Dan Houser

And when you combine the two successfully, you get the best of both worlds.

But it is a, you know, there is a tension always there.

I think in a game...

Like GTA 4, which I worked on and loved, and I thought the story was great, but we got criticized because people felt there was almost too much story, and that meant you cared too much about Nico, and he wasn't as effective an avatar in the open world.

I think we probably got closest to reconciling them as perfectly as they can be done in Red Dead 2.

or when playing as trevor in gta5 if you wanted to be crazy i think those were when it really worked the character absolute freedom because also you didn't want in any game you don't really want to compel the player if you're giving them freedom you don't want to say well i'm giving you freedom but i'm taking away because you've got to be this kind of person when you're free so i liked it when it could be he could you know he or she could veer you

to be nice, veer to be nasty.

I think that's when it was at the strongest.

So you, you kind of want a character that was rounded and you felt had good sides and bad sides.

It was a lot of thinking, a lot, like a year sometimes from when we begin talking about a project and dialing it, you know, and I would just get some initial ideas, very like one sentence they are.

a Serbian immigrant, or they are a retired gunfighter, um, with a wife in, you know, type, very, very simple stuff.

And then just start to think through it from every angle.

Um, and,

you know, start to think, well, would it work if they acted like this?

Would it work if you acted like that?

If this is the world, how does it contrast with the world?

Because I always thought that the games were kind of a mathematical equation.

They were the personality of the world, you know, multiplied or divided by the personality of the protagonist.

And when that creates interesting friction, that's a really fun experience for the player.

You know, it's, so almost always at least one or more of the protagonists, because obviously in GTA 5, we had more than one, we'd have someone who'd moved to the place or was in a new part of the place or moved to a new part of the map.