Rockstar wanted Grand Theft Auto IV to make Liberty City feel more alive than virtually any open-world game of its era. One of Leslie Benzies’ most ambitious ideas pushed that philosophy dramatically further, but the system created so many technical problems that the development team eventually abandoned it altogether.

One of Rockstar’s defining strengths has always been its ability to make game worlds feel like more than elaborate scenery. The studio fills its maps with tiny details, side activities, and interconnected systems that make it remarkably easy to disappear into them for hours. During development of Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar wanted to push that philosophy much further, and former studio president Leslie Benzies proposed an idea that still sounds remarkably ambitious today. In practice, however, the feature caused far more headaches than the team believed it was ultimately worth.

The story comes from former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij, who has repeatedly shared behind-the-scenes details about the development of GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA IV. Speaking to Edge, Vermeij recalled that Benzies wanted every civilian in Liberty City to have an individual life rather than simply wandering through the world as needed. Each NPC would have a home, a daily schedule, and a job, with characters getting into cars every morning and actually traveling to work.

Rockstar spent some time trying to make the idea function, but the technical consequences quickly became overwhelming. Vermeij said the feature became “so problematic” that it eventually had to be dropped, with NPC schedules generating a huge number of bugs. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 represented a major leap over the previous console generation, but simulating the daily lives of an entire city’s population still proved far more complicated than the hardware and development systems could comfortably handle.

This was not the only Rockstar concept to be discarded before eventually resurfacing in another form. Online multiplayer had already been on the studio’s mind during development of GTA: San Andreas, but repeated experiments did not become a fully realized feature until GTA IV. That foundation later evolved into the enormously successful GTA Online, so it is at least conceivable that the idea of deeper NPC routines could similarly return in some form in a future installment.

Vermeij Doesn’t Think GTA Needs NPCs That Realistic

Interestingly, Vermeij was never particularly convinced that Benzies’ proposal was worthwhile even before the technical problems became impossible to ignore. Beyond the difficulty of building it, he questioned whether players would actually notice or care about the enormous amount of simulation required to give every pedestrian a unique life. “I didn’t like the idea because it felt like it didn’t really matter that much,” he explained, arguing that there was little meaningful benefit in making every NPC follow an individual schedule.

The former Rockstar developer went even further, suggesting that players are psychologically comfortable with background characters feeling somewhat artificial or shallow. “I actually think that, psychologically, players are fine with NPCs being a little fake and empty,” he said. In Vermeij’s view, realism is not automatically something video games should pursue, particularly when a complicated simulation does little to improve what the player actually experiences.

Grand Theft Auto V eventually introduced more environment-specific NPC behavior, with pedestrians dressing and acting in ways that made sense around beaches, malls, and other locations, but they still lacked the complete daily routines Benzies envisioned more than 15 years earlier. Whether Grand Theft Auto VI will push considerably further remains unknown, as Rockstar has revealed very little about the simulation systems running beneath Leonida. Fans will soon get another opportunity to learn more, however: Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look premieres on Netflix on August 27 before arriving on Rockstar’s YouTube channel six hours later, while the game itself launches for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19.

Source: 3DJuegos