Behind the scenes footage showing creation of first GTA shows how far the game has come
Behind the scenes footage of the first Grand Theft Auto has resurfaced, and it really shows how far the game has come.
Rockstar Games - the company behind the GTA franchise - released the trailer for GTA VI on December 4, and fans went wild for it.
Returning to Vice City - an amped-up version of Miami - the game is 10 years in the making... And we can see why it needed all that time to create, after looking at its development back in 1996.
Advert
Ahead of the GTA VI’s release in 2025, let's take a trip down memory lane to see how the first-ever GTA game was made.
The original Grand Theft Auto was released in 1997 and created by DMA Design Ltd, which is now the Rockstar North studio based in Scotland.
Before the first GTA was released, the BBC got a first-hand look at how it was created.
Technology journalist Rory Cellan-Jones spoke to one of the software designers, named Dave, to find out what the hotly-anticipated release was all about.
Dave was filmed on a chunky, white computer, playing a game which looks vastly different to the GTA we know today. It looks like a top-down view of a street with cars driving in both directions - hardly that high-octane.
Explaining the game, the designer told Cellan-Jones: “Well, it's a mission-based driving game, where basically you're driving around the city, stealing cars, running over pedestrians."
Cellan-Jones joked: “Pretty tame stuff, then.”
The BBC journalist spoke to people in the music department, as well as the team who tests and plays the game before it was released. Our main thought - imagine getting paid to play games all day?!
A segment also revealed the behind-the-scenes of motion capture and hilariously showed a young guy, called Darren, putting the tech to use.
He was seen grappling with thin air and throwing punches at nothing whilst wearing a black skullcap and kneepads with white dots all over him, so the team could pick up his movements and capture them into the game.
"You might think Darren here's gone completely mad but what he's actually doing is executing punches in the motion capture department," Cellan-Jones explained.
"Those punches that he's doing, they're actually being picked up on a computer here [and] will be used to animate models in another game."
It is safe to say the franchise has come a long way, as the new GTA VI trailer shows. And anticipation still remains sky-high - but you'll have to wait until 2025 to get your hands on it.