Grand Theft Auto IV - Variety’s Dan Houser Interview

Variety has recently sat down with Rockstar Games’ Vice President of Creative, Dan Houser. Ben Fritz, the interviewer, has compiled an Interview, which discusses the Grand Theft Auto series, specifically Grand Theft Auto IV. Below’s a summary, courtesy of GTA4.NET for breaking the article up!

“…imagine him talking in his British accent as I present some extended excerpts from our interview. And when I say “extended,” I mean “extended.” This isn’t everything, but it’s a lot. Frankly, I just think everything in here is really interesting and worth sharing. I’ve got him talking why “GTA IV” is the first truly original game in the series, why storage capacity is more important than console power, why Rockstar doesn’t make first person games, why he doesn’t want to make a “GTA” movie, why he considers the upcoming episodic content an “experiment,” what he has to say to critics of “GTA’s” sex and violence, and why he thinks his games deserve to stand beside movies, not other videogames (amongst many other topics).“

Dan Houser, who has mostly kept a low-profile, has touched on many things regarding Video Games development, Rockstar Games and the previous Grand Theft Auto game incarnations, not just mainly Grand Theft Auto IV.

• Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas focused on removing restrictions, while Grand Theft Auto IV focuses ore on implementing things that make sense for the location or for the character.
• In GTA IV, Rockstar aims to recreate the feeling of jumping from GTA 2 to GTA III. It’s not just an improvement; it’s something completely different. GTA 2 to GTA III was a graphical revamp; GTA III to GTA IV is a phenomenal increase in detail (in story, character, city and relationships).
• The Euphoria physics in GTA IV make the game feel more alive; greatly improved graphics make emotions easier to convey. It’s all about making the game more natural.
• The story reflects the gameplay. The more realistic the game looks and feels, the more realistic the story can be.
• Rockstar [Games]’s dream with their games is to always make everything a flowing, completely integrated experience.
• The development process for GTA IV was professional yet unstructured. The team hasn’t really changed since GTA 3, so the process is largely intuitive.
• The original Liberty City (from GTA III) was never meant to imitate New York City; it was just “vaguely East Coast-ish”, as said before in earlier interviews.
• As with previous Grand Theft Auto titles, extensive research was done to capture the true essence of New York City.
• When coming up with the concept of Niko, Rockstar wanted someone that was tough yet foreign; he’s both battle-hardened and innocent at the same time.
• It took approximately six months to come up with a rough design of what represents New York City. Actually building that representation of New York (Liberty City, in this case) took years to complete.
• As the city is created, the story begins to develop with Dan bouncing ideas off of Sam and Leslie Benzies. The story begins to be developed, artists start to work on the characters, and the designers begin to break down the story into missions.
• Developing the actual Grand Theft Auto experience is a daunting task; although the game isn’t linear, Rockstar sets it up in such a way that any given situation is predetermined. From the article: “We know where you can move around the map. We know when you can unlock everything. So although the thing to you playing game is non-linear because at any point you might have 15 things you can do, we can track on a huge multi-tiered doc, where you can be. So we know at that point can’t see other things. We’re trying to tell a story, design a videogame and take you on a trip around the world all at the same time.“
• While San Andreas and Vice City took much influence from films, GTA IV does not. With the Rockstar team being based in New York City (and much of the team having lived there their entire lives), it makes more sense to base the game off of their own first-hand knowledge and experience of the city.
• The main reason that we haven’t seen multiplayer Grand Theft Auto in the past is technical limitations; the hardware just couldn’t handle the strain that a full GTA multiplayer experience would dish out.
• For GTA IV, the multiplayer experience isn’t meant to be revolutionary or completely innovative; it’s simply meant to be the best multiplayer GTA experience possible.
• Multiplayer recreates moments while singleplayer creates narrative; it’s all a very cinematic experience.
• The storytelling experience in GTA IV is far beyond anything we’ve seen in any Grand Theft Auto title to date.
• When we look at Niko’s situation in GTA IV, we see him as a serious individual with problems that he most overcome; the world that he’s stuck in, and the issues of those around Niko, are considerably ridiculous by comparison. It’s this tone that defines the game.

Dan Houser also talks about Rockstar Games and about its relationship with their parent company, Take-Two Interactive. Well, the full interview can be read here with no Block Quotes, if you’re starting to get impatient.

“There’s been so much drama over so many years and we’re still here. I guess we’re reasonably immune to it. Sometimes it gets irritating and sometimes you feel bad for the people involved because things get out of control.There have been so many CEOs since I worked here, some were fantastic and some not so. But it never stopped us and I don’t think it’s going to. I’m so used to it I can’t imagine any other environment. If I freaked out every time this is going on, we wouldn’t be coming up on 10 years. There must have been 20 dramas in that time. It’s what I associate with being in America: corporate drama.

The one thing that whoever is in charge of Take-Two [Interactive] has been cool about is understanding that we do good job of running Rockstar [Games].”

We may have written a lot here, but there’s more to it in the full article over at Variety. Still, do remember to leave your comments on this news item! Find it interesting? Do us a favor - Social Bookmark it. Stay tuned to us for more Grand Theft Auto IV News, Media and Information!

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