Rockstar had plans for GTA 3 Online. It was to be developed by Bully creators
Thanks to leaked old documents, we have learned that Rockstar Games studio initially planned GTA 3 Online, an online mode similar to the one offered by Grand Theft Auto 5.
GTA Online has become a real phenomenon and is the main reason why Grand Theft Auto 5 is still selling like crazy. It turns out that a similar online mode was already planned for Grand Theft Auto 3, but it was abandoned.
- The information comes from project documents from the PlayStation 2 era that have recently leaked online. Their truthfulness was confirmed by Obbe Vermeij, who was working at Rockstar Games studio at that time.
- One of these documents has information about GTA 3 Online. The developers' plans resembled what we are getting into now. We were supposed to receive an open online world, a character creator, a development mechanic with many skills, and various missions to complete. There would also be no shortage of gangs, police, and robberies.
- As Vermeij explains, the project had two versions. In the first one, the dev wrote the code for a simple online mode, which allowed for deathmatch-type battles. In them, players could participate in multiplayer shootings and steal cars. This version of the online mode lasted only four weeks because the developers at Rockstar Games quickly realized that it would take too long to develop.
- However, the studio didn't abandon this idea. People from the Barking Dog team, the creators of Homeworld: Cataclysm, were invited to collaborate (later this team was taken over by Rockstar Games and developed Bully). Vermeij doesn't remember exactly how it all went down, but he believes that it was the developers from Barkin Dog who wrote the project document for GTA 3 Online, which has just leaked online.
Eventually, nothing came out of it. Another attempt was made during GTA Vice City, even hiring two additional developers for this purpose. However, the idea was abandoned again due to lack of time. In the case of GTA San Andreas, the devs didn't even try to create a similar project and instead only developed a heavily limited cooperative mode. It wasn't until Grand Theft Auto IV that the devs finally had the resources to create the multiplayer they envisioned, and these concepts were further expanded in GTA 5.
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