
The RAGE engine has also been used in Max Payne 3, L.A Noire and the Red Dead Redemption games to great effect and the upcoming GTA 6 will no doubt be using the same tech.
Grand Theft Auto 4
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Hitting the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008, Grand Theft Auto looked lightyears ahead of the previous mainline entry, San Andreas, and featured the well-trodden Liberty City rendered in greater fidelity than it had ever been seen prior.
The story follows Niko Bellic, an ex-soldier from the former Yugoslavia looking for a new life with his cousin, Roman, who has mis-sold him how well he is doing in the “Land of Opportunity”.
What follows is Niko inevitably being sucked into the criminal dealings of Liberty City to help pay off Roman’s debts. This puts him in the way of some very unsavoury characters, one of whom is Vlad Glebov, who has secretly been romantically involved with Roman’s girlfriend.
What happens next puts Niko and his family squarely in the crosshairs of the Russian Mob and forces Niko to work for many of the shady players and organisations of the city to keep the danger at bay and ghosts of his past resurface to haunt him.
Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned
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Taking place at the same time as GTA 4, The Lost and Damned features Johnny Klebitz, who is the vice-president of The Lost MC motorbike gang and has been the de facto leader while the president, Billy Grey, has been in rehab.
Under Johnny’s leadership, the gang had made peace with their rivals but upon Billy’s release, he orders the truce to be broken which kicks off a bloodied gang war.
Billy continues down the path of all-out violence, which causes tensions to rise within The Lost MC itself, forcing Johnny to reconsider whether to follow Billy to the end or not.
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony
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Also set during the same time as GTA 4, The Ballad of Gay Tony is well, a Ballad of Gay Tony that follows his bodyguard, Luis Lopez, as he tries to keep his boss Tony Price and his business venture afloat and, crucially, not dead.
Despite being a legendary figure in Liberty City, Tony’s nightclubs and other business ventures are failing and he has fallen into debt with the Ancelotti crime family who want their payment one way or another.
Luis risks life and limb for his boss and it sees him working overtime across the city to keep the wolves at bay whilst running into a few familiar faces along the way.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
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Despite being released on the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable and being decidedly standard definition, Chinatown Wars is still considered part of the HD timeline.
The game takes place in 2009 and follows Huang Lee, the son of a murdered Triad leader. The opening sees Huang travelling to Liberty City to deliver the Yu Jian sword – a family heirloom – to his uncle Wu “Kenny” Lee.
Things take a turn when after arriving, armed assailants kill his guards and leave Huang for dead. Having survived the ordeal, Huang informs his uncle of what happened and the pair embark on a journey to win the sword back and solidify Kenny as the successor to the Liberty City Triads.
Grand Theft Auto Online
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Over the years, Grand Theft Auto Online has evolved and grown in size to a beast all of its own. The original missions took place before the events of Grand Theft Auto 5, but GTA Online is still going and so also takes place well after that story concludes.
During this online saga, the story surrounds a player-created character who is in Los Santos to make it big as one of its many criminals.
Over the years we have seen countless heists, missions and events that have made the story of GTA Online its own thing.
GTA V characters such as Lester and Franklin make their own appearances, with the latter offering missions to the player well after the conclusion of the main game.
The game is still ongoing and the story may conclude in some way once GTA 6 lands sometime hopefully not too far from now.
Grand Theft Auto 5
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Having been released on just about every console from the last ten years, Grand Theft Auto 5 trails only Minecraft as being the best-selling game of all time.
GTA 5 is the first to feature multiple playable characters Michael Townley, Franklin Clinton and Trevor Philips, and in a novel twist – the player three can change between the three of them in an instant for most of the game, with only some parts of the plot removing this feature.
The scene is set when in 2004, Michael and Trevor find themselves up against it with fellow criminal Brad Snider in a failed robbery attempt in Ludendorff, North Yankton.
Brad is killed during an exchange and Trevor assumes Michael is killed too and flees the scene. Michael survives and goes into a witness protection program and lives in Los Santos but in 2013, he soon finds himself sucked into criminality again when he partners up with Franklin Clinton.
After a series of events involving his wife, a tennis coach and a crime lord’s mansion, Michael enlists his former colleague Lester, a wheelchair-bound hacker, to provide digital assistance and Franklin to rob a jewellery store to pay off a debt.
Footage of the crime makes its way onto TV and an enraged Trevor Philips recognises Michael and heads to Los Santos to confront his former friend, which sparks off a decidedly ludicrous plot surrounding the three and the big movers and shakers of San Andreas.
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