Grand Theft Auto 5 is of course set in the fictional city of Los Santos but the metropolis and the surrounding Blaine County are very much inspired by Los Angeles and its environs. Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has discussed the game's setting in a Guardian interview.
"It's [LA] a fascinating city – it's kind of obsessed with itself. It's a 20th century city too: cars and real estate are its driving forces. There's no other reason for it to be there. It's so unlike Britain, that's what's so interesting. New York has a relationship you can understand, LA is nothing to do with Britain. It's alien to me and Sam, who have come over from London, it's like living on the moon. And some of the guys from Scotland adore it, some of them can't stand it – it's very interesting to see their reactions."
Los Santos is a huge open world and Houser says Rockstar believes this doesn't detract from the game's structured missions template.
"We've thought long and hard about it, but the reality is, structured missions – being given a task and completing a task – they feel like life. In a game, when you're doing missions you're doing a job, and in the open world you do what you want. To us that's the best way to replicate the structure, and the lack of structure, of life. I don't see the benefit of throwing that away.
"The trick is not making it feel too mannered and predictable and hopefully we've broken that up. I think players like the combination: things they're told what to do, tasks where they're not told what to do but know they have to achieve something specific, and things where they're able to explore for themselves. We try to give you all of those in a variety of different ways."
While the most recent Grand Theft Auto games have all been set in the US this wasn't always the case for the series with some entries in the series being set in the British capital but Houser says we shouldn't expect to return to the UK.
"I think for us, my gut feeling is, GTA London was cool for the time, but games were more limited then. 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 a 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."
Grand Theft Auto 5 is out now and though the game is expected to raise $1 billion in revenue in its first month Houser says it's not about the money.
