Post by Otacon on Dec 12, 2011 10:00:09 GMT -5
Why the City of Angels feels like Rockstar's home away from home.
Los Santos may be a place that exists only within the boundaries of the Grand Theft Auto universe, and within the imaginations of the artists crafting it at Rockstar North right now, but it remains very much a proxy for the very real city of Los Angeles.
With its headquarters tucked away in Manhattan Rockstar Games is firmly rooted in New York City. It's a place that that clearly resonates with the Rockstar core, with games including The Warriors and the Max Payne series set in The Big Apple and the likes of GTA IV's Liberty City using it as crucial inspiration. Still, over the past two generations the company has also demonstrated a real relationship with the City of Angels, returning to L.A. on multiple occasions across several franchises.
Grand Theft Auto V will mark the fifth time in two generations Rockstar has used Los Angeles/Los Santos as a backdrop for one of its titles. Most recently there was L.A. Noire. Before that there was Midnight Club: Los Angeles (in fact, the main Midnight Club series has visited the city twice). Then, of course, there's the first appearance of Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas. Each time the team involved has managed to add layers of life where there weren't before.
From the East Coast, to the West Coast!
Rockstar headed to L.A. with Midnight Club II in 2003, massaging enough key L.A. landmarks and atmosphere into the environment to make it abundantly clear where players were. However, it was the Grand Theft Auto tinted vision of L.A. as Rockstar's own creation, Los Santos, that really began the ball rolling.
Looking back at GTA: San Andreas' Los Santos now it's actually surprising just how far we've come in less than a decade. The world of San Andreas, and Los Santos, is as vast as ever but it's stunning just how fast technology is filling in the blanks that used to be left to our imaginations. That said, Rockstar North's first crack at Los Santos remains admirable, despite its age. It covers the full socio-economic spectrum, from the multi-million dollar mansions of Richman to the ramshackle housing of Ganton's infamous Grove Street. It's also sprinkled at every turn with personality and real-world flavour (with a GTA twist), from the Blastin' Fools Record Building down to the pier at Santa Maria Beach. It was a place built with a sound grasp of what is most fundamentally unique about the real L.A., even though it exists in a parallel universe. It oozed character.
A sign of the times.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles stepped things up considerably, featuring a facsimile of L.A. that stretches from Beverly Hills to South Central and is chock full of authentic detail, from Pink's Hot Dogs in Hollywood to Randy's Donuts in Inglewood. It's not even a city designed to be explored on foot and yet it still has enough depth to make it feel like a genuine place. Rockstar San Diego's effort to condense L.A. into an interesting and vivid video game arena resulted in a virtual city that had the capacity to upstage even the cars themselves; the true drawcards of any racing game worth its salt.
What traffic?
L.A. Noire is Rockstar's most recent visit to La-La Land and is easily the most incredible recreation to date. Team Bondi's exhaustive research has led to one of the most richly-nuanced visions of a digital city to date; no detail was too small. L.A. Noire itself became a virtual time machine; a doorway to a world that didn't exist anymore and yet one you could explore every street and alley of.
For one, the Hollywood sign is shorter these days.
The generation gap between Rockstar's first vision of Los Santos and the one shipping with GTA V will put as much space between the two as GTA III and GTA IV's respective depictions of Liberty City, but that familiar DNA will no doubt be strong. The many, many decades that will separate the cities of L.A. Noire and GTA V will mean it's unlikely the two will much resemble one another, but we anticipate Rockstar North will match Team Bondi's uncanny eye for fine detail and fabricate a dense, sprawling venue swimming in similarly subtle distinctions. Midnight Club: Los Angeles and GTA V will always be divided by the fact that the former contains a distilled reflection of the real L.A. built for racing and the latter will be a more flexible homage to it built for interacting with. Still, MCLA is probably the best appetiser around, this side of GTA IV, for a taste of the world headed to us in GTA's upcoming West Coast epic.
L.A. seems very much like Rockstar's home away from home; somewhere the company is more than happy to keep returning to. I can't wait to see how Rockstar North's second shot at Los Santos reflects this reverence.
