GTA V GameInformer Dec 2012

GO BIG OR GO HOME

With Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar Games rewrites its entire playbook.

by Matt Bertz

It's not easy to stay at the top. When video games become multimillion dollar franchises, a publisher's natural inclination is to preserve its cash cow by continuing to offer the same kinds of game experiences that made it popular. As time moves on, the big changes the creative teams took to create the blockbuster are replaced by minor, calculated creative decisions backed with gigabytes of research data and focus-group analysis that proves people will keep paying the price of admission. The new additions become predictable. Add dual-wielding to Sequel 2. Introduce co-op for Sequel 3. Yeah, it's primarily a single-player game, but why not take a stab at multiplayer for Sequel 4?

Rockstar Games achieved blockbuster status in 2001 when Grand Theft Auto III introduced gamers to the addictive freedom of open-world gameplay. But rather than micromanage the studio and force its predictable business decisions into the creative process, parent company Take-Two Interactive has stayed on the sidelines, giving the team the ample time it needs to properly craft its vision (financial analysts be damned). This approach has paid off handsomely for Take-Two. The last game in Rockstar's flagship series, Grand Theft Auto IV, has sold more than 25 million copies to date, and currently holds the top perch of the Metacritic all-time list with a sterling 98 out of 100 rating that takes into account more than 80 independent reviews.

For the highly anticipated follow-up, Rockstar isn't playing it safe by collecting marketing research and watching focus groups. In a gamble to exceed player expectations, push its creative boundaries internally, and hopefully add something to the discussion of game design in general, the studio is taking the kind of chance most publishers would dismiss immediately for being too difficult, expensive, and time consuming.

Grand Theft Auto V evolves nearly every mechanic, features the biggest world in series history, and introduces a new technology that radically changes the way players experience the game. Why control one main protagonist when you could switch between three at nearly any time?

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

The evolution of open-world protagonists in Rockstar games eerily follows the trajectory of video game storytelling in general. The early top-down games advanced the plot through subtitles. When Rockstar embraced 3D with Grand Theft Auto III, the main character, Claude, was the strong and silent type even though the rest of the cast was fully voiced.

With Vice City and San Andreas, the studio created protagonists Tommy Vercetti and CJ, whose cartoon-like appearances, voice actors, and larger-than-life personalities perfectly fit their respective historical time periods. At the dawn of the high-definition era, Rockstar gravitated away from caricatures in favor of morally grounded protagonists like Grand Theft Auto lV‘s Niko Bellic and Red Dead Redemption's John Marston.

But as the worlds got bigger and the amount of disparate activities increased with each subsequent game, Rockstar came across a narrative dilemma facing all open-world games. How many different lead characters can be all things to all people, all the time? If Niko is wrestling with the moral quandary of being unwillingly sucked into a life of crime in a cutscene, it creates a narrative dissonance when the player, assuming the role of Niko, fires rocket launchers at strangers in the middle of the street. When it came time to conceptualize Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar chose to address this issue head on.

"We loved Niko and felt he was a very strong lead protagonist for a game, and we were starting to get into John Marston," remembers Rockstar Games vice president of creative Dan Houser. “We were still being told a western was going to be a disaster, but we thought we were going make something interesting with a strong character that you started to fall in love with. We just felt that after those two games, just doing more of the same wouldn't be enough because we wouldn't be able to surpass them for a while. That was really where we came up with the concept of doing it like the episodes, with three characters."

As Episodes from Liberty City demonstrated, giving the player multiple perspectives has clear advantages. When you rode through Alderney on the back of a chopper as Johnny Klebitz, carrying all the emotional baggage of his motorcycle club, Liberty City felt drastically different than when you were partying with the one-percenters as Luis Lopez or carving your American identity as immigrant Niko Bellic. The city, which one could argue is the true main character of any Grand Theft Auto game, felt more alive, as if these were just three of the thousands of stories that could be told within its boundaries.

Once Rockstar began discussing what having three playable main characters in Grand Theft Auto V would entail in terms of game design, the idea gradually evolved past the simplistic delineation between characters that seemed like the natural progression from the episodes. Instead of rotating between five missions as one character, five as the second character, and five as the third, what if you were constantly switching between them? It wouldn't be easy to pull off, but Rockstar deemed the opportunities for both narrative and gameplay flexibility worth the effort. On the plot side, it would allow them to create a more diverse style of lead protagonist and tie certain behaviors to particular characters. On the gameplay side, if the characters lived far apart then players could experience more of the world more quickly off-mission, and Rockstar could eliminate flat spots during missions by allowing players to switch between perspectives at the press of a button.

“It's been very challenging, because before you were trying to keep one story alive and now you're trying to keep three," Houser says. “It's definitely had complexities and things that have challenged us, but I think the advantage at a very simplistic and blunt level is it lets you tell a more complex story in a more naturalistic way. It is the same with game design as it is with story design, so you aren't forcing the lead diameter through every situation and every piece of information. At another level, it lets you play as both protagonist and antagonist. We hopefully have a strong and interesting cast of supporting characters, but maybe less wide-ranging than in previous games because a lot of the time, the people you're not necessarily fighting with, but bickering with, are your other lead characters."

