Rockstar apparently came pretty close to making a Grand Theft Auto game outside of the United States. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has always been a biting satire of the United States, parodying pop culture, politics, and much more. It’s a hysterical parody of the absurdity of the country. For years, the franchise has bounced back and forth between a few key locations, namely New York, California, and Florida. The series did do an expansion set in London during the 2D era, but that is as much as the franchise has ever branched out of the United States. However, that has been a strength for other crime games like Sleeping Dogs, as they can do the GTA formula in other places.
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All of this is by design, though. Despite the fact some fans want to see other locations, Rockstar doesn’t seem to be willing to budge. In fact, very recently, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser spoke on the matter. He stated that he doesn’t believe GTA will ever go international, partially because of the freedoms America allows. Stricter gun laws and such mean a GTA game isn’t as exciting elsewhere in the world, as there are more narrative restrictions with the setting. However, that doesn’t mean Rockstar never put any real thought into it.
Grand Theft Auto Almost Went to Tokyo With a Different Developer
In a new interview with GamesHub, ex-Rockstar Games technical director and programmer Obbe Vermeji revealed that the developer explored ideas for GTA games set in a variety of international locations. He noted that Tokyo was almost a location for a GTA game, but Rockstar Games wouldn’t have led development on it. Instead, they would’ve given the code for the series over to an unnamed Japanese studio and let them do what he dubbed GTA: Tokyo.
“There were desires, yeah, but it’s like talking about alternative projects at Rockstar when you really start thinking about it. We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Istanbul. Tokyo almost actually happened. Another studio in Japan were going to do it, take our code and do GTA: Tokyo. But then that didn’t happen in the end.”
In 2003, Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two even trademarked Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo amongst a variety of other unused GTA titles. However, unlike the other unused titles, it is clear GTA: Tokyo became more than an idea on a whiteboard based on that trademark filing and the fact that they had lined up a different studio to work on it.
Vermeji said he think it’s unlikely that GTA would ever do a new location as the technology has kept the existing ones feeling very fresh and there’s too much money on the line to shake it up dramatically. He off-handedly referenced Bogota as a location that wouldn’t happen, but GTA: Bogota was also a trademarked title back in the 2000s as well.
“I think it’s unlikely it’s going to be in Bogota next time, especially since there’s just more and more money involved as the project gets bigger. It doesn’t make sense to set it in some left-field location for novelty. GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn’t work.”
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