So, rather than posting scans (which I'm pretty sure is against forum rules), I'm going to just post some info from the Game Informer reveal article.

I'll be actively updating this and cleaning it up a bit as I go through the article with a fine tooth comb, so stay tuned.

If you really want to get everything, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the magazine, digitally or when it hits news stands. Support magazines, a dying form of media.

EDIT: As a mod has informed me, apparently links to scans are ok. So here they are (until Game Informer issues a cease and desist to whoever posted them): http://imgur.com/a/GsODP

Characters

Michael

Retired and in this early 40s. Former bank robber in witness protection. Lives a luxurious life style, but money is running out and he needs to get back in the game. Doesn't get along with his gold digging wife and has trouble understanding his two teenage daughters. Also has a son, Jimmy, that is a lazy twenty-something pot-smoker.

Trevor

Career criminal in his early 40s. Drug user, loose cannon, former military pilot that worked with Michael on a few jobs back in the day. Has a neck tattoo that says "Cut Here" with a dotted line around his neck. "Completely revels in chaos".

Franklin

Mid 20s native of Los Santos. Currently a repo man working for an upscale car dealership. Fit and fashion conscious. He's looking to hustle and make his way up the ladder and hooks up with Michael to do that. The young and capable one of the bunch. Tired of being held back by some of his idiotic and dangerous friends.

Gameplay

Major Highlights:

• You'll be playing as all three main characters and be able to swap between them at almost any time.
• When swapping between them outside of a mission, you'll get a Google Earth style zoom out and zoom in.
• Characters will continue on with their lives when you're not controlling them, so they could be in any number of situations when you jump into them.
• You'll also be swapping between characters while in a mission (through a radial menu). The transition is smooth, quick, and doesn't slow down the action. An example given is a mission where you jump between Michael who is rappelling down an office building (Rainbow Six style), Franklin who is covering him with a sniper rifle, and Trevor who is in a chopper over head. It sounds like you might be restricted a little as far as when you can change, but it all sounds like it's intended to keep you in the action at all times.
• When you include interior and exterior environments, GTA V's Los Santos is bigger than RDR, GTA:SA, and GTA IV combined.
• Focus of missions is having multiple complex multi-tiered heists like "Three Leaf Clover" from GTA IV and the casino job in GTA:SA.

More Info:

• The characters will primarily reside in different regions while not controlled, so you can quickly jump around the area by jumping between characters. Michael will primarily be in the upper class Rockford Hills, Trevor will reside in a trailer in the middle of the rural/desert area of Blaine County, and Fraklin will be mainly in South Los Santos.
• Transportation includes the return of bicycles and planes, along with dirt bikes, motorcycles, jet skis, helicopters and many types of cars and trucks. Vehicles are more detailed, more numerous, and more varied than any previous GTA.
• There seems to be the implication that each character has unique capabilities. No indication of what that actually means though. Speculating here, but it might be things like only Trevor is able to fly jets or possibly differences in running speed.
• None of the GTA:SA stat building nonsense.
• Driving physics model has been tweaked from GTA IV. Whereas cars were "big and boatlike", they'll now "hold to the ground a bit better". Dan Houser says that it will scratch the itch of "high level racing games".
• Shooting and melee have also been improved. Houser says that shooting is still the focus though, so don't expect anything too great from the melee.
• There's some sort of gesture system that includes giving the finger.
• A single city stretching from beach fronts to a fully explorable Mt. Chiliad. Miltary base among other features. There's also a fully modeled and detailed sea floor that can be explored while scuba diving.
• A lot of side activities, some of which are unique to a particular character and only make sense for someone with their background. Includes things like base jumping, yoga, triathalons, full-fledged golf game.
• No romance stuff, but each character will have their own set of friends. Cell phone stuff has been streamlined to prevent interruptions. A lot of things you used to make calls to do are now just icons on the map.
• GTA IV style casual encounters with people on the street and RDR style random occurrences and dynamic missions (examples include picking up a hitchhiker, finding some wrecked cars in the desert surrounded by dead bodies, and chasing down a purse snatcher).
• A "vibrant and fun" economy. Apparently you won't be building up your empire through property purchases, but "there will be loads of other stuff".
• Not talking multiplayer at this time. They do mention briefly though that the Max Payne 3 "Crew" system will carry over.

Having characters acting of their own accord outside of missions just sounds insane! Almost like GTA: The Sims edition. Really curious to see mid-mission character switching in action at that, and I wonder if they'll allow coop for the majority of the missions, if not the entire game.

Overall GTAV just sounds so massive in scope and ambition... I mean the supposed size of the world alone is absolutely unreal. Just Cause 2 had a staggeringly large world and all, but when you imagine the attention to detail Rockstar gave GTAIV's Liberty City, and then imagine the same level of effort unto this significantly bigger environment... I fear for the health of my consoles when I slide the disc in =/

EDIT: Also just copying this over from the other thread since it may get locked because of the scans:

I definitely like how at least one character is in a comfortable position; no more starting from scratch with fuck all. Plus seeing that Michael has a family that he'll interact with sounds neat. I can already envision tutorial missions where you gotta do some chores for the family; pick up the laundry/groceries or something like that.

