Technical Issues Were Main Reason for GTA III Silent Protagonist

The big subjects for all Grand Theft Auto fans might be the possible features and launch date for the fifth full game in the series at the moment but the developers of the franchise working at Rockstar are eager to teach them more about its roots.

As part of a larger feature which celebrates ten years since the launch of GTA III, Rockstar states, “We were making up a lot of procedures as we went along, and we decided that the NPCs should talk and we would have to figure out how to make them talk (using motion captured cutscenes, something that had never really been done before, at least not on the scale we were doing it). So we decided that the game’s protagonist would not talk, partly to aid people identifying with him, but mostly because we had so many other problems to solve and this did not seem like a major issue.”

It adds, “We started to discuss introducing a talking lead character when working on Vice City, but it was a lot of work. While the structure of GTA3 may seem obvious or natural now, and the use of cutscenes made in the game’s engine that look and feel like the game may seem simple and easy, it really was not the case back in 2001 when we had to figure out all of these things for the first time.”

Grand Theft Auto III was a revolutionary game for the series because it abandoned the top down look of previous installments and creatde a completely 3D world for players to explore and abuse.

The game also made huge leaps forward in terms of world building and character development and almost singlehandedly created a new game genre.

After much speculation Rockstar has confirmed that it is working on GTA V but refused to offer any clear detail on the new game, although the launch date might be set for late 2012.