Legendary Rockstar developer reveals gutting truth about GTA 5 in first major interview
Grand Theft Auto 5 could have been even bigger according to one key former Rockstar Games developer, as John Ricchio, a producer on smash hit, revealed quite how much content has cut from the game ahead of its release.
Game development is incredibly complex and content is inevitably going to get cut, with costs, time, and execution predominantly the reasons why the painful decision is made.
For a game as significant in both scale and size as GTA 5, however, the chances of encountering cut content are even higher — especially as the development team was already working under crunch conditions in order to meet the game's release date back in 2013.
Ricchio – who not only produced GTA 5 but also Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 during his time at Rockstar Games – has revealed the 'gutting' extent of the game's cut content in a new interview with Kiwi Talkz on YouTube, and fans of the game might want to look away, especially considering the 13-year wait for GTA 6.
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Addressing quite how much was removed from the game ahead of launch, Ricchio outlined:
"It's a bummer, there was so much stuff in GTA 5. Oh my god, there was so much stuff that was like, done. Like mini-games that were like completely done," the producer outlined, showing that it wasn't necessarily just limited to content they didn't have the time or money to finish.
He indicates that the sticking point for minigames in particular was in the animation department, as "the animation team was getting destroyed. There was so much animation work to do to bring everything to the same level that we had to cut stuff that was otherwise completely done, but we just didn't have time in the animation schedule to get it done."
That's the trouble with the incredibly high standards that Rockstar sets itself and the lofty expectations that gamers have from the development studio, as everything has to match a high bar that's difficult to reach for each aspect you introduce into the game.
"I remember talking to a few people and they were like, 'this is a thing that happens, you know, because the game is so big, GTAs are always gigantic'," he continued, noting that "they'll throw out entire levels [...] because they don't have enough resources to get everything to the same level."
He admits that the decision to cut certain content was 'hard' during development – especially from the perspective of designers who had spent months, if not years, working on content that never saw the light of day – but Ricchio illustrates that it's simply part of the professional side of game development.
Some gamers have even speculated that this cut content could make its way into the upcoming sequel over 13 years later, and Ricchio didn't concretely shut down this possibility.
"I think it depends, I think a lot of it depends on how much the tech changes between games or between iterations of the game," he explained. "If the tech is fundamentally the same, or similar enough, you can sometimes plop it in as like, 'hey, let's just see how this works'."
Eagle-eyed fans have already spotted the potential for minigames like fishing to be present in GTA 6, so perhaps that was one of the few layovers from over a decade ago that have finally made their way into the new game despite being brutally cut.