What does GTA V’s ‘bold new direction’ mean?

“A bold new direction in open-world freedom, storytelling, mission-based gameplay and online multiplayer,” is how Rockstar are describing GTA V. At this point your guess is as good as ours when it comes to deciphering exactly what that means.
Nonetheless, try to decipher we shall.
We always expect fresh single player from Rockstar, so perhaps the most intriguing part of that statement is the “bold new direction” in “online multiplayer”. That particular aspect of videogames today is starting to get somewhat stale in terms of innovation, so I’m hoping GTA V’s multiplayer is not simply going to be a rehash of that seen in GTA IV. 
A persistent character throughout single and multiplayer would be a good start? 
There has been a lot of chatter regarding possible multiple protagonists in GTA V, an idea that I’m not sold on if you’re constantly flipping between characters mid-story. Check this idea out though: seperate stories in the same world. You play through one story as a complete whole (no flipping, no messing around), and then do you same with a few others. 
This would be a great way of letting you see the same events from a different angle and giving you a more immersive sense of different areas of the city, depending on where your character lives and/or has gorwn up.
Rockstar have also said that “Grand Theft Auto V focuses on the pursuit of the almighty dollar in a re-imagined, present day Southern California.” Nothing new there then, although I am pleased that the series is moving back to sunny shorelines and scantily clad women of west coast USA. I could only stand the dirty grey of Liberty City for so long.
Watch the GTA V trailer.
Read our impressions of the trailer.