OCEAN'S THREE

We first meet Grand Theft Auto V's three playable characters by jumping into their day-to-day lives during a hands-off game demo. Rockstar first introduces Michael, the character whose perspective we heard in the voiceover of the first Grand Theft Auto V trailer. Michael is a retired bank robber who is living a more lavish lifestyle than most people in the witness protection program thanks to an unconventional deal with the FIB. As the demo opens, he's resting comfortably in a pair of flip-flops alongside a pool in the affluent neighborhood of Rockford Hills (think Beverly Hills). In the near distance you can see his private tennis court, and if you look onto the smoggy horizon you can see the cityscape of downtown Los Santos.

Though he appears to be living the good life, Michael isn't content. His wife is burning through his cash reserves like she's auditioning for a role in The Real Housewives of Orange County, and he doesn't have the slightest idea how to communicate with his children. As he walks into his opulent mansion we meet Tracy, his teenage daughter, who is jamming out loudly to a Just Dance-style video game.

“It's called exercise - you should try it," she says flippantly to her father.

She clearly takes after Michael's wife, Amanda. We cross paths with her as she's heading out the front door for another shopping spree. As she walks out of the house she shouts, "If you want to know where I am you can check your credit card statements."

She hops into her Sentinel XS sports car and Michael yells back, “Hey, I'm feeling lucky! I'll check the hospitals!" These two make Tony and Carmela Soprano seem like the Huxtables.

With the car gone, Michael grabs a bicycle out of the garage. As he rides down the street we get our first glimpse of the neighborhood. With manicured lawns, sprinkler systems, rolling hills, and enough high-end luxury cars on the street to make the Grotti dealership in Liberty City look like a used car lot, Rockstar has once again accurately captured the vibe of a region.

The contrast between Michael's world and that of his longtime friend Trevor is jarring. When the Rockstar playtester calls up a quick menu to switch characters, the camera pulls away from the affluent community and zooms out to a Google Earth-style vantage before dropping us into a ramshackle trailer in a desert region of the map. As we greet Trevor, he's fighting a courageous battle with constipation on the toilet. yelling. “I need a f-ing midwife for this thing!"

We spend only a brief moment with Trevor, but his maniacal personality doesn't take long to make an impression. He hops into his Bodhi. a large truck that looks sort of like a convertible Jeep Wrangler JK, and heads down the road. Blaine County is a barren, rundown desert region filled with bikers, meth heads, and other walks of life more comfortable on the fringes of society (think the destitute area around the Salton Sea). Trevor rolls down the street, pulls into a parking lot and flicks off a group of people loitering in front of a building, something Rockstar recommends you do in varying circumstances to see the different reactions from people. People in rough-and-tumble neighborhoods will take it quite differently than the soccer moms at the posh boutique store.

Time to wreak some senseless havoc. With Trevor, the demo playtester nonchalantly grabs a can of gasoline sitting along the wall of the building, douses all sides of a parked truck, and pours a trail away from the vehicle. He revels in the reflective qualities of the gasoline for a brief moment, drops his lit Zippo, and steps back to admire his handiwork. The flame travels violently toward the truck, first setting the tires on tire, then the chassis, and finally reaching the gas tank after a slow burn to cause a huge explosion. Just another day in the life of a drugged-out psychopath.

When we switch over to the third protagonist, Franklin, he's cruising Vespucci Beach (think Venice Beach) looking for a car he's supposed to repossess for his boss. The waterfront is filled with activities, including a muscle beach gym. A look-alike is conducting a sermon on a nearby street corner.

Franklin eventually locates his target: a 9F, the GTA equivalent of the Audi R8. When he gets in the car, he drops the top down before taking off. Driving toward downtown Los Santos, we see several familiar businesses, including an Ammu-Nation. After a hiatus in Grand Theft Auto IV thanks to Liberty City's strict gun control laws, it's nice to see the return of everyone's favorite one-stop gun shop.

These brief introductions give us only a small sample of each character's personality, but it's easy to see the potential for this narrative approach. Michael, Trevor, and Franklin aren't interchangeable ciphers. Each one has his own personality, motivations, and skillset. When you're not controlling them, they're going about their daily business and you may be surprised by the situations they find themselves in should you switch back to check up on them. Just like the playtester did in this demo, the player is free to switch between these characters at any time when off-mission.

“That contrast between three different experiences, geographies, and vibes to everything should be really strong, and I think it's something that gives the game a unique feeling where you're visiting these people's lives and seeing what they do," Houser says. "Within the story, you're going to know information about a character before they know it because you're going to know what the other people know when you play as them."

LIVING THE HEIST LIFE

What brings these seemingly disparate characters together? The pursuit of the almighty dollar. Each character has a fully fleshed-out story arc, but instead of waiting for the finale to introduce complex missions, Grand Theft Auto V peppers several complicated, multi-tiered heists in the vein of Grand Theft Auto lV's popular “Three Leaf Clover" mission across the narrative.

“We really wanted to make heists a big theme in the game - and we'll demonstrate those later on - based on missions not just from GTA IV but from previous games that people really responded to," Houser says. “People are in love with doing the bank jobs, particularly when they feel like they have prepped the bank jobs. We've never felt we've done a great job with a bank job, so we decided, ‘Let's properly invest the story and the mission design for some of the missions into making some of these built out series of heists.' That was a huge part of the story missions - trying to set the game apart from games we've done in the past."

In addition to adding more big heists, Rockstar is also addressing mission diversity to leverage different pairings of the protagonists. We want to move from having one character in a mission to having two to having three," Houser says. “This makes the missions feel distinct in that they feel high action but they will have a very different tone depending on who's on them, how many people are on them, and how much we're using switches to make it feel different."

