Quite a long time has passed since then Rockstar did anything other than GTA And Red Dead Redemption. Gone are the days of Max Payne, LA Noire or Midnight Run, but there were wilder ideas on the drawing board. A former executive who led one of these promising projects doesn't believe any opportunities were missed simply because they wouldn't have met the requirements of Grand Theft Auto.
“The reality is that if you have a studio that has one mega-successful game, it just doesn't make sense to make any drastic changes,” Obbe Vermeij, formerly Rockstar's technical director who worked on GTA 3, Vice, San Andreas and 4, said GameHub. “Whatever weird ideas you have, we should really bring them to GTA instead of just launching a whole new game.”
“Looking back, I don't think there was a missed opportunity, either in this zombie game or in other experiments like Agent,” he states. “They wouldn't be as good as GTA. They would be a waste of time and a distraction.”
Hard words, but then you have to wonder if these games made an impression on players. LA Noire didn't stick around for too long, as many probably saw it as a stopgap to get the next GTA or Red Dead title. These feelings only intensified, especially when GTA 6 suffers more delays.
However, Vermeige deeply respects developers for turning away from success when the cause doesn't suit them, as Larian Studios does. new Divinity instead of jumping straight into Baldur's Gate 4. “It's great to see Larian Studios, who just made Baldur's Gate 3 and they said“We don't feel like Baldur's Gate 4. We're just going to make another game,” he says.
“It's good for them. But it's a bold move. It's not obvious. It's very risky. It's easier to just keep doing what you're doing.”
