Dan Houser's interview with IGN Miroslav Biarinec | 20.11.2012 18:03
Why new characters?
" If we were in a situation where we were still making games about Claude or Tommy Vercetti in the same exact worlds where we just updated the map and hadn't re-imagined large chunks of the game every time, we'd be incredibly bored...
It's not that we didn't love Niko; it's just that we felt like after doing such a one-man odyssey type of game, to do something totally different would freshen everything up and keep it interesting."
On the GTA V Map:
" This world -- the range of height and between north and south and east and west -- is huge, and it's a real strength. It felt California. Oceans are there and tall hills are there. We wanted those in the game. For us, this kind of world, that was a big properly-realized L.A. and a huge slab of regionally appropriate countryside, felt like the most interesting match to do something new with. Doing other cities just didn't seem appealing. Doing small towns is very appealing. There's a bunch of small towns and villages and whatnot in there to discover and play around in. Doing other cities, though, felt like it was going to create problems we didn't need. It wasn't going to add to the experience. Of course you could do a game with a bunch of cities now that could be pretty interesting, but we didn't think that was going to be this game. This map is going to be spectacular to people when they start exploring and playing around with it."
Check out the full Q&A at IGN here.