To demonstrate how this switch technology works mid-mission, Rockstar showcased a scenario where all three characters work together.

MAKING THE SWITCH

When we meet up with the crew, Trevor and Michael have already reunited, but not necessarily by choice. The FIB is on their case, and to get them off their backs, the trio needs to perform a snatch-and-grab mission for them.

They meet at a helipad to pick up the civilian chopper the FIB is supplying for the mission. As Michael pulls up, Trevor is berating the security agent guarding the chopper about standing around with his earpiece while everyone else is “out there making money and nailing chicks." When Michael urges his lunatic friend to calm down, Trevor keeps on running his mouth like a deranged Dennis Hopper character. He has agreed to this mission on the premise that it will lead to the springing of his friend Brad. When he reiterates this, Michael replies, “We'll talk about Brad later." Sounds like there could be differing opinions on that.

This appears to be Franklin's first exposure to Trevor, because after seeing him taken aback by the psychopath's hot-headed rant, of which Michael's parenting skills eventually become the target, Michael tells him it's okay if he sits this one out. Franklin reconfirms his commitment, so the mission proceeds as planned. Michael changes into an outfit suitable for rappelling down the side of a sky-scraper, and he and Trevor hop in the chopper.

When they arrive at the towering IAA headquarters (the GTA equivalent to the CIA), Franklin is already perched with a sniper rifle in a nearby building, ready to react if things get violent. As Trevor hovers overhead, the player assumes the role of Michael as he rappels down the side of the sky-scraper to locate the correct office. The rappelling mechanic is reminiscent of Rainbow Six Vegas; the player has full control over the camera and controls the speed of the descent. As Michael descends along the side of the building, we can see into the offices where people are going about their day-to-day business. We also notice the musical score ramping up the tension - a first for the GTA series.

Michael locates their extraction target just in time, as the lady conducting the interrogation is threatening to sodomize him with an 18-inch Maglite - sans lube. As they verbally berate him and smash his fingers with the heavy-duty flashlight, he sticks to his position that he “installs camera equipment, not surveillance!"

Before things get too out of hand, Michael smashes through the glass and grabs the target, holding him hostage with one arm while pointing a gun at the various interrogators reaching for their pistols in front of him. Suddenly, an icon on the screen presents the player with the first switch option.

From here out, you could stay in the role of Michael, trying to pick off agents while waiting for Franklin to snipe the rest of them from afar, but instead the player pulls up the radial quick menu and selects Franklin. Upon pressing the button, the player perspective switches instantaneously, putting you behind the trigger of a sniper rifle in the building across the way. The transition is executed smoothly, with a camera angle that helps you adjust to your new role instantaneously. As Franklin, the player makes short work of the remaining agents.

After Trevor picks up Michael and the target, a helicopter chase ensues in the sky above downtown Los Santos. During the chase, the player has three switch options available: you can pilot the getaway as Trevor, try to snipe other pilots as Franklin, or fire an assault rifle out the back of the chopper as Michael. After taking down a few birds, the crew returns the copter to the FIB helipad and the mission concludes.

After seeing this one short demo, the gameplay possibilities that open up with three varying perspectives are immediately evident. Switching to another character at the right time can eliminate the flat spots during missions and keep the player at the heart of the action. Letting you swap between characters handling various tasks should also make the multifaceted heists much more intriguing imagine cracking a safe with one character and then immediately switching to the man guarding the door who is just about to open tire on the arriving police.

We have a design issue that all games have that games are at some level about doing stuff, you being the person in charge of the mechanic," Houser says. “When you are only one character, it means they always have to be driving when the driving is fun, shooting when the shooting is fun, flying when the flying is fun, and parachuting when the parachuting is fun. It can lead to things being a little ridiculous - having a lot of time spent climbing ladders, or a lot of segues from moment to moment that can end up being slightly contrived. With [multiple simultaneous protagonists] we can get past that and also cut out a lot of the transitional moments to just always put you in the action."

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THE NEW FACES OF GRAND THEFT AUTO

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Name: Michael

Occupation: Retired

Age: Early 40s

Location: Rockford Hills

History: A highly successful former bank robber, Michael retired in luxury after making a sweetheart deal with the F18. Currently in the witness protection program, it may look like he has the idyllic life, but he hates his wife Amanda (who reciprocates the feeling and spends all his money) and doesn't understand his two teenage children (Tracy and Jimmy). With the money running out and his domestic life driving him crazy, Michael needs to get back into the game.

Appearance: He may be older, but with a clean-cut appearance, nice clothes, and a big house, Michael doesn't look out of place in high society.

Houser's Take: "When we started with Michael, the idea was an older guy who was very successful getting sucked back into the game. Of all the various stories we've told about bank robbers, thieves, and hit men over the years, this was a story - just as we thought with GTA IV and Niko as an immigrant - that's got a lot of freshness to it."

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Name: Trevor

Occupation: Career criminal

Age: Early 40s

Location: Blaine County

History: A frequent drug user who is governed by his desires and prone to violent outbursts and destructive rampages, Trevor is the proverbial loose cannon. A former military pilot, he used to work a few bank jobs with Michael back in the day. You don't need to twist his arm to get him on board with a heist.

