Grand Theft Auto V: Criminal Underworld

*“The criminal underworld is a dangerous place.”*
―Tagline
***Grand Theft Auto V: Criminal Underworld*** is a stand-alone expansion to 2013's *Grand Theft Auto V* and is the sixteenth game in the GTA franchise, released for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows through the Steam platform. It is developed by Nakamura Interactive with Rockstar Games publishing the expansion. The game is also concurrent with the Morningwood Entertainment TV series *San Andreas: Criminal Underworld*.

The expansion follows Haley Fall and her younger brother Jenkins Fall, both being former members of the Canadian criminal organization, the Fall Syndicate. They both attempt to make it in the criminal underworld in San Andreas by offering themselves as hired guns for those who were looking as well as being hit men as they were before with their father. *Criminal Underworld* takes place five years after *Grand Theft Auto V*.

## Plot

After years of serving with the Fall Syndicate, Haley and her brother Jenkins both decide to move on to other things, however this angers their father who places a bounty on their heads after finding out they left. Once off the grid, they find themselves in Los Santos, San Andreas where they decide that they would need to work for someone in order to survive but without saying there's a bounty on their heads. Eventually they make some new friends - Jeffery Thomas, a member of a local street gang; Roger McKay, a hardened member of the Professionals; Luna Tachibana, a member of the Nakamura Crime Family.

After helping Jeffery with a problem involving the Los Santos Vagos, he rewards Haley and Jenkins with a place to crash, an apartment in Del Perro where they stay and hide. A day later, Haley goes to Roger after being called up for an extra gun on a hit-and-run on a bounty they caught and go to claim the hit, successfully killing the guy and earning the trust of Roger and his group of Professionals. Later both she and her brother assist Luna with something that required outsiders rather than permanent members of the organization he's with, hoping to crash the meeting between the Hall Crime Family and the Eighth Brothers Syndicate in South Los Santos which is successful and causes tensions between the two groups and draws attention to the siblings for their work.

Hours later after the ambush, Haley is contacted by an unknown man who tells her to meet him at the Del Perro Pier in Del Perro and that she had to be alone otherwise she would be killed. Curiously, she goes to the meeting point where she finds a middle-aged man with brown hair waiting for her. He introduces himself as Faith and tells her that his name would remain disclosed for the time being. He talks about the ambush she did a few hours ago and that it sparked a war between the two parties involved in it and that through eyes and ears, he hears of her and her brother's involvement. She is given a job by Faith to intercept a courier of an unknown organization who was carrying two million in cash which belonged to Faith and his organization that was taken four days prior. She successfully kills the courier and retrieves the money, getting it back to Faith without a single dime lost.

Faith is impressed with her performance and asks her to work for him which she gladly accepts the offer and goes back to her brother at the apartment but before she could get back, he gives her a call about Jeffery who was kidnapped by rival gang members and that Jeff's fellow gang members found out where he was being held. She, Jenkins, and the gang members go to free Jeff from the rivals.

## Characters

* Haley Fall - Haley Fall is the older sister of Jenkins Fall. She was formerly a hitman for her father in the Fall Syndicate, a Canadian criminal organization. She joined the Syndicate after her 17th birthday at the request of her father who trained her to properly handle a weapon. However after the mysterious death of her mother, she had suspicions that her father was behind on it. As a result, she and Jenkins left their home and made their way to Los Santos.
* Jenkins Fall - Haley's younger brother who as a child and baby always followed her and never wanted her to leave him at all. As he grew up, he still always remained by his older sister's side. Even as a bodyguard for their father. He joined the Syndicate three years after Haley and followed her anywhere she went. After the death of his mother, he followed her when she left the Syndicate and ended up in San Andreas where they made some friends and looked for work.
* Jeffery Thomas - A member of a local street gang in Los Santos, Jeffery Thomas is an African-American street hustler who meets and befriends Haley and Jenkins after they arrived in the city. He gives them an apartment to stay in which belonged to his dead cousin who was killed two days prior.
* Roger McKay - A member of The Professionals in Los Santos, Roger leads his own group of Professionals in Vinewood and befriends Haley and Jenkins. He gives them calls for help whenever he was short one or two men.
* Luna Tachibana - A long-standing member of the Nakamura Crime Family, Luna is a Japanese-Canadian who was born in Canada but moved to Los Santos, San Andreas after getting himself mixed up with Japanese criminal organizations, syndicates, and gangs. Befriending the Fall Siblings, he recruits them as outside contacts.

## Development

In an interview in June 2016, IGN asked Rockstar Games about any single-player DLC which was promised after the game's release. "Well we've been working on another project. Most of the team at Rockstar North and our other subsidiaries have been busy," she replied to IGN's question. "But we've hired an external development studio for an upcoming update to Grand Theft Auto V," she said, "and we've been wanting to reveal it for sometime." She finished.

The untitled project mentioned earlier was revealed to be Red Dead Redemption 2 which was going for a 2018 release date. As for the update on GTA V, it was revealed by Nakamura Interactive that they were working on an expansion for GTA V and that it was a stand-alone called *Grand Theft Auto V: Criminal Underworld*.

## Reception

*Grand Theft Auto V: Criminal Underworld* received positive feedback from fans and holds a MetaCritic and GameRankings score of 75 and above while other reviewers have given positive scores as well.

IGN gave the expansion a 8.9/10, praising the framerate stability and storyline as well as for being the first GTA expansion to feature a female protagonist.

## Trivia

* According to Nakamura Interactive's game storyline director, Haley's last name was originally Rose instead of Fall and that the original first scripts had Haley and Jenkins to be in a relationship with each other. However this was changed because design director Anakin Nakamura instead wanted them as family.
	+ Furthermore, Luna Tachibana was originally a member of the Fall Syndicate who assists Jenkins in escaping his father with Haley.
* The setting of Criminal Underworld was originally going to be San Fierro but the developer decided Los Santos instead.