GTA Tokyo ‘almost actually happened’ with an external studio, Rockstar veteran claims
A studio in Japan was intended to make a Tokyo-based GTA, according to a former developer
A Grand Theft Auto game set in Tokyo, Japan, nearly came to fruition, according to a former Rockstar North employee.
Obbe Vermeij, the technical director of GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA IV, shared the insight in an interview with GamesHub.
According to the Rockstar veteran, GTA: Tokyo would have been developed by an external studio based in Japan, using Rockstar’s game code. However, the proposal fell apart for unknown reasons, and the franchise stuck to its US-based setting.
“There were desires [to take the series outside of the US], but it’s like talking about alternative projects at Rockstar when you really start thinking about it,” he said.
“We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul. Tokyo almost actually happened. 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.”
Vermeij said the increasing development time required to make games of GTA’s huge scale, plus its association with satirical US cities, means the series is unlikely to explore global cities again in the future.
“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,” he said.
“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 VI because they’ve already played Vice City. That doesn’t make sense. It’s completely different.
“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.”
GTA writer Dan Houser recently claimed the success of Grand Theft Auto 3 and its subsequent sequels led to the US government using it as a scapegoat for society’s ills.
“They decided we were the only people on the internet peddling pornography, apparently, which was ridiculous,” he said. “And they nearly shut us down, we got fined a huge amount of money. It was very disruptive to the company, and some of my team members quit, and it was really tough.”
