That's possible that it was discussed back then, but there are only few ressources (like youtube videos comparing the dialogues) nowadays event mentioning that.
I don't think GTA V does that, driving to missions works differently, there is less dialogue on the way and the "check point" is closer to the actual mission and I even tried to provoke different dialogues by failing missions because I wanted to hear alternate dialogue.
Game journalism was in a vastly different place then than it is now, I would not use modern appearances as indicative of what people thought at the time
For example, most reviews were written in text, not some awful tuber vid
Doesn't GTA V do the multiple dialogs thing too? I could have sworn it did.