I am RKO
03-29-2008, 03:09 PM
IGN (http://www.ign.com) recently conducted an interview with Mr. GTA himself, Dan Houser as well as Rockstar Games (http://www.rockstargames.com/iv/) Art Director Aaron Garbut about Grand Theft Auto IV.On how IV will be different to previous titles.
Well hopefully everything. [laughs] We imagined the world from scratch this time. We kept some of the old brands that it felt -- part of the issue is that there were so many brands. There are 400-500 fake brands in the game, so to start from scratch seemed stupid and it was a nice echo from previous games.
In terms of the characters, as we were bringing up the quality of the graphics and the physics and the animation, the quality of the writing and story structure were always balanced to reflect those [things]. So if we were going for a more naturalistic style in physics or lighting, we would go with a more naturalistic style with the writing which would only work if -- the reasons we could pull that off and make the cutscenes slightly longer is because we've got such good facial animation that you can afford to be a little bit more slow-paced in them and a little more intimate with some of them. They've got to look beautiful, some of the cut scenes, and they hold the game together nicely.
On In-Game Relationships
Well, not exactly like that, because we tried to build everything for each mission, but lots of different bits and pieces like that, yeah. We wanted choices in all kinds of ways to be part of the game. In some ways, without, again, wanting to criticize games that we loved making at the time and put a $#!@load of effort in -- we spent a lot of time trying to massively overhaul what we've done in the past -- the feeling was that maybe by San Andreas that some of the missions got too linear.
So one thing we wanted to do was put a lot of choice in how you did that mission. There are multiple ways of doing a mission, and then at the end of them, some of them, you have a choice, "what do you do or do you not here?" And then there are ramifications from those choices. [We're] trying to meet halfway between, trying to make the gap between the story and the non-story that always felt very defined in previous games. You're either doing a mission or you weren't, and we tried to make the distance between those a little bit closer.
On Hi-Resolution Graphics in an Open World Game
The main challenge is the obvious one -- detail. We need to fill the world with so much more stuff to make it interesting. There's a huge amount of work involved with that. Our props department has created a sickening amount of variation of every conceivable object.
We don't just have a bin to stick down the odd alleyway, we have hundreds of variations on rubbish, discarded couches, bits of cardboard, all of which need to be setup to break apart convincingly complete with lots of unique particles from our effects department. We don't have a single type of lamppost, we have 30 odd variations. This idiotic level of detail and variety carries through all aspects of the game.
You can read all eleven pages of the interview, by clicking here (http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/863/863028p1.html).
Well hopefully everything. [laughs] We imagined the world from scratch this time. We kept some of the old brands that it felt -- part of the issue is that there were so many brands. There are 400-500 fake brands in the game, so to start from scratch seemed stupid and it was a nice echo from previous games.
In terms of the characters, as we were bringing up the quality of the graphics and the physics and the animation, the quality of the writing and story structure were always balanced to reflect those [things]. So if we were going for a more naturalistic style in physics or lighting, we would go with a more naturalistic style with the writing which would only work if -- the reasons we could pull that off and make the cutscenes slightly longer is because we've got such good facial animation that you can afford to be a little bit more slow-paced in them and a little more intimate with some of them. They've got to look beautiful, some of the cut scenes, and they hold the game together nicely.
On In-Game Relationships
Well, not exactly like that, because we tried to build everything for each mission, but lots of different bits and pieces like that, yeah. We wanted choices in all kinds of ways to be part of the game. In some ways, without, again, wanting to criticize games that we loved making at the time and put a $#!@load of effort in -- we spent a lot of time trying to massively overhaul what we've done in the past -- the feeling was that maybe by San Andreas that some of the missions got too linear.
So one thing we wanted to do was put a lot of choice in how you did that mission. There are multiple ways of doing a mission, and then at the end of them, some of them, you have a choice, "what do you do or do you not here?" And then there are ramifications from those choices. [We're] trying to meet halfway between, trying to make the gap between the story and the non-story that always felt very defined in previous games. You're either doing a mission or you weren't, and we tried to make the distance between those a little bit closer.
On Hi-Resolution Graphics in an Open World Game
The main challenge is the obvious one -- detail. We need to fill the world with so much more stuff to make it interesting. There's a huge amount of work involved with that. Our props department has created a sickening amount of variation of every conceivable object.
We don't just have a bin to stick down the odd alleyway, we have hundreds of variations on rubbish, discarded couches, bits of cardboard, all of which need to be setup to break apart convincingly complete with lots of unique particles from our effects department. We don't have a single type of lamppost, we have 30 odd variations. This idiotic level of detail and variety carries through all aspects of the game.
You can read all eleven pages of the interview, by clicking here (http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/863/863028p1.html).