GTA 6 is taking us back to Vice City – or at least a new, modernized version – and it’s bound to be epochal. But despite the warm weather of Rockstar’s take on Miami, and the enormous size and scale of San Andreas, Liberty City remains the developer’s greatest architectural achievement. In Grand Theft Auto 4, it’s a dense, living and breathing metropolis. In GTA 3, it’s more of a playground – Portland, Staunton Island, and Shoreside Vale are filled with opportunities for criminal mischief and cartoon violence. But there’s one key feature that makes your journey through Liberty City feel more thrilling. If you remember Grand Theft Auto 3 for its cinematic car chases, one former Rockstar developer explains the trick behind their creation.
The GTA 6 release date is inbound, but Rockstar, as is the developer’s tradition, is keeping information about the open-world game sequel close to its proverbial chest. Fortunately, Obbe Vermeij, the former Rockstar technical director who worked on Vice City, San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto 4, and GTA 3 has some insights to share. Despite being one of the most famous (and infamous) videogame series in history, details behind Grand Theft Auto’s creation are often hard to come by. Vermeij however remains a fountain of information, and now lifts the lid on a fundamental feature of GTA 3’s driving.
Whether you wanted to travel quickly between Liberty City’s districts or just experiment and explore, chances are you took a ride on GTA 3’s overground and underground train network. Personally, I used it to escape the cops – if they sent the helicopter after you, getting on the train meant it couldn’t keep up, and couldn’t hit you with its machine gun. Long commutes are dull, though, and it was Vermeij’s job to break things up.
“When working on the train in GTA 3, I found riding it boring,” the former Rockstar developer explains. “I considered letting the player jump ahead to the next station, but this would cause streaming issues. Instead, I made the camera switch between random viewpoints near the track. This made the ride more interesting.”
So, when you ride the train in Grand Theft Auto 3, the camera periodically changes perspective, creating a kind of real-time montage of your journey. It was a good trick – and the team at Rockstar wanted to use it elsewhere. You might remember the ‘cinematic camera’ that you could use during GTA 3’s car chases, where the viewpoint jumped between your car, your pursuers, and various angles either from above, alongside, or behind. It all started with Vermeij’s train cam.
“Somebody suggested trying the same in a car,” Vermeij continues. “I added the wheel cam, as well as the view from chasing cars. The team found it surprisingly entertaining so the cinematic camera stayed in. The cinematic camera remained unchanged for Vice City. One of the coders that joined us after finishing Manhunt (Derek Ward) took over the camera and revamped the cinematic camera for San Andreas.”
Speaking of San Andreas, Vermeij has previously explained one of the game’s strangest mysteries, whereby planes suddenly spawn over your head, explode, and come crashing down onto the street.
With the next chapter of Rockstar’s crime opus on the way, you can find everything you need to know about GTA 6 over at GTA Db. You might also want to check out some of the best sandbox games available right now on PC.
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