One amazing aspect of both last year’s Grand Theft Auto V and its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto IV, were the size, scope, and detail of each game’s cities

In a recent interview with Edge, Rockstar North Art Director Aaron Garbut commented on the process of building a city, and how it precludes the developers from actually creating a 100% replica of the real thing. “I’d never want to rebuild a city. I think that would be a lot less satisfying both for us to build and for the player to play. In a lot of ways, it would be less convincing, too. At least that’s how I rationalise it to myself,” Mr. Garbut explained, “we take the feel of a city, the one we get through visiting and through experiencing it our whole lives through media, and build that. We compress, we edit, we emphasise certain things and we end up with something that in some ways, I think, feels more like the popular perception of the place than the actual city. Only because the popular perception isn’t the real city, if that makes sense.”

Grand Theft Auto V was developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games on September 17th, 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Grand Theft Auto Online launched on October 1st, 2013.

Posted: Jan 02, 2014 9:48 pm
Related Forum: Grand Theft Auto Forum

Source: http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/01/02/grand-theft-auto-vs-art-director-on-creating-los-santos-id-never-want-to-rebuild-a-city/