Until about the 1:30 mark, this trailer for the Rockstar Editor in Grand Theft Auto V sounds like a non-event. Congratulations, you’ve added video recording features, a standard at this point for AAA games. And then Rockstar reveals the real reason they’ve got the video editor… so you can make your own movies in Grand Theft Auto.
That’s not a minor point. It’s true that Grand Theft Auto games have been turned into filmmaking tools in the past, but those used mods, PCs, and a lot of behind-the-scenes hacking to get to work. This is an official tool, not unlike Source Filmmaker, that allows people to make their own movies, whether they’re crime related or substantially… different. They even managed to get the rights to the in-game songs, so you can score your creations accordingly.
In other words, we’re about to see a new level of machinima, and possibly even some straight, serious movies, courtesy of a game where you can fly a jet upside down under an overpass before strafing traffic with a Vulcan cannon. Truly, we live in an age of wonders.