Rockstar's Ambition: Having all GTA cities in one game

[Serio]

In an interview with IGN, Leslie Benzie from Rockstar North claimed that the studio's ambition was to one day have all the cities from the past Grand Theft Auto games, merged into one mega-world, and allowing the player to fly between them. Would this even be a feasible thing to work towards, for Rockstar? We've all seen how badly their current game engine can fail unless specifically optimized for one platform, and that's just with a relatively small city. Grand Theft Auto V is expected to push this even further, but is the eventual goal of having all three regions(Vice City, Liberty City, and San Andreas) in one single game even remotely possible with current technology?

Here's the (rather short) article, which also talks about potentially revisiting Vice City: Rockstar Wants to Put All Grand Theft Auto Cities in One Game - IGN

[D3matt]

Sure it's possible, they just need to work on their engine and optimize things correctly. They could just treat flying between them as a "loading screen" so only one city is loaded at a time. Then it would be easily feasible. And I'm sure there are other ways to do it as well.

[Mr. Matt]

I think the problem is with processing power and storage space - there will never be enough of it. They could probably accomplish their ambition on current hardware if they used an engine akin to the one used in GTA3. But as hardware advances, devs insist on increasing the graphics - polygons get more numerous, textures get larger, details get finer. They won't sacrifice fidelity for increased scope or performance.

If they were to try such a thing with their current engine on current hardware, bandwidth and disc storage space would be insufficient for them to distribute it to anybody, to say nothing of the horsepower required. I imagine the same will be true in ten, or even twenty years. It's the same reason that console games will never run at the highest possible screen resolution at 60fps by default - devs choose to increase detail at the expense of performance, always pushing whatever hardware they're developing for to the max to ensure they have pretty screenshots to put on the back of the box.

[FileTrekker]

I think it's perfectly possible, now you could easily have one city per disk, for example. The development time would be extraordinarily long, however. With next-gen hardware it becomes more possible.

But time is the key factor for me, the tech is certainly there, and disk space is becoming less of a problem these days, albeit this current generation of consoles is lacking on that front.

[Kilobyte]

While it is technically "possible", I'm going to side with Mr.Matt on this one.

How detailed could they possibly make it? How much space would that take up, and how long would it take to download/install from disc?

I can only see it working as three big boring cities, with limited attractions.

[Commissar MercZ]

I like the concept, but I worry that in implementation it might be a case of why quantity over quality is not a good thing. Some games pull of large game worlds well, but these are also those that have exploration elements. GTA has, for me at least, always been more of an action game and less about sightseeing.

[Mihail]

Very possible, the engine might not be optimized perfectly, but whois to say it will be all in one instance? I don't foresee it being that way, imagine Tommy Versittie getting off the jet at the beginning of GTA Vice City from Liberty City, same thing, fast travel, as long as they make the world dynamic, I'd love it as much as I've loved all of the other ones.

[Kilobyte]

I don't think anybody actually expects them to be in the same instance. It simply wouldn't make sense to have to drive or fly hundreds of miles through random filler, just to get to the other side of the instance.

It is the development time it would take to create three distinct games, and let you dynamically switch between them by swapping discs, while keeping your character and stats.

Imagine if you could pick one of the GTA III era characters, and switch between the different GTA III era games on the fly. Just go to an airport, wait for the "swap disc" prompt, and then switch games. with a GTA IV era title you could take your dates to San Andreas, Liberty City, or Vice City. You would still receive phone calls from characters in the other games.

This type of integration, and the fact that previously these have been three seperate games, it just doesn't seem feasible.

[PAL-18]

If they use the Just Cause 2 engine, then yes is doable. If they try to make a new engine or modify one of their current ones ... probably unlikely.

[D3matt]

Originally Posted by Kilobyte

I don't think anybody actually expects them to be in the same instance. It simply wouldn't make sense to have to drive or fly hundreds of miles through random filler, just to get to the other side of the instance.

It is the development time it would take to create three distinct games, and let you dynamically switch between them by swapping discs, while keeping your character and stats.

Imagine if you could pick one of the GTA III era characters, and switch between the different GTA III era games on the fly. Just go to an airport, wait for the "swap disc" prompt, and then switch games. with a GTA IV era title you could take your dates to San Andreas, Liberty City, or Vice City. You would still receive phone calls from characters in the other games.

This type of integration, and the fact that previously these have been three separate games, it just doesn't seem feasible.

3 separate world instances doesn't mean it's 3 separate games. And there's no reason you should need a disk this day and age. Yes, it would be a large undertaking, but not an impossibly large one, if it's approached properly. Hell, release the game with one city and the codebase to support additional instanced cities, and then release the other cities as expansions or DLC. There are plenty of games releasing DLC that does a lot less than that.