Source:http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/121/1214244p1.html
credit for this article goes to ign and the dev team at rockstar games.
Los Santos may be a place that exists only within the boundaries of the Grand Theft Auto universe, and within the imaginations of the artists crafting it at Rockstar North right now, but it remains very much a proxy for the very real city of Los Angeles.
With its headquarters tucked away in Manhattan Rockstar Games is firmly rooted in New York City. It's a place that that clearly resonates with the Rockstar core, with games including The Warriors and the Max Payne series set in The Big Apple and the likes of GTA IV's Liberty City using it as crucial inspiration. Still, over the past two generations the company has also demonstrated a real relationship with the City of Angels, returning to L.A. on multiple occasions across several franchises.
Grand Theft Auto V will mark the fifth time in two generations Rockstar has used Los Angeles/Los Santos as a backdrop for one of its titles. Most recently there was L.A. Noire. Before that there was Midnight Club: Los Angeles (in fact, the main Midnight Club series has visited the city twice). Then, of course, there's the first appearance of Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas. Each time the team involved has managed to add layers of life where there weren't before.
From the East Coast, to the West Coast!
Rockstar headed to L.A. with Midnight Club II in 2003, massaging enough key L.A. landmarks and atmosphere into the environment to make it abundantly clear where players were. However, it was the Grand Theft Auto tinted vision of L.A. as Rockstar's own creation, Los Santos, that really began the ball rolling.
Looking back at GTA: San Andreas' Los Santos now it's actually surprising just how far we've come in less than a decade. The world of San Andreas, and Los Santos, is as vast as ever but it's stunning just how fast technology is filling in the blanks that used to be left to our imaginations. That said, Rockstar North's first crack at Los Santos remains admirable, despite its age. It covers the full socio-economic spectrum, from the multi-million dollar mansions of Richman to the ramshackle housing of Ganton's infamous Grove Street. It's also sprinkled at every turn with personality and real-world flavour (with a GTA twist), from the Blastin' Fools Record Building down to the pier at Santa Maria Beach. It was a place built with a sound grasp of what is most fundamentally unique about the real L.A., even though it exists in a parallel universe. It oozed character.
A sign of the times.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles stepped things up considerably, featuring a facsimile of L.A. that stretches from Beverly Hills to South Central and is chock full of authentic detail, from Pink's Hot Dogs in Hollywood to Randy's Donuts in Inglewood. It's not even a city designed to be explored on foot and yet it still has enough depth to make it feel like a genuine place. Rockstar San Diego's effort to condense L.A. into an interesting and vivid video game arena resulted in a virtual city that had the capacity to upstage even the cars themselves; the true drawcards of any racing game worth its salt.
What traffic?
L.A. Noire is Rockstar's most recent visit to La-La Land and is easily the most incredible recreation to date. Team Bondi's exhaustive research has led to one of the most richly-nuanced visions of a digital city to date; no detail was too small. L.A. Noire itself became a virtual time machine; a doorway to a world that didn't exist anymore and yet one you could explore every street and alley of.
For one, the Hollywood sign is shorter these days.
The generation gap between Rockstar's first vision of Los Santos and the one shipping with GTA V will put as much space between the two as GTA III and GTA IV's respective depictions of Liberty City, but that familiar DNA will no doubt be strong. The many, many decades that will separate the cities of L.A. Noire and GTA V will mean it's unlikely the two will much resemble one another, but we anticipate Rockstar North will match Team Bondi's uncanny eye for fine detail and fabricate a dense, sprawling venue swimming in similarly subtle distinctions. Midnight Club: Los Angeles and GTA V will always be divided by the fact that the former contains a distilled reflection of the real L.A. built for racing and the latter will be a more flexible homage to it built for interacting with. Still, MCLA is probably the best appetiser around, this side of GTA IV, for a taste of the world headed to us in GTA's upcoming West Coast epic.
L.A. seems very much like Rockstar's home away from home; somewhere the company is more than happy to keep returning to. I can't wait to see how Rockstar North's second shot at Los Santos reflects this reverence.
Source:http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/121/1214244p1.html
credit for this article goes to ign and the dev team at rockstar games.