IGN's massive interview with Dan Houser & Aaron Garbut

Posted at 00:42 GMT by Chris :: Category: GTA IV :: Comments: 5

IGN have just posted a huge article on their site, consisting of 11 lengthy pages. The interview with Dan Houser and Rockstar North Art Director Aaron Garbut is "an in-depth look at the story, the creation of Niko, and the monumental task of creating the most realistic city ever seen in a videogame". The article is so big in fact that this is only the first half (we'll see the next piece on Monday).

This part of the interview covers:

the origins of GTA IV's story, what makes Niko the best character Rockstar has ever created, learn about the new dynamic relationship system and find out what went into building Liberty City. On Monday, we'll give you the full scoop on the gameplay additions and improvements.

It doesn't appear that there's any new information covered, but it's interesting to hear directly from the developers, and it gives a good insight into how things are done.

Link: GTA IV: Building a Brave New World

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Comment by tilly on 29/03/08 00:47:

Wow.

I read the first few parts of each page.

A littttttle boring, but very informative and gives a lot of insight of GTA and how to appreciate it.

Comment by mark866 on 29/03/08 00:55:

very cool, but too long to read if there was a audio version then that would be better like a podcast

Comment by mark123 on 29/03/08 13:53:

okay so i read the whole thing ( i was bored ) you dont really notice anything majorly new. most of the answers tend to be fairly repetitive. in fact i'm sure some answeres were almost phrase by phrase only placed in different orders.

but there are some aspects of it that just imerse yourself, in the sense that you see the effort put in .. or you'll notice things about side missions.. like um

something about a character in a mission that will just start wandering around the city.. and you may or may not bump into him at a later point and if you decide to talk to him or if you dont , may or may not have consequences later on in missions.

you know things like that seem to bring up a more realistic aproach to the city.

there was something that might annoy me though, the side missions.

he said that in new york there are characters with highly strung personality traits , you'll be walking down a street n someone will go " do you like hip-hop? wanna buy my cds?" or something . and so in liberty city it will be the same, but instead if someone says something like that to you then it could trigger a mission for you to do. but you sit and think.. i might be chasing someone or doing something i wanna do i dont want to have some side mission getting in the way or whatever.

but also things like, if you fail a mission and go to do it again then the cinematic scene would be different ( even though its the same mission ) like the wordings and what the character says would be different.

also he said that if you were to play all the cut scenes back to back it would be twice the length of a movie ( so i'm guessing 3 hours ), and that you do have choices in games to do things or to take other paths ( within reason ) because they cant put "10,000 different paths in the game"

thats just a summary, but thats pretty much whats said and the rest is mainly repeated. there are things about detail in the city but nothing major.

the next one to be released on monday should be better.

EDIT:

there was something about character AI. where by the guy said he was driving a car in the game , and then a woman t-boned him. she then got out and started to shout at niko, then the guy niko was in the car with got out and just shot the woman. it shows that some characters match AI match their personalities in the cut scenes. also if one character is laid back and gets drunk then he/she could become an aggressive drunk and so on. so it shows more realism in that sense. lets you get to know the characters better

Comment by tilly on 29/03/08 18:50:

i liked the "packie mcreary shooting a girl for yelling at him."

Comment by Gycu Brun on 29/03/08 19:34:

That was a good read, thx for posting.

Dan Houser said he hates when people say GTA is not about the graphics ... Also I'm glad I got to know better the man behind GTA ...