Rumour - GTA V protagonist, release date, and map detailed

This stack of Grand Theft Auto V information purportedly originating with a disgruntled former Rockstar North employee is interesting - and hugely spurious.

The info dump was posted on the Gamespot forums; it has since been deleted, but is still available through Google's caches.

The poster signed up with a brand new account to post the info, and claims to be a friend of someone who "recently got sacked from RockStar North for general misconduct" and who is apparently free from non-disclosure agreements thanks to the termination of his or her contract.

According to this dubious source, Grand Theft Auto V will have only one playable character, Albert de Silva, the "rich guy" featured in the first trailer. De Silva is part of a criminal faction from Vice City, is half Hispanic, and has a son named Kevin - a "stereotypical CoD player" who is "lazy, useless and shouts racial abuse online" but does admire Albert. Albert will not die at the end of the game.

The map will be five times as large as GTA IV and divided into three parts. Los Santos is around half of the map's total area. A variety of planes will be available to fly, and cars and weapons will be customisable.

Multiplayer will support up to 32 players on consoles, with PC to be confirmed. Players can form gangs, which will be ranked by reputation, and can perform tasks - the examples given are robbing a laundry or stealing weapons from the military.

Finally, the source puts Grand Theft Auto V down for a May 2013 release, with at least six months of core development still to go before a more firm window can be set, and a playable demo at E3 2012.

Hit the cache link above to read more; the poster goes into detail on Wanted levels, chases and in-game radio among other snippets.

All of this is pretty dodgy - if the source isn't under contractual secrecy, why the anonymity? How many staffers does Rockstar fire that it won't be able to identify the source immediately? And why the heck does Rockstar, a company noted for its insistence on keeping things under wraps, not have exit clauses on its NDAs? So pour a huge pile of salt on.

We'll ask Rockstar for comment. No official details regarding Grand Theft Auto V's story, features, platforms or release have been revealed.

Thanks, RipTen.