>>715903065GTA SA has more mechanic depth than any other open world made after it. The only games to come close are BotW or Death Stranding, because they both make traversal part of the game and challenge itself. GTA works because driving in it is chaotic and unpredictable, people turn into you, cars run red lights, etc. and you have to navigate the labyrinth-like cities and figure out the best way to your destination so you are always alert and engaged when travelling from point A to point B.
Modern open world slop turns this into tedium, because there is no challenge in juts holding forward as you walk towards the next quest marker in an open field.
On top of that, GTA has flying, trains, boating, RC races, racing, biking, gang territory minigame, arcade minigames, secrets across the map, strippers, shipping games (years before any eurotruck sims copied the idea), buyable housing, a fully voice acted story with fleshed out characters, an incredible OST (even if its all licensed) that acts as a fucking in-game radio with more song variety and selection than games with 1000 times its budget, and goofy shit like "invade area 51'. All of this on the PS2. They didn't need a nujudea TI 6090 Super with 4 threadburners to deliver a fraction of this experience.
It is the Citizen Kane of open world games. Often copied but never succeeded, despite how badly its aged. Young people do not understand it, you may not like it, but it is still a monolith that cannot be topped.
GTA is unironically the highest IQ game ever made. Any 'masterpiece' open world game with their hundred-million budgets and "auteur" voice actors or writers or programmers or hardware that's black magic compared to what you had in 2000, can't even achieve a fraction of the achievements that a few brits on a shoestring budget developing on shitty hardware could accomplish back then.