Grand Theft Auto launches. Here’s a first impression.

The game has already been a huge success before it even launched its online gameplay. Now that GTA Online is live, it appears to be impressing, glitches aside.

Twelve years later, I’m a mute again. Rockstar has walked a long way down the story road since Grand Theft Auto 3, giving its protagonist backstories, personalities, demons and barrels of monkeys on their backs, but “GTA Online” brings us back to an older idea. Once again, we’re nothing but a silent avatar of anarchy in an absurd world breaking apart at the seams — albeit a world more richly realized than we ever thought possible back in 2001. There’s something very satisfying about letting the best stories happen as they may.