Apart from stealing cars and going on rampages, there’s one thing that connects the Grand Theft Auto series, and that’s the USA. The series has never shied away from parodying and commenting on the country’s culture and socio-political structure. While we’ve seen other games do the same for other countries, none of them hit the spot quite like Rockstar’s creations.
So, when the question of a GTA game set in another country comes up, we can’t help but feel it will be missing one of its most deciding factors. Perhaps that’s why the studio never went ahead with its plans to expand the series beyond the USA. A former Rockstar developer has revealed that the studio almost went ahead with GTA games set in other popular locations.
GTA Almost Went To Japan
In a conversation with GamesHub (via Insider), former technical director with Rockstar North, Obbe Vermeij, who worked on GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, revealed that the studio was making plans to create a GTA game set in Tokyo. Unfortunately, the plans never came to fruition, but there was talk of creating games for multiple major cities.
“We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Istanbul. Tokyo almost actually happened. Another studio in Japan was going to do it, take our code and do GTA: Tokyo. But then that didn’t happen in the end,” said Vermeij. However, GTA has cemented its American setting since then, and featuring other countries no longer seems feasible.
What GTA 6’s Delay Means For The Games Industry
The entire release calendar moves every time GTA 6 does, so how will the latest delay impact everything else?
“People love having these wild ideas, but then when you’ve got billions of dollars riding on it, it’s too easy to go, let’s do what we know again, and also, America is basically the epicenter of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven’t been there. They have a mental image of the cities.
“I think it’s unlikely it’s going to be in Bogota 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 left-field location for novelty. GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn’t work.”