Don't know about this whole 3 character thing. The reason why I loved RDR so much was because of marston. I loved that character and truly wanted him to get through everything alright.

SPOILERS INCOMING for Red Dead:

Since I loved that character, the death and other large events were super impactful. That last scene with him was incredible and has stuck with me as one of the most emotional moments in gaming.

SPOILERS ENDED

I'm not saying it's impossible to do with the 3 new guys in Gta but I just think trying to write as good a character as marston for a whole campaign for 3 separate people will be hard to do. Plus it sounds like they are all scum from the start so maybe that isn't their intention. Which in turn makes my argument moot. Either way I shall buy this game

@Sackmanjones: With GTAV, it feels like Rockstar are once again reverting back to the balance of the older games. From my guess, there appears to be a much higher focus on the gameplay, and how there's a lot of it, compared to GTAIV's focus on telling a unique (for video games, I mean) and poignant story; the missions in GTAIV were pretty low key and there wasn't all that much variety, and I think with GTAV they're trying to reclaim the ''do whatever the fuck'' motif if previous games. GTAV's story will no doubt retain the same calibur of quality of course, but I think they're aiming for a much more fun and lighthearted tale with the gameplay to match.

That's the vibe I'm getting anywhoo which, if they can pull all this off well enough, sounds like GTAV could potentially end up as my favourite of the series.

@Sackmanjones: Spoiler Tags, dude. I mean, you gave good warning, so not too bad, but the site does have spoiler tags which fix that problem way better!

And a GTA game full of multi-tiered, multi-character heists? A GTA game less about murder but more about straight up heists? BLAH BLAH MORE GTA BLAH BLAH FUCKING HEISTS?!

I LOVE HEISTS.

(I can't wait)

@Sackmanjones: Spoiler Tags, dude. I mean, you gave good warning, so not too bad, but the site does have spoiler tags which fix that problem way better!

And a GTA game full of multi-tiered, multi-character heists? A GTA game less about murder but more about straight up heists? BLAH BLAH MORE GTA BLAH BLAH FUCKING HEISTS?!

I LOVE HEISTS.

(I can't wait)

@Sackmanjones: Ah. They should really update the mobile site, then!

Goddamn, I especially love how diverse they're attempting to make the protagonists and how their 'world' differs from one another. Like how Trevor has early access to planes. Plus being able to actually, sorta, vicariously live life as a family man as Michael--hanging with the wife and his kids--sounds super interesting. You're probably only going to interact with them similar to how Niko took out his buddies, but the relationships themselves are what's got me excited.

I just jizzed into a sock. This game will probably be the best game of this type ever to be made, it sounds more innovative than GTAIV.

I like the sounds of this. It looks like they are changing things up a bit. Finally, a AAA title that still has the balls to make some sort of progress.

Oh man that all sounds so great... I need this game now!

(what happens if in free roam I move all the characters into one place and then shoot two of them in the head? Time Paradox?!)

@Chaser324 said:

• No romance stuff

Oh thank god.

@Chaser324: You can post scans, they just can't be added to wiki pages as images.

I think I'll wait till I get a chance to read the magazine.. But after the cover image revelation and I'm super excited to read it

This sounds fucking kickass.

@MB said:

@Chaser324: You can post scans, they just can't be added to wiki pages as images.

Thanks for the info, I guess maybe I'll post a link then...I just assumed that since it's not allowed in places like NeoGAF that it wasn't really allowed here.

Being able to not only be 3 characters, but being able to switch to them seemingly on the fly is one thing, but

"Characters will continue on with their lives when you're not controlling them, so they could be in any number of situations when you jump into them."

WHAAAAAAT

Oh man that all sounds so great... I need this game now!

(what happens if in free roam I move all the characters into one place and then shoot two of them in the head? Time Paradox?!)

The map is larger (in terms of both interior and exterior space) than San Andreas, GTA IV and RDR.

Fap Fap Fap....

@MikeGosot said:

@Soap said:

Oh man that all sounds so great... I need this game now!

(what happens if in free roam I move all the characters into one place and then shoot two of them in the head? Time Paradox?!)

They dodge. Nah, just kidding, i imagine you can't do that. And when you try it, the characters say something in the lines of "What the fuck are you doing!?"

Or you can kill them, but then they'll just respawn back at a hospital :P

Jizz. In. My. Pants!

@MikeGosot said:

@Soap said:

Oh man that all sounds so great... I need this game now!

(what happens if in free roam I move all the characters into one place and then shoot two of them in the head? Time Paradox?!)

They dodge. Nah, just kidding, i imagine you can't do that. And when you try it, the characters say something in the lines of "What the fuck are you doing!?"

Or you can kill them, but then they'll just respawn back at a hospital :P

This sounds pretty great.