Appearance: Balding and disheveled, the years haven't been kind of Trevor. He frequently wears plain white t-shirts and has a tattoo that says “Cut Here" with a dotted line around his neck.

Houser's Take: “Trevor appeared to us pretty much out of nowhere as the embodiment of another side of criminality - of freedom, and of doing what you want. If Michael was meant to be the idea of some version of criminal control - or some sort of bourgeois criminal who tries to go straight and gets sucked back in - what about the guy who didn't do that? What about the opposite guy? What about the guy who just says, 'f- off' every moment, is relentless, doesn't want to stop taking drugs, doesn't want to stop partying, doesn't want to be told ‘no' by anyone, and just completely revels in chaos?"

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Name: Franklin

Occupation: Repo Man

Age: Mid 20s

Location: South Los Santos

History: A young and ambitious hustler, Franklin currently works for an Armenian luxury car dealership that sells cars to people who can't afford them. When they default, Franklin plays the role of the grim repo man. Franklin stumbles into Michael when looking for a hustle.

Appearance: Fit and fashion conscious. Franklin is the young and capable one of the bunch.

Houser's Take: “Franklin was the idea of this street hustler in the modern world where the glory days - if there ever were glory days of gang banging - had long since passed. When some of the illusions of this life have been shattered, what do you do now having been in that world? That seemed like an interesting character; a guy in his mid-to-late 20s who wants to move forward but doesn't really know how and is being held back by some of his more idiotic and dangerous friends."

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GAMEPLAY EVOLVED

For Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar Games has rebuilt most of the gameplay mechanics from the ground up. Vice president of creative Dan Houser wouldn't speak to particulars, opting to let the teams that work on each system delve into finer details at a later date, but he did offer general impressions on the driving, shooting, and melee combat.

Driving

“The cars hold to the ground a bit better. We thought they were big and boat-like in GTA IV, and we feel like it has really leaped forward because we're able to run a little more physics on them. It feels more like a racing game. There are not a lot of high-level racing games out there at the moment, and that itch is going to be scratched by this game in a way maybe it hasn't been in previous GTAs."

Shooting

“We feel like we've evolved it on from where we had it in any previous game a long way. And not just in terms of how it works, but also in terms of the core mechanics of how you play the game."

Melee Combat

"It's better than we've had in the past. How far we can push it - we will see depending on resources we allocate to it. It's never going to be as big a deal as shooting with the way that we make the game, but we do want it to feel really fun and strong."

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WELCOME TO SUNNY LOS SANTOS

When the leadership group at Rockstar games started conceptualizing Grand Theft Auto V shortly after wrapping up IV, many ideas were on the table. But rather than venture into a historical setting or new location, the team felt it still had work to do in San Andreas.

“Sam, my brother, more than anyone, but also the lead artist Aaron Garbut, were both really interested in the idea of doing a proper Los Angeles," says Rockstar Games vice president of creative Dan Houser. "We felt we hadn't done that with San Andreas which was these very small, sketch-like cities. Los Angeles and the surrounding countryside would be very interesting, giving us good themes to play on and lots of good, different gameplay environments - something that could allude to aspects of IV and allude to aspects of San Andreas, but still feel very fresh and different from both of them."

Though Rockstar has focused on this region several times over the last few years with titles like L.A. Noire, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, they still felt they had only scratched the surface of the culture. If any culture is ripe for a GTA-style parody, it's the vanity capital of the modern world. With Hollywood, the porn industry, the decriminalization of marijuana, the immigration battle, gated communities, the pockets of luxury amidst the tent cities of homeless people, and the bankrupt government, there are more than enough topics ripe for parody in the signature Rockstar style.

"The geography you could get outside Los Angeles is spectacular," Houser says. “The contrast between desert/rural Southern California, inland from L.A. and just a bit north, compared to L.A., gives you a great microcosm of red state/blue state theme - different vibes culturally as much as geographically. I think that was something we really felt would be good about this location."

Grand Theft Auto IV featured a densely packed urban environment filled with activities around every corner, and Red Dead Redemption made large open expanses more gameplay-friendly with dynamic encounters that lure players into missions. Grand Theft Auto V combines the best of both, giving players the largest open-world playground in Rockstar history with a huge and diverse city serving as the epicenter.

When I ask why they chose to make one large city instead of making two or three, Houser says it was a design decision primarily driven on making the best possible experience. “The bottom line was building one city and doing it properly. To do a proper version of L.A., which area-wise is the largest city in the world, the game has to give you a sense of that sprawl - if not completely replicate it. You have to spend a lot of your city budget time and money making L.A. To split that into two, you would lose what LA. is."

Just how big is this new world? Art director Aaron Garbut crunched the math. When you include interior and exterior spaces together, Los Santos is bigger than the worlds of Red Dead Redemption, San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto IV combined, with room to spare. This expansive environment includes beachfronts, wine country, a large wilderness area surrounding a fully explorable Mt. Chiliad, a Salton Sea region, a military base, and of course the sprawling suburban hills leading up to the bustling urban center of Los Santos. Bring your scuba equipment, too, because you can even explore the fully detailed ocean floor along the Los Santos coastline.

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GETTING AROUND LOS SANTOS

To encourage players to explore this vast expanse, Rockstar is giving them more vehicles than any other Grand Theft Auto to date. Confirmed vehicles include a BMX bike, mountain bikes, road bikes, dirt bikes, a huge variety of cars and trucks, helicopters, planes, ATVs, and Jet Skis. You won't have to wait until the endgame to take to the skies, either. Since Trevor is a former war veteran with flight experience, you just need to find a plane to fly it.

