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For more than two decades, the GTA series has been associated with the United States. Rockstar reimagined iconic American cities with titles like Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City as fictionalized versions of New York, California, and Florida, and since the series’ brief visit to London more than 25 years ago, leaving North America seemed to be an unlikely option.
But that wasn’t always the case. According to recent statements, Rockstar was actually close to taking GTA to Tokyo, Japan in an ambitious project that almost saw the light of day before it was canceled.
In an interview with GamesHub, former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij, who worked on notable games such as GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas, revealed that the idea of GTA: Tokyo was seriously on the table.
Vermeij said:
“We had ideas for GTA games set in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Istanbul, Tokyo almost happened. It was supposed to be developed by another studio in Japan using our software engine as GTA: Tokyo, but the project was ultimately not completed.
With the series having ballooned to an unprecedented size since the release of GTA 5 and the hype surrounding GTA 6, Fermai believes that the opportunity has been lost and moving the series to another continent is no longer a realistic option.
He explained that the stakes are higher than ever, saying that with billions of dollars at stake, it is easier for companies to stick to what they know best. He added that the United States is a center of Western culture, making its cities familiar even to those who have never visited them, unlike other cities that may seem mysterious or far from the general imagination of players, and Fermai gave examples of this by saying that the idea of GTA in unfamiliar cities like Bogota or even Toronto would not be appealing enough.
In the end, these statements reveal an unknown chapter in GTA’s history where the series was one step away from a radically different experience on the streets of Tokyo before commercial realism and huge stakes sealed the decision to keep it within American borders, at least for the foreseeable future.
