We used master shots, close ups, dolly shots and crane shots, all with the motivation to cast a mood on the player. In a standard game world one can move a camera anywhere they like and use the entire environment to place this camera, but we don't have this convention in the real world so we restricted ourselves to the bounds of real life filming reality. Just to ensure that we got this feel, we brought on Navid Khonsari as an in-house director at Rockstar to work with DMA's Lead Animator Alex Horton to create this film aspect for the cutscenes. But we attempted to set the tone of the game's cutscenes with more than just the quality of the animation, we also used more traditional film techniques to bring about this mood and feel, similar to the techniques of such films as Goodfellas and the Godfather. In order to bring this feeling to the cutscenes we did extensive motion capture (mo-cap) for every single one of the cutscenes.
IGN: The animation has a very particular style, please tell us about the tone and feel you were going for.Īdam: We wanted to make the player's interaction with the seedy underbelly of Liberty City as human and lifelike as possible. With all these steps in place we finally had a cohesive storyline, which not only tells a good tale, but also adds character and meaning to the missions the player is sent to perform. When this was finished we brought in the (incredible) voice talent, which further served to tie everything together and help us identify what was working right. The storyline and missions were created in parallel so one didn't limit the other, so a great mission could be integrated into the storyline and vice versa.
IGN: Could you explain what you set out to do in terms of how the cutscenes tie the storyline together?Īdam Davidson: Well, for starters we set out to not make the mission cutscenes simple mission statements as they are in most games, but instead we wanted to mix up the mission statements themselves through the story as it was written by Dan Houser and James Worrall. And, we've also delivered several cut-scenes to show you exactly what we mean. We spoke with Rockstar's Adam Davidson, the company's lead analyst, about how the seemingly hundreds of cut-scenes were integrated into GTA3, and why they're so important. By performing numerous tasks, learning everything there is to know about Liberty City, and by making your way up through the ranks of the Mafia, you learn these things, and much, much more. As the anonymous ground-level criminal seeking payback and a strange kind of truth, your job is to find out what happened, who's in control, and how you can do something about it. With Grand Theft Auto III, players will see several ways in gameplay and story telling in consistently woven into the gameplay, creating a compelling feeling to play not only because of the game, but because of the story itself.Īs you may all know by now, Grand Theft Auto III tells the story of a love-tarnished bank robber-punk whose girlfriend has shot him, stolen his goods, almost lands him in the slammer, and who is now on the loose with a rival urban warlord. With the birth of new systems, such as the PS2, comes faster, more powerful hardware, and eager, creative designers who have been waiting for the power of a new system to provide the freedom to let their ideas flourish.Įnter Rockstar and DMA. Film techniques and story-telling devices used in movies have become a huge part of games these days, through a long, slow process by people who know - and love - games.
That was a long time ago, and companies such as Capcom and Square have honed storytelling techniques to a near art form. As the industry turned older in 19 we saw how the guys who thought they had struck a gold mine took their losses and went back to sunny LA, and then watched as cut-scenes were slowly, carefully integrated into games in ways that actually worked to the benefit of telling a story, and to the benefit of making the game more rewarding for gamers.