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KILLING TIME IN LOS SANTOS

With welcome diversions like bowling, strip clubs, live stand-up comedy, internet cafes, and a great selection of television shows to watch at home, players rarely found themselves twiddling their fingers in Grand Theft Auto IV. For the sequel, Rockstar Games plans to blow out off-mission activities to an even greater degree with a variety of different side missions and more sophisticated minigames in the vein of Red Dead Redemption's poker.

“What we really wanted to focus on in mission design is a huge amount of diversity," says Rockstar Games vice president of creative Dan Houser. “We want to use the characters and use the rest of their lives - be it Michael's family, Franklin's crazy friends, or Trevor out in the desert with access to planes very early on - to quickly get you into a lot of action and a lot of different kinds of things. You can go from being in as heavy a shootout as you've ever seen in a GTA game to doing yoga within a matter of missions. Hopefully it feels very nice, consistent, and held together, but you're being pulled around into a lot of different activities by the story in a really fun and interesting way." Here is what we know so far:

GET IN CHARACTER

Many of the side activities are available to each of the three protagonists, but to drive home the differences in their personalities and develop their characters further, Rockstar plans to give Michael, Trevor, and Franklin unique hobbies that only they can participate in. “We're still ironing out all the details, but we want one or two key minigame activities per character to really help the characters get separated from each other," Houser says. “We just want the world to feel different for whomever you're playing. If you're Trevor, you're more likely to find the world antagonistic than if you're not."

CUSTOMIZE YOUR LOOK

Because Michael, Trevor, and Franklin are fully fleshed-out characters with specific skill traits, Grand Theft Auto V does not have the RPG-style player customization so many people loved in San Andreas. Allowing players to gain and lose weight had a unique set of technical challenges. “The main thing is at a technical level to get the changing scale of the character - to get them bigger and smaller - is hard, and in San Andreas the standard definition graphics were more forgiving," Houser says. "Doing that with three different characters - we definitely thought about it but decided it was impossible. We just weren't going to get the results we want with the way the rest of the animation system works. It was just not worth making compromises elsewhere." Though you can't go on a NutraSlim diet, you can still customize the look of your characters with different clothing.

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT

Even if Niko stayed in his crappy tenement, he had plenty of entertainment at his disposal with a collection of hilarious television parodies. Our favorites included the rambunctious cartoon Republican Space Rangers, a scathing parody of George W. Bush's foreign policy, and the hilarious Ken Burns send-up documentary A History Of Liberty City. Rockstar confirmed that the “entertainment inside the entertainment" is returning in Grand Theft Auto V, but chose to keep specifics under wraps outside of saying it has funny new stuff that's pretty odd to do in a game."

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Grand Theft Auto V expands on extracurricular activities in a major way with options like yoga, triathlons, Jet Skiing, base jumping, tennis, and even a full-fledged golf game. "We've actually got a full golf course, which we're very pleased with because it's pretty fun," Houser says. “What we'd learned on the best aspects of GTA IV and Red Dead was that it's better to have one really good minigame built by a really good design team than five half-assed ones that aren't that fun. People will try everything, but if it's fun they'll invest more time into it."

NO ROMANCE IN THE AIR

Niko Bellic had several women available on speed dial to take on dates, but the cast of Grand Theft Auto V won't be spending its free time chasing tail. When asked if romance would return in GTA V, Houser says, "I don't think so, simply because of the nature of the characters. We weren't sure it would work, and we're doing lots of other new stuff. We definitely would bring it back in the future, but not in this game. It just felt like it was going to be overly complex [with three protagonists]."

MAKING FRIENDS

Players won't be spending free time wining and dining women in Los Santos, but each protagonist has his own cast of friends to interact with when they aren't performing heists or hanging out together. We asked Dan Houser to highlight a few Rockstar favorites:

Lamar: "I really like Lamar, who is Franklin's crazy friend. He's just a good sort of crazy - the guy who does the acting is brilliant. Franklin's kind of serious and ambitious, and Lamar's a more lunatic version from that world and he's just very funny."

Jimmy: “I love Jimmy, Michael's son. The actor captures the story of a whiny, lazy, pot smoking 20-year-old kid so brilliantly. They've got this awful and confused father-son relationship. You've never seen a relationship like that in a GTA game or in games before. You never see a lot of family stuff. So you have a full family thing that we are excited by, because it seems sort of fresh and weird."

Ron: “Ron is Trevor's best buddy as much as Trevor can have a buddy. He's a paranoiac conspiracy theorist living in a neighboring trailer. If Trevor is like the shark, he's like the remora. He's completely paranoid but terrified of this maniac he's got to spend time with."

Amanda: "Michael's wife Amanda is great. The actress is brilliant and the vibe of them is just so funny because he's been awful to her and she's a really strong personality as well. We've never had a woman like that in one of these games before. They've always been the gun-toting type or damsels in distress. Here's something completely different where she's bound to him by their past lives and they can't stand each other anymore. It's something that feels very fresh, feels like GTA, and it's just sort of amusing."

