GTA Tokyo “almost became a reality”, former Rockstar member revealed – Game News

A game title Grand Theft Auto set in Tokyo, Japan, has been very close to the official development stage, according to a recent sharing from a former veteran employee of the company. Rockstar North. This information has made the gaming community curious, because throughout the history of the game series, Grand Theft Auto always associated with fictional cities inspired by America.

The person who made the revelation was Obbe Vermeij, the former Technical Director who participated in developing the parts Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto IV.

In a recent interview, Vermeij said Rockstar had seriously considered bringing the game series out of the US, and Tokyo was one of the most potential options.

According to Vermeij, project GTA: Tokyo was not directly developed by Rockstar, but was planned to be outsourced to an external studio located in Japan. This studio will use Rockstar’s core toolkit and source code to build a completely new version, set in Tokyo. However, for undisclosed reasons, this plan was eventually canceled, and the game series continued to be faithful to familiar settings in the US.

Vermeij shared that the desire to bring GTA out of the United States once existed within Rockstar, but most of those ideas were just at the discussion level. In addition to Tokyo, the team considered many other locations around the world such as Rio de Janeiro, Moscow or Istanbul. However, Tokyo is a rare project that “almost actually happened”, before being shelved at the last minute.

According to this former Technical Director, the main reason why it is difficult for Rockstar to return to the idea of ​​an international context lies in the increasingly huge scale and development time of the game series. GTA. As each new installment took nearly a decade to complete, testing entirely new locations became too risky and impractical.

Besides, GTA was also closely tied to the style of American social satire, making the move to another context require a lot of creative changes.

Vermeij commented that in the future, brands GTA will likely continue to revolve around a small group of familiar American cities. Players will likely see Rockstar return to locations inspired by New York, Los Angeles, or even Las Vegas, but it’s difficult to expect a GTA Set in Asia or Europe. According to him, the rapid advancement of technology also makes returning to the same city no longer an issue, because each new version offers a completely different experience.

In addition, the successful early years of GTA also comes with a lot of controversy. Veteran screenwriter Dan Houser once shared that the popularity of GTA III and the following parts made Rockstar a target of criticism, even considered a “scapegoat” for many social problems in the US. These pressures once had a great impact on the company’s internal affairs and caused some members to leave.

Umbrella GTA: Tokyo Existing only as an unfinished idea, this revelation still opens up an interesting insight into the directions that Rockstar has considered, and shows that GTA almost had a completely different chapter in its development history.