@MikeGosot:

The devs have listened to criticism of GTA IV about there being nothing to really spend money on, and now there is "loads of stuff" to spend money on. However, it sounds like there's little if any property to buy, so it's unclear what exactly the "loads of stuff" is.

Also, no info on how things like money, weapons, inventory, etc. will be handled with you swapping between three guys.

On mobile, but here's a link to the scans:

http://fast1195.imgur.com/grand_theft_auto_5_gi_reveal

@joshthebear: I actually already added a link to scans to the first post once MB gave the thumbs up.

I just started a topic breaking down the gameplay/features revealed, which are plenty. Has anyone actually read the article yet?

@GERALTITUDE: Yeah, I downloaded it on my iPad and read it as soon as it became available earlier today...hence this thread.

@Chaser324 Yeah mostly I was calling out the dude who was like "There's no gameplay details in here!" No offence or anything duder.

Details are everywhere.

What I really want to try is getting the cops on my ass, then drive to another character and switch to him, and see how the original character deals with the cops. 
Really wasn't expecting the different characters to work like this, but if it works out right it could be really amazing.

@MikeGosot:

The devs have listened to criticism of GTA IV about there being nothing to really spend money on, and now there is "loads of stuff" to spend money on. However, it sounds like there's little if any property to buy, so it's unclear what exactly the "loads of stuff" is.

Also, no info on how things like money, weapons, inventory, etc. will be handled with you swapping between three guys.

@MaFoLu: Yeah, I'm really excited to get my hands on this game and see how the mechanic works...Spring has never felt farther away.

If this game was just more GTA IV, I would've been thrilled, but it sounds like they've really gone over and above to deliver something bigger, better, and different than anything they've done before. Any doubt people had about whether or not they were justified in incrementing the number on the end to five is totally gone. From the sounds of it, they maybe should've added two and just called this GTA VI.

@MikeGosot said:

@Yummylee said:

@MikeGosot said:

@Soap said:

Oh man that all sounds so great... I need this game now!

(what happens if in free roam I move all the characters into one place and then shoot two of them in the head? Time Paradox?!)

They dodge. Nah, just kidding, i imagine you can't do that. And when you try it, the characters say something in the lines of "What the fuck are you doing!?"

Or you can kill them, but then they'll just respawn back at a hospital :P

And you still lose money/weapons?

Still? They changed that in GTAIV remember so when you die you still kept your weapons, and I have to imagine they'd keep it that way for GTAV. Of course given how many other changes are being implemented who knows... but I highly doubt they'll revert it back to you losing all of your weapons again.

Sorry @Chaser324 I didn't think you were summarizing as well, just linking. Feel free to take my bullet points if you want. Mod will probs lock it up soon. It didn't start out redundant, I swear!

@GERALTITUDE: It's cool duder, at this point there's at least half a dozen different threads where discussion of this same info is taking place.

• 'Driving is described as an arcade racing game, vs the heavy cars of GTAIV.'

FUCK.

@benpicko said:

• 'Driving is described as an arcade racing game, vs the heavy cars of GTAIV.'

FUCK.

Yeah, kinda crazy, but Dan Houser did say in the article that it is going to scratch the itch of "high level racing games" in a way that GTA has never done before.

Man... this just sound so overwhelming but I'm really exited about it I was on board before but this is just what I needed to know. I really hope they can deliver.

Is that thing gonna be like 4 disc on 360 because ...come on! that's too much.

So is it a co op game? I'm confused

@Nightriff said:

So is it a co op game? I'm confused

Maybe? So far we're all to be under the impression that the campaign is single-player, but they haven't gone into any details concerning the multiplayer yet. Really hope there's some form of coop, though.

@Nightriff: They haven't discussed multi-player yet, so we don't know if there will be co-op or not.

All of the stuff in this article relates to single-player, where you'll be able to switch between three main characters at almost any time.

Grand Theft Auto Games have always been influenced by a some sort of popular or well known film / television series. Reading this, I can easily think of Resevoir Dogs, Heat, or Heist film they'd pay homage to.

@Yummylee said:

@Nightriff said:

So is it a co op game? I'm confused

Maybe? So far we're all to be under the impression that the campaign is single-player, but they haven't gone into any details concerning the multiplayer yet. Really hope there's some form of coop, though.

Probably won't be able to do story missions co-op since it sounds like certain characters get different missions and they wouldn't be all together.

After all the other open world games that have come out and have been better than gtas, I could not care less about another one.

If they actually pull off the three leaf clover mission type than it'll be incredible. I'm excited beyond belief about this game.

@JZ said:

After all the other open world games that have come out and have been better than gtas, I could not care less about another one.

Which open world game has ever pulled off 3 different playable characters that have AI simulated lives while you control only one? This is highly ambitious and to write it off is ludicrous. Have some faith.

The charaters in deadly premonition have simulated lives, but you don't play as more.

Michael, Trevor, and Franklin, huh? I thought it was Kane, Lynch, and Black Guy.

@JZ said:

After all the other open world games that have come out and have been better than gtas, I could not care less about another one.

did you read the article? this sounds incredibly original compared to most open world games out right now.