Beyond the fact that there are plenty of East Asian crime games that fulfill the itch some players might have for a GTA based in that locale–although Yakuza isn’t incredibly similar in terms of gameplay–according to an ex-developer at Rockstar, an entry to the Grand Theft Auto universe set in Tokyo just wouldn’t have made the cut. Although it almost did. Recently, GamesHub conducted an interview with Obbe Vermejj, who used to be the Technical Director at Rockstar North, there was a brief, glorious moment in time when their team had thought about making one of the future Grand Theft Auto games set in a place other than the United States. Apparently, however, there were several qualms raised related to the creative and cultural side of the series that just made that untenable. Vermejj asserts:
People love having these wild ideas but then when you’ve got billions of dollars riding on it it’s too easy to go let’s do what we know again, and also America is basically the epicenter of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven’t been there. They have a mental image of the cities.
Definitely, upon some measured thought, Grand Theft Auto is something that perhaps exists mainly because of the pop-cultural sphere of America–especially recent titles like GTA 5, which owes a decent amount of its staying power due to being set in a satirical version of Los Angeles. Reflecting on one such departure from GTA’s usual setting in the futuristic city of GTA 2, Vermejj seems to concur with this idea, stating that:
…you’ve now obviously got the cultural impact which is way more important than it was then. You know, the game generates memes and conversation and hits and clicks and views. You just have far less of that if it was set in some vision of the future, I think.
So sadly, at least according to Vermejj, we’re just going to have to get used to the rotation between the major U.S. cities the GTA series has previously explored. Although in good news, he doesn’t think that GTA 6 will be $100 as some have speculated. He believes that Rockstar, which has been caught up in controversy lately, will likely try to make up profit through another extensive GTA Online multiplayer mode, which means in his opinion they’ll price the game normally. Alas, how thrilling it would have been to tear through the elevated expressways of Tokyo’s in a knock-off Nissan GTR, or deck a mouthy pedestrian in Shibuya, or engage in high-stakes shootouts with Yakuza members… but that’s probably not coming to fruition any time soon.