how could you be bored playing san Andreas. That game had so much content and stuff to do in,that I never got bored and recall,playing that game for hours and hours at a time. To each there own,I guess.

ive been playing GTA since the original GTA for the PSX
i didnt like GTA 3 very much tbh, everything felt too generic, for me Vice city was the game that brought me back to GTA

For some reason the 2D games just seemed more fun.

3D had poor combat and shooting and the driving was average. Yes there was lots to do, but it was all just drive person A to location B, kill person C. And repeat multiple times.

i agree with LinkVPit that GTA has always had poor combat and average shooting mechanics
for example GTA Chinatown wars is one of the best in the series imo, i would love a similar game on the 3DS

"But the foundation for GTA III had been established years earlier, as early as 1986 with The Legend of Zelda, and then again in 1998 with Ocarina of Time."

Uhhh, no. I don't see how anyone could say that the "open world" in Ocarina of Time (which was just an empty Hyrule Field to ride Epona around and chase ghosts in), was just as influential as the open world sandbox style do-anything-you-want gameplay that the GTA series popularized, especially since the first GTA game predates Ocarina of Time by a whole year.

The original LOZ's world was "open" in that you could tackle the dungeons in almost any order (provided you had the necessary items to access them or complete objectives), but that's hardly comparable to GTA at all. In LOZ, the overworld is essentially just a hub that connects all the dungeons, which are the meat and potatoes of the games. In GTA, the overworld IS the game.

Anywho, yes, GTAIII was and still is that influential for a number of reasons. First because of the open world "sandbox style" which has already been mentioned a million times, but also because it was one of the first games to bring mature, realistic themes and storylines to videogames that mirrored some of the biggest Hollywood mob or gangster films of all time like Goodfellas and Scarface, coupled with celebrity voice actors to boot. Before GTA, a game's M-rating was basically just a symbol of how much over the top blood and gore the game contained.

Fair enough. But you only lifted one quote, which is somewhat misleading taken out of context.

I go on to say:

"The original Zelda set the stage for open-world, non-linear gameplay, and Ocarina built upon those ideas with an immersive, open-ended world that seemed to unfold with or without the player participating. Of course GTA III was an evolution of the type of game Ocarina represented. There were fewer barriers in GTA III, thematically and physically. Players could wander almost anywhere, and put the main storyline on hold indefinitely..."

The important word I use here is evolution. I would never claim that GTA III was simply Hyrule field filled with skyscrapers. Grand Theft Auto was the evolution of ideas from games like Ocarina, Deus Ex, Shenmue, etc.

Also, I really like your point about voice acting and Hollywood production values. I hadn't accounted for that in the OP, and it's an important point to make.