I think GTA 5 should definitely be set in San Andreas in the year 2012. It should basically be a combination of GTA 4 and GTA: San Andreas, having the graphics and gameplay mechanisms (eg: controls) of 4, with the combined features of both.
GTA 4 was indeed an amazing game, but it excluded several of the great features of GTA: SA.
For example:
1) planes
2) assets/asset missions
3) purchasing property
4) extensive player customization (more clothes, haircuts, tattoos, etc.)
5) player stats (fat, muscle, vehicle & weapons skills, lung capacity, etc.)
6) gang warfare & being able to recuit gang members for jobs
7) gambling (GTA 4 didn't originally have it, but TBoGT re-introduced it with the cage fighting aspect) and having a chance to get MORE THAN DOUBLE the bet (like inside track)
8) Ammu-nation (maybe this time they could actually sells heavy weaponry such as RPGs, Flamethrowers, and Miniguns?)
9) car mod garages (hopefully just 1 company with several garages this time around that can mod ALL/MOST cars?)
10) car garages for safe-houses! (parking spaces are stupid, since they dont fix up the car, but it's understandable since Liberty City is based off of NYC)
11) Dual wielding small weapons
12) Crazy weapons (police baton, spade, katana, chainsaw, etc)
..........and I'm sure there are more.........
Anyway, this is what I believe that Rockstar needs for the perfect GTA 5 (in addition to anew setting since we already know it's coming):
GTA 4 game engine + LA Noire graphics + combined game features of GTA 4 and GTA SA (including those listed above) + new character and storyline + game mechanics and controls of GTA 4
I hope if San Andreas is chosen as the new location, that the cars won't suck as much as the one's in SA did. The ones in GTA 4 would be worth modding, not the trash cars from SA. But it's 2012, so it shouldn't be too bad.
Also, I would greatly appreciate an offline multiplayer.
Also, it would be cool if there was a vehicle dealership, like in Chinatown Wars. Except, cars should be more expensive (like a price that you would pay in real life), but you only have to buy them once. And if a car that you buy gets destroyed, it should be taken to a body shop and fixed up and available after a certain amount of in-game hours or days.
More weapons would be nice two. It's somewhat stale having only 2 weapons to choose from for one slot, and one's clearly better than the other. It was much different in SA. For example, even if the Micro SMG was less powerful than the MP5 SMG, it's significantly cheaper and can be dual wielded, which makes up for the firepower. Even though the Minigun is clearly the most powerful of the 4 heavy weapons, its still not as fun as going around burning people/stuff with a flamethrower (I apologize if I sound like a sadist, it's purely incidental, but.......well, you get the point). Even for the pistol, I was forced to choose between the powerful but expensive and loud desert eagle OR the cheap but stealthy and weak silenced pistol. We need a weapon's selection that gives us the opportunity to make these decisions! The closest GTA 4 comes to it is when the Mirco-SMG is slightly faster than the MP5 SMG, but even then it's not much of difference to make a difference in gameplay. The only thing that makes it even the slightest bit difficult in choosing weaponry is the clip size, but even that is not much of a big deal.
