New trailer reveals stunning world of Grand Theft Auto V

A new trailer has revealed more details of a game expected to the biggest hit of all time - dwarfing this year's Call of Duty Black Ops 2.

The new trailer shows off cinema-quality graphics, duels between helicopters, train crashes and Reservoir Dogs-style dialogue.

The long-awaited sequel to Grand Theft Auto IV will be released in Spring next year. The often-controversial series has sold 114 million games since it launched in 1997.

Described as the 'largest and most ambitious title in the series', the new game will be set in the fictional city of Los Santos, loosely based on Los Angeles.

It will feature multiplayer elements - and focus on the interwoven stories of three criminals, including a retired bank robber drawn reluctantly back into a life of crime.

Sam Houser, co-founder of Rockstar, the game's creator, calls the game a 'radical reinvention'. The video contains language unsuitable for children.




               [Related: Black Ops 2's director reveals why gaming can take on Hollywood]

Newspapers and politicians have frequently called for the games to be banned for encouraging crime - but the 'open world' games are one of the most reliable hit machines in gaming.

Grand Theft Auto IV, the last installment, came out in 2008 - selling 22 million copies.

The game lets you play three separate characters for the first time - Trevor, a psycopathic, drug-using war veteran, Franklin, who works repossessing cars for an Armenian car dealership, and Michael, a 'retired' bank robber.

"Just at the conceptual level, the idea was three separate stories that you play in one game," said the game's director Sam Houser, one of a pair of British brothers that have overseen the series since 1997.

"The next bit was, let’s not have the stories intersect once or twice but have them completely interwoven. It felt like it was going to be a real narrative strength: you get to play the protagonist and the antagonist in the same story" said Houser in an interview with the New York Times.

“We’ve made something that sort of is Los Angeles and sort of isn’t. And that’s deliberate, that it isn’t an exact replication of it. We wanted this post-crash feeling, because it works thematically in this game about bank robbers. And that seems like it’s going to endure through the next year.”

In the game's first trailer, panoramas of the city were shown off with Michael - now in the witness protection programme - saying in voiceover, "You see it in the movies. I wanted to retire. From what I was doing, you know? From that, that line of work. Be a good guy for once, a family man.

"So, I bought a big house. Came here, put my feet up, and thought I be a dad like all the other dads. My kids, would be like the kids on TV. We could play ball and sit in the sun. But well, you know how it is."