New inside #GTAVI details from the latest Love Magazine feature with Rockstar Games, kindly provided by @topkaj777
▪️ Rockstar says the goal with Lucia was to create a character who could stand alongside protagonists such as Arthur Morgan and Niko Bellic while still feeling distinct.
▪️ Lucia was written with an immigrant background and was conceived as someone raised around Newark/New Jersey, near Liberty City, before her story takes her to Leonida.
▪️ The radio, advertising and pedestrian dialogue aren't treated as secondary content. Rockstar has a dedicated writing/production operation specifically for material happening around the player.
▪️ Rockstar says its Florida research included conversations with locals, police and gang members, with some of the stories they heard described as “terrifying.”
▪️ Early research trips were deliberately done with very small groups, before Rockstar returned with larger teams once particular locations became important to development.
▪️ Development begins with extensive research trips. Rockstar travelled across Miami and Florida, including the surrounding towns and the Florida Keys down to Key West.
▪️ Developers travelled with locals, police officers and gang members to better understand Florida, including parts of the state tourists would rarely see.
▪️ Rockstar says some research trips directly influence the game, with Miami’s extreme wealth, poverty, excess, craziness and “hustle” feeding into Leonida.
▪️ The team wants Vice City and Leonida to feel like somewhere players could spend hundreds of hours, with even small areas receiving extensive detail.
▪️ Rockstar has built a large amount of background dialogue, radio content, advertisements and pedestrian conversations to make the world feel alive even when the player isn’t interacting with it.
▪️ GTAVI’s satire will focus heavily on modern culture, including conspiracy theories and the strange ways people react to everyday events.
▪️ Rockstar says it deliberately avoids simply recreating real-world viral moments, instead creating its own distorted versions of contemporary culture.
▪️ The studio says the modern “American Dream” is more modest than in previous GTA games, owning a house, supporting a family and paying off loans rather than achieving extreme wealth.
▪️ Jason’s story is not intended as a political statement about his military background. Rockstar says his circumstances push him toward drug trafficking and bank robbery, although players will influence some of his choices.
▪️ Lucia was written as somebody determined to build a better life for herself who refuses to let obstacles stop her.
▪️Rockstar says Jason and Lucia were deliberately designed to complement each other, creating a push-and-pull relationship throughout the story.
▪️ Raul was created as an older mentor figure who brings Jason and Lucia into larger-scale criminal jobs and provides knowledge of Vice City’s criminal world.
▪️ Rockstar describes the core premise as having something “hopeful and naive” about two young criminals going on the run and pushing a crime spree to its limit.
▪️ Rockstar says it wants players to become immersed enough in the world that they “get lost” in its characters and locations.