Rockstar Considered Four Protagonists Before Settling on Jason and Lucia, Rob Nelson Tells Famitsu
After GTA V’s three leads, the team “even thought about increasing the number of main characters to four,” Rockstar North’s head of development told Japan’s Famitsu. It went the other way — to two — for the sake of attachment.
Confirmed — Rob Nelson, head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, said it on the record in Famitsu’s exclusive interview, published August 28. The quotes below are translated from Famitsu’s Japanese.
What he said: after putting three characters at the centre of GTA V, the team thought about various directions for what came next — “we even thought about increasing the number of main characters to four.”
Why it became two: more protagonists means less time with each, and less reason to care about any of them. Nelson pointed to Red Dead Redemption 2, where a single lead, Arthur, and systems like honour built a stronger attachment than a split story would have, and said making the two leads a couple let the series explore something it had not done before: the relationship between its leads.
The limit of this story: this is a design decision described after the fact. It does not say how far a four-character version got, or whether anything from it survives in the game. The same interview is the source of our suppressive fire story.
Sources
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