"grand theft auto v"s multiple protagonist design was envisioned to improve the series' core mechanics. the team sought to innovate game storytelling and negate stale familiarity by not evolving the gameplay's core structure. "we didn't want to do the same thing over again", said houser. the multiple protagonist idea was first raised during "san andreas" development, but contemporaneous hardware restrictions made it infeasible. garbut explained, "it didn't work from a tech point of view because the three characters need three times as much memory, three types of animation, and so on". after "grand theft auto iv"s release, the team developed "" and "", episodic content packages that followed new protagonists. the three interwoven stories received positive remarks, so the team structured "grand theft auto v" around this model.