![]() This enabled Rockstar to make more use of pedestrian logic and all the other elements that create a living, breathing city, including packing in all the dialogue from passers-by and the famed radio stations, which King describes as "an incredible way to add depth and a richness of texture that extends beyond just the physical map."ĭMA also had to be careful with polygon counts and visual fidelity to ensure the game ran at 30fps, no matter how much chaos the player was causing. Animation was the big one, King says, as the team had to account for full body animations of removing someone from their car and climbing into the driver's seat - a task that's considerably easier with 2D sprites.Īlso, while the PS2's advanced hardware opened new possibilities, there was still the constraint of the console's 32MB RAM, which was addressed largely by the ability to stream content off the disc. ![]() But Rockstar and DMA were determined to make something that was truly new and different.įirst it had to contend with the myriad challenges of bringing the staples of the top-down 2D games to a 3D open world. There had been games set across an entire city before, with the likes of Driver and Midtown Madness - the latter impressing Rockstar so much, it acquired it and brought the team on board to develop Midnight Club Racing. Grand Theft Auto 3 was not the first 3D open world, of course. "They had vector units, and now we could actually run it." Building Liberty City ![]() "And then the PlayStation 2 came out," King says. Nintendo 64 titles like Body Harvest and Space Station Silicon Valley show the kernels of ideas that would evolve in the open-world GTAs, and at the time GTA 3 was in development, the team was further experimenting with The Warriors, which was in its early stages at the time. The development team at DMA Design, which would become Rockstar North after the release of GTA 3, had already experimented with 3D worlds. "You couldn't really do it on a PlayStation, Dreamcast couldn't really do it - you could maybe do fake 3D sort of isometric-ish stuff." "From a storytelling perspective, it would be much more immersive if you can actually get down to the streets and go 3D," he tells. Although, according to Rockstar co-founder Jamie King, the team was simply waiting for the right technology. While the likes of Mario, Sonic, Zelda, Metal Gear and other classic series had already made the jump, GTA 3 was somewhat behind this curve. If anything, it was perhaps later than expected. ![]() Originally a top-down franchise, Grand Theft Auto's transition was inevitable. 20 years later, the industry is still feeling the impact. On October 22nd, 2001, Grand Theft Auto 3 arrived on shelves for the first time. ![]()
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