GTA 6 maker Rockstar excels at open-world games because it looks at would-be “creative constraints” and just says “go nuts,” says former GTA 5 audio dev
One former Rockstar Games developer says the reason why the GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 studio makes open-world games so “exceptionally” well is because audio devs aren’t limited by creative constraints, and are encouraged to “go nuts” with their ideas.
Speaking in a new interview with Reece ‘Kiwi Talkz’ Reilly (below), former Rockstar Games audio designer Rob Carr – who has credits on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more – discusses the constraints (and lack thereof) audio devs like himself face at the studio when working on massive open-world games.
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As for what that means in practice, Carr suggests that “if you want to do footsteps, and you want 10,000 different, unique sounds for that, go nuts” – it might just be that the scale of an idea like that ends up getting cut down later down the line. “It’s easier to dial it down, you know, dial it back, go too much and then strip some fat off than it is to not do enough and then have to push for that extra five or 10% at the end of the project,” he suggests.
While he doesn’t talk about GTA 6 here, you can’t help but wonder if Rockstar might be making similar changes to its upcoming open-world behemoth around now ahead of its launch this November. More importantly, I wonder how many footstep sounds it’s going to have?
Some of GTA 6’s big ideas are likely hiding in GTA 5, ex-Rockstar dev predicts – and you only need to look at GTA 4 to see why: “I’d be incredibly surprised if they don’t do anything like that.”
