GTA Tokyo Was a Possibility But That Idea Was Scraped

Reportedly Way back, Rockstar was considering a sequel to GTA 3 that would be set in Tokyo. The idea was scrapped in favor of already established places like Sand Andreas and Vice City.

The news comes from TimeExtension. They asked an unnamed source who had previously worked in Rockstar, regarding the GTA Tokyo reference which was found by data miners that was in the source code of GTA 5. The unnamed source has confirmed that such a project was indeed in consideration. It all started when the co-founder of Rockstar Games Sam Houser visited Tokyo and frequently visited Japan during the promotional run of GTA 3. Rockstar eventually decided that it would be better if they stayed close to the things that they were familiar with.

The Source of TimeExtension explains “He had just released GTA 3 back then and they were doing a lot of travel to Tokyo back then to promote the game,” and further continues “It seemed like a cool, interesting city to do it in, but at the end of the day, it just came down to logistics. Getting the research team out there long enough to map the city and just the cultural satire in terms of what could possibly work in a fitting narrative way in that city. Making those things connect was a little tough and we thought it was just cooler to stick with the cities that were introduced in Grand Theft Auto 1.”

Eventually, Rockstar released GTA Vice City 2001 and GTA San Andreas in 2004 both of which became the best games of all time. After hearing about GTA Tokyo, I have a lingering thought about what a Tokyo GTA would look and feel like. Yakuza is the series that comes to mind when you think about gangsters and the open world in Japan because that is the closest we have.