It’s been 23 years since Rockstar Games pioneered the 3D open world with Grand Theft Auto 3, and since that groundbreaking release, the studio has remained at the forefront of the genre. Even though there are more contenders for the throne than ever before, Rockstar’s worlds continue to prove themselves as generational leaders, largely thanks to their commitment to immersive realism. The network of overlapping systems and handcrafted elements that make up places like Los Santos and Saint Denis are designed to offer such a sense of authenticity that these simulated cities truly feel alive.
Ben Hinchliffe knows the craft behind this digital reality well. A former Rockstar designer now working in the immersive field of virtual reality, he helped put together the worlds of LA Noire, Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 – games that each set the bar higher and higher.
In the case of 2011’s L.A. Noire, much of that immersion came thanks to groundbreaking facial capture technology that was able to recreate every sneer and twitch of the actor’s eye. This is the feature for which defunct developer Team Bondi will be best remembered. However, Rockstar, which was both publisher and co-creator of the project, offered contributions based on the project’s proven open-world strengths.
This is something that will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows, as LA Noire is widely considered to be a tender open-world game due to its lack of side activities and map-filling content. “Because the focus was on Phelps and the police, we were a little surprised,” Hinchliffe says. “How far would Phelps go and what could he do? He couldn’t do anything too outrageous. He is a lawman. This shaped a lot of the content in terms of where we could take it. Let’s say you’re a criminal or a thug, you could probably get away with a lot more in terms of content and what you could have done.”
A reflection of this genuine, painstakingly recreated Los Angeles can later be found in Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto 5, where huge sections of the city’s streets are faithfully reproduced on the map of the metropolis that inspired them. But realism cannot be achieved by architectural accuracy alone – people are as significant as sidewalks. Hinchliffe worked on several random crimes in LA Noire – the human element that helped bring the digital city to life. There were gangsters lurking in the side streets who didn’t care about the main story and you never knew when they would attack next. They brought genuine, everyday frustration to the detective’s work – would you focus on the case, or would you fulfill your public duty and pristine up another city mess?
These random crimes would indirectly evolve into Grand Theft Auto 5 world events, with pedestrians calling for support after being mugged or carjacked. They came as part of Rockstar’s mandate to “be bigger and better in every way.”
“It made the cars feel like they were handling better, had more damage to the vehicles, deflated the tires and so on, and made everything react more realistically,” Hinchliffe recalls. “It was a great vision to just move things forward.”
The key to enhancing GTA 5’s immersive features were the dozens of automated systems that made the city life simulation feel truly organic. The tire burst was a natural reaction to the player’s driving habits, not a scripted sequence. But Rockstar has learned that sometimes it takes a lie to create something that feels true.
Hinchliffe worked on The Meltdown, a mission in which you have to support paparazzi photographer Beverly Felton take a photo of a drunk star caught in a police chase. Hinchliffe controlled an genuine race through the streets of Los Santos All.
“A lot of the movement in this chase is completely handwritten,” he says. “It’s not traffic. We made cars follow a predetermined route and pass through it at a predetermined time, and the garbage truck simply comes around the corner at the right time. We wrote everything by hand to give the player the best experience and the best cinematic atmosphere in this chase.”
“Rockstar systems are very clever,” he adds. “Tools are very useful in design. You can switch between handwritten and general behaviors very easily, and even handwritten things look organic because of the tools.
This approach really works in Red Dead Redemption 2. While the 2018 western is Rockstar’s most simulation-heavy open world yet, much of its authenticity only exists because the world is proprietary. The boundary may seem alive and reactive, but behind the scenes there are thousands of handcrafted reactions to the many actions players can perform.
“An important aspect of Red Dead 2 was that the higher-ups wanted to reinforce the feeling of NPCs feeling more real and make the world around you feel like a living, breathing thing,” Hinchliffe recalled.
Almost every NPC in Red Dead Redemption 2 has some sort of inner life. Even if life is simply driving a freight car down the same route over and over again, it’s work with a purpose that players can turn into an opportunity for highway robbery. This level of detail is crucial for Red Dead Redemption due to the limited population density Hinchliffe mentioned. However, on the modern metropolitan scale of Grand Theft Auto, where the streets are home to thousands of pedestrians, this sense of authentic life is much more difficult to achieve. Expecting the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 to replicate the addictive achievements of RDR 2 seems like a pipe dream… but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Hinchliffe worked on Grand Theft Auto 6 until he left Rockstar in 2022, which means he knows the scope of the game’s ambition and is bound by a non-disclosure agreement to keep that scope secret. However, as an experienced open-world game designer, he has his own informed opinions about what is possible.
However, his current priorities are not such interactions. Hinchliffe currently works for independent British developer Just Add Water, serving as lead designer on the virtual reality construction simulator Dig VR. In many ways, it’s a galaxy away from his experience at Rockstar, but there’s an element that connects his past and present: immersion.
“VR just adds another level of immersion by default because you’re in space,” Hinchliffe says. “But then it’s harder to make the player feel immersed, and this place is real because they are IN This.”
“Obviously VR is extremely tactile,” he continues. “You use your hands for most things, and the challenge is making sure that what you’re doing with your hands or whatever you’re interacting with feels real. If this does not happen, you can break the immersion immediately.”
These challenges really highlight two very different approaches to immersion. While GTA is about a detailed city-wide simulation, VR is about physically turning the key in the ignition. It is smaller, more intimate. This requires a complete reset of your expectations and ambitions compared to traditional gaming. This also applies to more than just immersion.
The current state of virtual reality is like a repeat of the early days of traditional gaming. Because the medium is so different, everything requires starting from scratch. And so Dig VR’s achievements are literally groundbreaking. Moreover, it may inspire other VR developers to incorporate dynamic terrain into their projects. “It’s these little steps of helping each other and helping the medium grow,” Hinchliffe says. “As each game introduces a new feature that hasn’t been introduced in VR, the whole space starts to repeat itself and move forward.”
23 years ago, Rockstar transformed its Scalextric-style 2D roads into a fully 3D city. This pushed the industry forward, paving the way not only for its own games, but also laying the foundation for games like Assassin’s Creed, Forza Horizon, and Cyberpunk 2077. The open world genre is now a patchwork of contributions from different developers, each with their own iterations. and moved the concept forward. And next year, with the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, we’ll finally see what Rockstar’s next contribution to immersive worlds will be.
Matt Purslow is senior features editor at IGN.
The views expressed in this interview are the personal opinions of Ben Hinchliffe and do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of Rockstar Games.
