According to Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games, there won’t be any significant changes to the studio’s games, at least not from a certain point of view.

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 is currently the only game in the series set outside the United States. Fans have long wondered whether Rockstar would ever return to London or take the franchise elsewhere. However, based on a statement by Houser, who wrote all the games in the series except the upcoming sixth installment, this is unlikely. In an interview with Lex Fridman, Houser said the franchise is closely tied to American culture.

“We made a little thing in London 26 years ago. Grand Theft Auto: London was one of the first top-down view games for the PS1. It was pretty cute and fun as the first mission pack for the PlayStation. For a full Grand Theft Auto game, we decided that there was so much Americana inherent in the IP that it would be difficult to make it work in London or anywhere else. You know, you needed guns; you needed larger-than-life characters. The game just felt so American, possibly from an outsider’s perspective. But that was such a big part of what the game was that it wouldn’t really have worked in the same way elsewhere,” said Houser.

Houser left Rockstar Games in early 2020, so it’s not really up to him anymore. However, after working there for twenty-two years, he surely has a good sense of how the studio thinks about its highly regarded IP. In another part of the interview, Houser mentioned that his favorite character in the series is Niko Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV because he is the most honest and likable. However, he also highlighted Carl Johnson (CJ) from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Michael De Santa from Grand Theft Auto V, partly because the voice actors did a great job bringing these characters to life.

Houser also said that he is not worried that large language models created with generative training will take away the work of writers, because he believes that LLMs can only create cheap, adequate-quality content, but are unable to come up with new, interesting ideas, which is precisely the magic of writing.

Source: WCCFTech