FAMILIAR FACES

Though he wouldn't name specifics, Houser confirmed that some familiar faces from Grand Theft Auto IV and Episodes From Liberty City may resurface in Los Santos. Just don't expect major characters like Niko Bellic or anyone from the PlayStation 2-era GTA games. "The five PS2 games are one universe, and this is the high definition universe, so they don't co-exist," Houser says. “You wouldn't ever see CJ or Tommy Vercetti. They would be like mythical characters in this world who never existed."

THE LOS SANTOS ECONOMY

Past Grand Theft Auto games featured the ability to purchase real estate to expand your criminal empire or collect homes. For GTA V, Rockstar is taking a different approach to creating an economy. "A valid criticism of GTA IV is that there wasn't enough to do with money at the end of the game," Houser says. "We are definitely going to have a very vibrant and fun economy, from earlier in the game to after you've completed everything. There won't be property, but there will be loads of other stuff."

YOU BETTER CALL SOMEBODY

Since Vice City, Rockstar has used a cell phone to drive gameplay and give players new activities to pursue. GTA V preserves the mobile-phone concept, but you won't be getting calls from friends all the time. For all intents and purposes, you are your best friends. Rockstar plans to streamline the phone to surface some of the activities. "One criticism people felt about GTA IV was there wasn't enough to do when you weren't doing story missions," Houser says. "A lot of it was hidden on the phone, so we've taken a lot of that and moved it onto the map." Though it may be losing some functionality, Houser says it's gaining new features as well. "It will be a more contemporary phone, so I think you'll use it for things like accessing the Internet," he says.

CASUAL ENCOUNTERS

Walking through the streets of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV, you would occasionally run across a pedestrian you could interact with. These random encounters are coming back in a bigger way for GTA V. When Franklin drove around Vespucci Beach briefly in the demo, we noticed a Jesus-looking preacher dressed in white robes speaking to his flock. He is just one of many pedestrians who have more to offer than a witty one-liner. "This time they are fully mo-capped, they've got a lot more to say, and you can interact with them a little more," Houser says. "There's a far greater array of them along with just huge numbers of other pedestrians and other systems, so it should feel like it's a lot easier to meet people and stumble into interaction as well if you want to."

DYNAMIC MISSIONS

Because the expansive frontier in Red Dead Redemption was so wide open, Rockstar Games devised a dynamic mission system that would present players with scenarios they could either ignore or engage rather than making them wander aimlessly between missions. This structure proved so successful that Rockstar is migrating it over to Grand Theft Auto V. When you're driving around in the country, you may see a broken-down car or hitchhiker on the side of the road. If you're the curious type, pull over and see what happens. Going off-road in the desert, you may come across two parked cars and a sea of dead bodies around them. Did a Breaking Bad-style drug deal go bad? Investigate if you want. Dynamic missions extend into the heart of Los Santos as well. If you see a cash van, you can attack it to make a quick score, or if you're looking to do a good deed you could catch the mugger who grabbed a granny's purse.

MUTLTIPLAYBR

Rockstar is saving the multiplayer reveal for another time, with Houser only offering, "We're very pleased with the direction it's heading. We're ever closer to nailing the fun and excitement of open-world multiplayer." Though we have to wait for hard details, we already know some of the basics. During the Max Payne 3 press blitz, Dan Houser confirmed to IGN that the Crew infrastructure introduced in that title will carry over into Grand Theft Auto V via the Social Club. Though Rockstar says much of the HUD elements we saw during the demo were placeholder, we did notice that the multiplayer menu was located directly underneath the switch icons, which means players will probably enter the competitive modes through the single-player experience again. Given the single-player campaign's focus on heists, we hope Rockstar creates a dedicated cooperative/competitive mode based around this concept as well.

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SHELVING THE CELEBRITIES

Past Grand Theft Auto games are remembered for their colorful casts of celebrity voice actors. The impressive roster of big name talent includes Ray Liotta, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda, and the late Dennis Hopper. But when Rockstar moved into the high-definition era, they eschewed celebrity talent for major roles. This philosophy extends to Grand Theft Auto V as well, which has no major names cast as the main protagonists. We asked Rockstar Games vice president of creative Dan Houser about the reasoning behind this decision.

“We've done two or three movie shoots for this game spread out through various three-week shoots," he says. “I don't think there would be many celebrities that would be available even if we wanted to spend the money on them for the amount that we've used them for."

“The good thing about most famous actors is they can actually act very well or they can do their shtick really well. Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other. I think it was really useful on the PS2-era games for bringing these somewhat simplistic characters to life."

“But when we went to PS3 and 360 I think it would become a distraction if you were like, ‘Well, that's a famous person.' Suddenly these characters start to feel like they were alive a lot more and you need that to sell them. As long as you have good actors, not knowing them actually is an advantage in terms of bringing the game to life. I can't see us moving past that for major parts in the game."

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THE ART OF GRAND THEFT AUTO

To gain insight into the process of creating the intricate worlds of Grand Theft Auto, we spoke to Rockstar North art director Aaron Garbut.

Q. When you finally settled on returning to Los Santos for Grand Theft Auto V, what elements of the San Andreas version of the city did want to preserve, and which parts were you comfortable leaving behind?

A. We wanted the world to feel fresh, so, like Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV, our reference for the world wasn't the city from the earlier games. Instead, we went back to the real place, the real locations. Some elements found their way back in, but more through nods to the past than trying to recreate the original. This is an entirely fresh game world waiting to be explored and experienced.

