Rockstar kill hopes for new GTA London
If you’ve been sitting in on your Jack Jones (alone) feeling all Richard and Judy (moody), holding out from spending your Becks and Posh (dosh) on Grand Theft Auto 5 while you wait for news of a cockney-infused GTA London edition to be made, then you’re out of luck me old china plate (mate). Rockstar head-honcho Dan Houser has said that the Grand Theft Auto series is now, and likely forever will be, firmly rooted in the United States.
Speaking to The Guardian, Houser spoke of the opportunity to build something “iconic” within the confines of the American dream.
“Speaking for myself – and normally I’d be as militant about saying ‘we’ as much as possible, because it certainly isn’t only me at all, thank god – but my own personal feeling is that GTA is America. With [GTA V], I think, we’re very happy with the location. It let us do something iconic,” said Houser.
Not that there isn’t a precedent set by Rockstar themselves. The early 2D Grand Theft Auto games were given two London-themed mission packs, Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969 and Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961. However these were for the most part simple re-skins of the existing games, and required far less work than the 3D titles now demand, at a time when the series was still finding its feet.
“I think for us, my gut feeling is, GTA London was cool for the time, but games were more limited then,” said Houser.
“These days I think we would love to set a game in the UK, set in London, whatever, but I don’t know if it would be a GTA game. I think there are plenty of great stories we could tell about the UK, great environments to showcase, great gameplay mechanics that could have a UK bent to them – I just don’t think it would be a GTA necessarily.
“There are so many games we’d like to make that we just don’t have the bandwidth to make at the moment. But we always think, well the future is long and varied, and that’s what the future’s for.”
For now then, it seems Rockstar will be focussed on GTA V additional content, and there only other announced title in development, Agent. That is, of course, unless the rumoured next-gen and PC versions of GTA 5 don’t distract them first.
