And scrapped it when it wasn’t on par with Rockstar’s effort
Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IIIis well-known as a landmark title that exerted significant influence over the videogame industry with regard to modern design. One notable developer that was motivated by GTA IIIwas Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise. However, his efforts to make a game like GTA IIIdidn’t quite pan out.
Speaking with Joystiqat the BAFTA ceremony about the GTAcreators’ lifetime achievement award they were presented, Kojima commented “When GTA IIIcame out, we were on Metal Gear Solid 2.At that point we tried to create something similar and we were completely unable to come up with this design to [a level of] similar success.”
Kojima went on to say “To be honest, looking at their [Rockstar’s] success at doing what we tried to do and failed, we went back and made the game engine we first tried, to ensure the freedom the player would have. So more than being inspired by them, to be honest they just went ahead of us, they were more successful than what we were trying to create back then.”
Despite the fact that the upcoming Ground Zeroesis open-world, Kojima’s hesitant to say it’s similar to Grand Theft Auto. “Now, game-wise what we are trying to create [in Ground Zeroes] is something probably different than they are trying to create. We’re trying to ensure the freedom so the player can do some more realistic stealth infiltration by having all this freedom. So, I believe we’re creating different games,” he stated.
Kojima toyed with design similar to GTA 3 back when it was released [Joystiq]