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The most solid “secrets” of Grand Theft Auto’s development are not hidden files or cut levels. They are decisions that developers described in interviews, mostly about the original 1997 game and GTA III (2001). Most of these accounts are memories given years later, so they are best read as the developers’ own recollections rather than production records. Where a story comes from a secondary reproduction, the article says so.
The nine stories below run in the order the games were made: the original game’s rough beginnings, a few failed attempts at 3D, the troubled road to GTA III, and one set of changes made after September 11, 2001.
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Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy- The Definitive Edition - PlayStation 4 | $23.87 | Buy on Amazon |
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Where the original game started
1. It began as a cops-and-criminals driving prototype
Mike Dailly, a programmer and artist at DMA Design, told The Guardian in a 2015 interview that the 1994 engine grew into a game where players could be cops or criminals. The early version is often described under the working title “Race and Chase.” Dailly remembered the driving demo as exciting but buggy, and prone to crashing. The idea of playing either side of the chase is the seed of the later series.
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Paul Farley, a designer on the original game, said the team first had a crude 2D driving prototype. The breakthrough, in his telling, was the idea that players could pick up missions by visiting phone boxes. In his words from The Guardian’s 2015 interview: “Then we had the idea of allowing the player to pick up missions by visiting phoneboxes, and it became much more free and open.” Farley said this also went beyond what the programmers had expected, since they had assumed the game would only need to run in short sessions.
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3. Three American cities, built without travelling to the US
Farley said the designers took the “essence” of Manhattan, San Francisco and Miami for the cities that became Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City. The team did not travel to the United States for research. Farley recalled working from one internet-connected PC and library materials. This is a recollection about inspiration, not a claim that each city is a one-to-one copy of a real place.
4. A pedestrian bug became the Hare Krishna procession
Farley recalled that groups of pedestrians sometimes followed a single person because of a bug. The developers saw the potential for a long line of people and used that behaviour for the Hare Krishna characters. The account rests on Farley’s memory; no separate technical postmortem describes the bug itself.
Rank #2
- Grand Theft Auto III: It all starts in Liberty City. With the revolutionary freedom to go anywhere and jack anyone, Grand Theft Auto III puts the center of the criminal underworld at your fingertips, if you have enough guts to take it.
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Welcome to the 1980s. From the decade of big hair and pastel suits comes the story of one man's rise to the top of the criminal pile.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Five years ago, Carl 'CJ' Johnson escaped the haze of Los Santos, San Andreas...a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption.
Three attempts at 3D before GTA III
5. The team tried 3D several times and failed first
Gary Penn, a GTA developer, told Game Developer in a 2011 interview: “There were actually three or four attempts to do a 3D one before Grand Theft Auto III.” He said the earlier efforts were beyond the team’s capabilities at the time. The move that finally worked, according to Penn, came with the Space Station Silicon Valley team, which had just made a 3D game and brought both the ability and the attitude needed to move GTA into 3D. The “three or four” figure is Penn’s approximate recollection, not a counted production figure.
GTA III: a team unsure it had the right game
6. The team doubted its own game before release
Dan Houser, a GTA III co-writer, described the state of the project to GameSpot in a 2011 interview. About ten months to a year before release, the team had a city, cars and weapons, alongside a large set of unresolved problems. He described the game’s showing at E3 2001 as underwhelming, and said the team wondered whether it had misjudged the concept.
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7. Story and mechanics were treated as one design problem
Houser said the team did not separate story from design. In his words: “We don’t necessarily separate the story and the design–they’re kind of the same thing.” Story could reveal mechanics, and mechanics could tell the story. The hard part, he said, was keeping player choice while still giving the game a narrative structure.
8. Missions were meant to teach the player about the city
In excerpts from a 2001 IGN interview, associate producer Jeremy Pope described missions that lead the player to discoveries, such as a sniper rifle on a rooftop. Those excerpts are reproduced on the fan site iGrandTheftAuto, and readers who want the complete interview should look for IGN’s original 2001 article. The same excerpts quote then-DMA lead producer Leslie Benzies on the aim behind the game’s concept: “The underlying principle for us when creating the game’s concept was for us to create a city and breathe as much life into it as possible.”
Rank #4
What changed after September 11, 2001
9. Several details were reportedly changed late in development
A retrospective reproduced on iGrandTheftAuto, which republishes 2001 reporting, says Rockstar made three last-minute changes after September 11, 2001:
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- A jumbo jet was removed from the skies over Liberty City.
- A side character was deleted.
- The colours of the police cars were changed.
This is a secondary account of the 2001 reporting. It is not Rockstar’s own production record, so treat these changes as reported rather than independently confirmed here.
How to read these stories
Named quotations from The Guardian (2015), Game Developer (2011) and GameSpot (2011) are the firmest evidence in this article, and they are the developers’ own words. The IGN material is the weakest because it reaches readers through a fan-site reproduction. The stories are useful for understanding how the games were made, but they should not be read as a full history of the franchise, which was not covered by these sources.
The Bottom Line
The most distinctive parts of the early GTA games came from prototypes, accidents and tolerance for rough work in progress, rather than from a finished plan. A bug became a crowd, a driving toy became a mission-based city, and a team that doubted its game still shipped one that changed the series.
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