Variety interviews with Dan Houser

[willpsplover11]

http://www.gta4.net/news/4078/variety-inte...ith-dan-houser/

[Aimee]

Just reading a couple of those statements made me really appreciate what R* have done for us.

 

For example...

 

 

It took approximately six months to come up with a rough design of what represents New York City. Actually building that representation of New York (Liberty City, in this case) took years to complete.

 

Yeah it's their job, but they didn't need to work so hard on it - they could have retired after VC. I feel extremely grateful right now lol

[malignity]

Yeah it's their job, but they didn't need to work so hard on it - they could have retired after VC. I feel extremely grateful right now lol

I'm sure they couldn't if they wanted to earn a living.

[Magic_Al]

It's apparent in this and other interviews that the Xbox 360 DLC development is basically NOWHERE yet. They haven't started on it. They're just thinking about it. I don't think a lot of people have noticed this.

[toxicshock1911]

Its a nice read. Long, but worthwhile.

[IceCreamMan]

 

When coming up with the concept of Niko, Rockstar wanted someone that was tough yet foreign; he's both battle-hardened and innocent at the same time.

 

Hmm, sounds like a very solid character.

[bonesmccoy]

Now that the game is gold and being shipped across the world, I imagine Rock$tar is beginning to work on the 360's DLC. This interview is probably over a week old. I thought it was interesting that Houser wasn't interested in hyping the DLC, but saying that it is an 'experiment'. If anyone else hasn't noticed, when developers start hyping things that have yet to be developed (like Hideo Kojima for example), people usually end up disappointed. It's reassuring that this Houser has his wits about him, and isn't wasting any air.

[derty]

 

We just start knocking ideas around and talking about a few things. New York came out as the obvious place because we’d never done it before. In the old games [Liberty City] was just vaguely East Coast-ish. It wasn’t New York and it wasn’t trying to be.

 

I f*cking knew it! Because the stadium is from philadelphia, home of the Liberty Bell, as are a few other landmarks that currently escape me.

[Aimee]

Now that the game is gold and being shipped across the world, I imagine Rock$tar is beginning to work on the 360's DLC.

Or taking a well deserved break. I mean, i don't think any of us are gagging for the DLC yet, so i think they've got a while to sort that out. But they might have already done the voice parts, i'm sure i read something along those lines last week sometime.

[Tsuroki]

Now that the game is gold and being shipped across the world, I imagine Rock$tar is beginning to work on the 360's DLC. This interview is probably over a week old. I thought it was interesting that Houser wasn't interested in hyping the DLC, but saying that it is an 'experiment'. If anyone else hasn't noticed, when developers start hyping things that have yet to be developed (like Hideo Kojima for example), people usually end up disappointed. It's reassuring that this Houser has his wits about him, and isn't wasting any air.

Yeah, the interview is probably a little bit out-of-date, but only got posted recently due to time constraints. Seeing as it was posted in a blog rather than on the front page of Variety, it was probably pieced together for another article... Ben Fritz just happened to think that the entire interview was worth posting as well.

 

It was definitely a fun read, and I had a hard time condensing the entire interview into a small summary that talks about GTA IV only. Dan touches on so damn much in that interview (as I noted in the news post). When I did up the first draft of the summary, it was probably 4x longer than what I ended up posting.