Talking to Gamasutra, former DMA Designs guy Gary Penn reveals that the original Grand Theft Auto was almost chucked due to an interminable cycle of development problems.
“[The original GTA] was a real mess for years, it never moved on, it never went anywhere,” he says. “It never really felt like it was going anywhere. It was almost canned. The publisher, BMG Interactive, wanted to can it, as it didn’t seem to be going anywhere.”
He explains that the game “crashed all the f***ing time”, and was virtually impossible to test as a result, while the car handling was “appalling” and the “core of playing was fundamentally broken”.
Ironically enough, however, it was a combination of these issues that turned things around.
“One day, I think it was a bug, the police suddenly became mental and aggressive. It was because they were trying to drive through you,” he says. “Their route finding was screwed I think and that was an awesome moment because suddenly the real drama where, ‘Oh my God, the police are psycho — they’re trying to ram me off the road.’ That was awesome, so that stayed in. It was tweaked a little bit, but that stayed in because that was great fun. Suddenly the game got more dramatic and it’s no longer boring – the police trying to pull you over. They’re after you, they’re trying to ram you off the f***ing road. Everybody suddenly went, ‘Hey this is actually pretty cool. There’s something in this, this is working.’ It was less about the mission stuff, which we always thought was another mess, and more about just general play – just being able to piss around.”
And the rest is controversy.
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