Q. Liberty City captured the spirit of New York City better than most books and films. What elements of Southern Californian culture did you want to include in Los Santos that perhaps you didn't get the chance to include in San Andreas?

A. Our processes and the fidelity of the world have evolved so much since San Andreas that it's hard to think about San Andreas in those terms anymore. We didn't have the power to do this properly in the past, but it's an area we're always trying to push forward. To get beyond the city as just a backdrop or a game level with pedestrians randomly milling about and instead make it feel like part of a real world, with distinct areas and individuals going about their lives, a real place that you can visit and exist within.

The primary focus of San Andreas was gang culture. This time we are trying to capture the contemporary culture of L.A. as a whole, the entire cross section and the variety that brings a city, surrounding towns and settlements to life. So in some senses the difference between San Andreas and V is that V is so much broader. Conversely, everything about it is so much more detailed and thought through. So it comes down to increased scope with massively increased fidelity - not a bad goal. We're trying to capture the nuances that make a place feel real, but doing that in the context of a city that also has such extreme contrasts.

That's the interesting thing about L.A. - it's just so diverse. That's how the city feels to me: diverse, sprawling, larger than life, and more than a little bit mental. We've toned down its sprawling nature in Los Santos - we compressed the city somewhat so that it never felt dull, but everything is there, including those special mental characters and moments you just wouldn't experience anywhere else; the oddness that's as much a part of L.A. as the palm trees and the traffic jams. We're filling the world with unique characters you can come across and random events you can witness or become involved in that really can bring this world and your experience of it to life in a way we've never done on this scale before, and certainly in a way we really couldn't achieve in San Andreas.

Q. What are some of your favorite details about Los Angeles you've incorporated into Los Santos?

A. One of the biggest achievements we've made with this game is the detail we have created over such a massive and varied world. I love the contrasts L.A. provides as a city - there's so much variety, so many extremes and we've done our best to capture all we can. When we're building the world we tend to fly about and check things out using a freely moveable "debug" camera. It's pretty incredible to start out nearly a mile up looking over the vast city, rivers, coastline, countryside, hills, mountains, canyons, deserts, wetlands, forests, and all the little towns, farms, buildings, and settlements and then zoom in to an area. Starting high enough up that you can watch the shadows of the clouds in the sky roll over the world far below, seeing the helicopters, birds, and planes flying about and then zooming in until you first see the cars and pedestrians driving and hanging out, then closer still, and you can make out the unique architecture of the area, the graffiti on the walls and the areas that have been painted over, the countless fake brands on shop fronts and the TV shows, films, and ads on billboards - then closer again until you can see the way the sprinklers turn on in the evening to keep the grass wet or the way puddles have gathered around the hoses in a carwash or the dog jumping against a fence as someone walks too close, while the neighbor lies on a sun lounger by the pool soaking in the last of the day's sun. The way some dodgy looking guys hang around outside the store, ready to hassle anyone getting too close, then zoom farther into a 24-7 store, where everything from the food on the shelves to the cigarettes and magazines behind the counter are individually modeled and textured with specific designed branding. Where the floor has been worn by foot traffic and the tiles have lifted a little in places and curled up a little around the edges. Then zoom from there back out through the door, past the canopy flapping gently in the wind, back out, and out, and out a mile up again, that 24-7 way too small even to see anymore. Knowing the same detail is everywhere you want to look. Whatever you can see, and you can see a lot, is fully realized, fully resolved, filled with unique characters, vehicles, missions, and experiences and waiting for you to explore. It's intense.

Q. Talk about the level of research Rockstar puts into capturing the culture and vibe of a city and its various neighborhoods. How deeply do you dive into census information, etc?

A. We go to quite extreme lengths to make sure we capture the right flavor of each area. We've always done a good amount of research, bringing a large chunk of the team over to photograph the locations, but since IV this has really moved up a gear. We took over a quarter-million photos this time and filmed many hours of video. We pored over the various online mapping and street-view tools. Our research team created dozens of DVDs filled with information, documentaries, news stories, video clips, etc. Census information informed the population control in the game for each area. We looked at information on car sales and ownership in California to guide our vehicle list. Basically, any information we could get our hands on has been used in some way. All this stuff just works as a guide; we aren't just trying to copy or emulate the real place. We're using it as a basis to push and pull into something vibrant and distinct. That's easier to do when its based on the solidity of reality though, when you're building on something rather than freestyling.

Q. When scouting locations during the research phase, Rockstar often relies on locals to introduce them to the different cultural pockets of the cities that tourists don't often come across. Who showed you around Southern California?

A. The research trips were huge. We covered such a huge area. Just covering a massive sprawling city like L.A. is hard enough without also including the desert, hills, forests, towns, and farms with that. Our research team did a fantastic job organizing this all and hooking us up with the right people to show us around. From architectural historians and location scouts, to off-duty cops and DJ Pooh. We were taken to the perfect places, educated, and kept safe!

Q. Pedestrians have always made GTA cities feel bustling, but as anyone who has visited L.A. can attest, Californians would rather drive their car halfway down a block and leave it with another valet than walk. How are you making this city feel vibrant with a number of pedestrians in some areas?

A. What we find is that although the number of pedestrians wandering around the streets is reduced, there are always people actually doing things or hanging out. We have written a system to handle this. Creating people and cars doing specific things around the map scheduled throughout the day. You can see the gardeners and cleaners waiting at bus stops in East Los Santos in the mornings then find them tending the gardens and houses in our Beverly Hills during the day. This system does a lot to bring the world to life and it's the key to giving each area the proper flavor.

