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The original Grand Theft Auto moved mission selection from a separate menu into its city because the menu interrupted immersion. Designers introduced in-world mission triggers, including phoneboxes, so players could find work while driving and exploring. The often-repeated line “we didn’t want to have to build a front end” is not verified in the available retrospective accounts; the documented explanation is that the menu felt boring and out of place.
What changed in the mission design?
Early versions let players choose the next mission through a sub-menu. That meant stepping out of the city experience to make a selection, then returning to play. In a 2006 GamesRadar+ retrospective, members of the DMA Design team recalled that this approach undermined immersion and that the front end felt boring.
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The later design put mission starts into the game world. Players could encounter triggers through payphones and other in-game elements, rather than choosing every assignment from a separate screen. Mission selection became part of moving around the city.
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Why did the team want missions inside the city?
To keep the player in the world
The practical aim was to avoid breaking the sense of being in a living, interactive city. Brian Baglow, DMA Design’s lyricist and PR head, recalled: “The original idea was to create a game based in a living city.” Project leader Keith Hamilton summarized the team’s ambition as: “Everything had to be interactive.” The in-world mission approach fit that goal better than returning to a menu.
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To make play feel more open
Game designer Paul Farley described the shift in a 2015 Guardian 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.” The phonebox idea did not merely change where a button was pressed; it made discovering a mission another activity within the city.
Was that the whole reason the game became open-world?
No single, cleanly documented decision accounts for the original game’s open-ended design. The project began as Race ’n’ Chase, with an ambition to build a responsive city, and it evolved through collaboration and experimentation. GamesRadar’s retrospective describes the game changing from a cops-and-robbers driving concept toward a car-based crime simulation and sandbox. The team also recognized the criminal direction when players could leave one vehicle and get into another.
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- 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.
Moving mission selection into the city was one important design step: it made exploration and mission discovery coexist. It should not be treated as the sole cause of the game’s open-world structure, or as proof that the choice alone drove the franchise’s later success.
What did the designers expect players to do?
Farley recalled that the coding team had not initially anticipated players exploring for hours; the engine had not been designed to run indefinitely. That contrast helps explain why the open-ended experience involved more than a menu decision: the designers’ evolving ambition for city exploration outgrew some of the assumptions built into the early project.
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Where did the fictional cities come from?
Farley said the designers drew on the essence of Manhattan, San Francisco, and Miami when creating Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City, respectively. The settings were fictional interpretations rather than direct reproductions, giving the game recognizable urban identities for its driving, missions, and exploration.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Was “we didn’t want to have to build a front end” really said?
That exact sentence is not established by the cited retrospective accounts, so it should not be presented as a verified quote from a named developer. The sources do support a related explanation: the team first used a sub-menu, found it boring and disruptive to immersion, and later let players trigger missions through the city.
Rank #4
Sources: GamesRadar+, “The making of Grand Theft Auto”; The Guardian, “How we made … Grand Theft Auto”.
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