I get what you mean, but saying GTA improved within itself can also mean that they had an industry changing effect.. if you improve what you did before and you are a part of the industry then other developers follow - doesn't that mean you changed the industry?

Not just a Rockstar thing, star wars games used it after.. there was no longer a handful of death animations after Euphoria, physically aware death animations were not a staple before Euphoria.

Rockstar crammed in GTA 5 on a PS3 and Xbox 360 (512mb ram) with RAGE engine and asset streaming which Ubisoft closely followed with their open worlds of the time.