GTA 5 - A Wonderful and beautifully detailed game! but i still feel empty....

hey guys i might be through about 75% with the main story and side quests + did some of the side activities.
i really loved GTA 3 and vice city, never played San Andreas somehow and GTA 4 was boring for me and mostly played the main story through. GTA 5 however is much much more fun again and i love the game. but somehow i still feel the world feels empty. CRAZY i know it is just you have a VERY beautiful and HIGHLY DETAILED world. the details are really phenomenal, it is nearly a SIM, i get the feeling the game is more invested as a sim instead of a game. the mechanics work and feel nice but what can you do with the world? it is so beautiful but 80% has no meaning to it. you got so man awesome looking views, shops, buildings but thats that. i might be thinking wrong or dont see the meaning of it. it is more like a beautiful holiday/a slideshow instead of being it implemented in the game. if you take beautiful details, the crazy details out the game is a bit bare bone AS A GAME.
again the GAME is awesome, and i love it. it just feels too much focused on all the details and less to the game.

i could walk around Gta 5 and find every time new areas, new details and am just speechless, to have this in a game like this. but do i want this? do i play the game to view the beautiful created world?

what do you think?