Q. Los Santos is bigger than GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, and GTA: San Andreas combined. From the art design perspective, what are the biggest challenges of creating a game world of this scale?

A. The main challenge is keeping it all in your head and keeping it all moving forward consistently. A lot of us now know Los Santos better than Edinburgh, but getting to that point has been a struggle. It's a massive task in terms of production in all sorts of ways. There are so many diverse areas and filling them with unique features and getting it all to just feel right has been a massive undertaking that has seen the combined efforts of a lot of very talented people across many of the Rockstar studios. This effort though has given us a world that should keep people interested for quite a while and one we can continue to expand on.

Q. With GTA V, you're not only allowing players to explore Los Santos and the surrounding wilderness - they can explore the ocean floor as well. How did you approach designing these regions? What kind of surprises can gamers look forward to encountering?

A. We get the world roughly blocked in as quickly as we can then constantly play and evolve. We add new features, areas, and detail pretty much right up to release. Detail and features are added in layers and passes. This helps us keep a level of consistency, but the fact we continuously play and feedback that experience into pushing and pulling the map and evolving it means that areas almost grow into their final forms, sometimes driven by gameplay, sometimes by visual needs. We are always looking for ways we can give the player a different experience or new toy-set to use; allowing the player to go underwater is a function of that. Like any area, the underwater has had the same attention as above land with rocky canyons, deep ravines, and coral beds, with the same goal of distinctive features, areas, and fun.

Q. What comes first - the creation of the game world or a list of missions the designers hope to include with location requirements? Walk us through the close partnership that needs to exist between these two disciplines on a project of this scale.

A. We build the world First. A relatively small team builds an untextured version of the world before anything else happens. This lets us get a sense of scale, see the skyline, and get a sense of each area. Once we're happy with this we build up the team and start to turn the untextured world into a finished item. Once the untextured world is built, it can be driven about on so missions start to progress, too. Some ideas come from playing about in the world, others are just built out on paper. The missions evolve in a similar way to the world, starting as rough playable sketches and evolving. As the missions develop the map can be built up around their needs. There's a lot of back and forth and adjustments to suit the needs of the missions, and sometimes missions get adjusted when we need to change the world for visual reasons.

Q. As technological capabilities have advanced over the years, GTA has gravitated toward photorealism on consoles but stopped short of fully embracing it. What is the philosophy behind this approach?

A. I think photorealism is a bit of a boring goal, actually. It's not really a goal at all, more an inevitable technical achievement. Pushing Grand Theft Auto a bit towards photorealism has suited its grittier approach, but it's vitally important to give the world and the characters in it their own personality. It's just more fun, more interesting, and - to me at least a lot more appealing.

Q. At what point in the process do you start conceptualizing the look of the protagonists?

A. Mike Kane, one of our associate art directors, works with the guys in New York, who cast and then scan our characters. Mike and his team then work to give them the right flavor and push them to where we need them to look - like everything else, that evolves all the way through development.

Q. As the level of detail has increased over the years, Rockstar's cutscenes have gotten increasingly more cinematic. What, if anything, did you want to do differently or improve upon for Grand Theft Auto V?

A. The main thing we've tried to do is integrate them into the game experience more, flowing in and out of cutscenes as seamlessly as possible so everything ties together into a single experience.

Q. What are the new technical tools provided by the RAGE engine that the art team was most excited to exploit for GTA V?

A. There have been some very nice advances in the lighting and shader model that gives us much more control and subtlety. The ramp up in scale has been exciting, new features that have meant essentially we draw everything into the distance. We used to “only" render 1.5 km at most in IV, now we render the most distant mountains at the other end of the world many, many miles away. You can even see the little lights on the street or on buildings draw right into the distance. It all gives the world a lot more solidity. Really though, on a project this size there's a million things, small and big, that have given us the ability to push the experience.

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A RISK WORTH TAKING

As the biggest structural change to how Rockstar designs games since Grand Theft Auto III, implementing this switch technology isn't easy. Being able to jump into another player instantly is onerous on the game engine, so Rockstar is still optimizing the performance. In doing so, they've also found spots in big missions where they can make the switches feel more cinematic and spectacular, leveraging all of the new techniques they learned in making tailored shooting experiences in Max Payne 3.

Coupled with the narrative flexibility that multiple protagonists provide, Rockstar believes they've created a foundation for its most innovative game yet.

“We're all starting to feel that it's our strongest plotted game because the characters are so intertwined," Houser says. “When you're advancing Michael's story, you're also advancing Trevor's story in a different way, and the meeting points are very exciting. I think making that work has certainly been challenging given our inexperience and lack of skill, but we've done our best to oorne up with something we think is giving this much more densely plotted experience that we couldn't have pulled off when you always need the lead character in every moment."

For a series as successful as Grand Theft Auto, any major change is a risk. Fans expecting a bigger version of GTA IV set in San Andreas are going to get a whole lot more. 1"ime will tell whether Rockstar's fans embrace this new three-protagonist structure. but based on what we've seen, this has the potential to take the franchise - and open world games - to new heights. Change isn't easy, but if Rockstar's creative gamble pulls this off, the rewards for Take-Two and GTA fans could be great indeed.