Rockstar Games once had plans to set GTA spin-offs in Tokyo, Moscow, and other non-American locations and they were even going to use local developers to make them.
Rockstar has famously stated that Grand Theft Auto will never leave the US, with former narrative boss Dan Houser insisting that its satire of American culture (and the easy availability of guns) is too intrinsic to the game’s appeal.
Todd Howard has said the same thing about Fallout, even though other countries are occasionally mentioned in its lore. In the case of GTA, there were two expansion packs set in 1960s London but that was back in the 2D era of the series, when it didn’t have much of a story and the franchise wasn’t the juggernaut it is today.
However, back in the PlayStation 2 days of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas there were apparently plans to take the series to any number of other cities, but in games that would not have been made by Rockstar.
According to former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij, who has previously offered up behind the scenes stories of his time at the company, many different locations were considered for spin-off games.
‘We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul. Tokyo almost actually happened,’ he told GamesHub. ‘Another studio in Japan were going to do it, take our code and do GTA: Tokyo. But then that didn’t happen in the end.‘
That is a very interesting revelation, although it’s a shame he doesn’t reveal who the developer was. It’s also interesting that Rockstar was going to use a local developer, whereas more recent Western-published titles, like Ghost Of Yōtei and Forza Horizon 6, are games about Japan by Western studios.
It’s not clear that they would’ve been able to find a sufficiently experienced local developer for a game set in Moscow or Rio, but that’s probably why the Tokyo game was the one that came the closest to happening.
Unfortunately, Vermeij agrees that the US is too important to the game’s appeal for a big budget game to revolve around it. ‘America is basically the epicentre of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven’t been there. They have a mental image of the cities,’ he said.
‘I think it’s unlikely it’s going to be in Bogotá [capital of Colombia] next time, especially since there’s just more and more money involved as the project gets bigger. It doesn’t make sense to set it in some leftfield location for novelty. GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn’t work.’
Vermeij was asked whether he thought the series would ever be set in Europe, since if nothing else Rockstar North is based in Scotland, but he seems fairly certain it won’t be.
‘It’s just not realistic. I would love it, and if games still took a year to make then yeah, sure, you can have a little fun, but you’re not going to get that when there’s a GTA every 12 years.
‘You’re not going to set it in a new location. You don’t really need to either because the technology changes so much. Nobody is going to say that they’re not going to play GTA 6 because they’ve already played Vice City. That doesn’t make sense. It’s completely different.
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‘They’ll revisit New York again. They’ll go back to LA or maybe Las Vegas. I’m afraid we’re stuck in this loop of about five American cities. Let’s just get used to it.’
Even though he was the technical director, Vermeij would’ve been party to many high level discussions about the series, not least because he would’ve been heavily involved in helping third party developers to use the GTA game engine.
His comments mirror those of Dan Houser and while neither of them work at Rockstar anymore, if any current employee has different feelings about the matter, they’ve never made it public.
GTA 6 is set in Vice City, the series’ analogue of Miami. After several delays it will be released on November 19 next year, hopefully…
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