One of the biggest characteristics of the Rockstar games that came out over the past two decades is their laser focused character driven storytelling that helped shape the identities of those games and made them so much more memorable and unique, beside their gameplay. And Rockstar Co-Founder and writer Dan Houser is one of the reasons for the incredible character-centric storytelling and the sharp-tongued social commentary that’s present in all the defining Rockstar titles, from GTA 4 to Red Dead Redemption 2.
The upcoming GTA 6 is going to be the first title from Rockstar where Dan Houser isn’t involved with the narrative, which indicates a vastly different approach in it’s storytelling and character work. And in a recent interview with IGN, the former Co-founder and writer confirmed that he didn’t have any involvement in GTA 6 although he said it’s going to be great nonetheless.
“It’s not going to be a story that I wrote or a character set that I developed. I think it’s going to be exciting. The game will be great, I’m sure.”
“I think it’s a great privilege to have worked on something that big. I wrote the last 10 or 11 of them, [so] I think the world probably had enough GTA from me,” Houser stated.
He also cited Rockstar’s seminal Red Dead Redemption 2 as the best game he worked on:
“Red Dead 2, I think, was the best thing that I worked on. [It’s] the best single kind of realization of open-world storytelling thematic consistency, and understanding how the games are assembled to take you on an emotional journey.”
Houser also mentioned some of his favorite works in the past Rockstar titles, from GTA 4 to Red Dead 1 which contain strong and nuanced character-driven storytelling that’s incredibly rare to come across in videogames. But even more than that, there is an element of Humanity in those stories that really make the games compelling and alive from a narrative perspective, and all of that wouldn’t have been possible without Houser.
“I also think GTA 4 [is one of his favorite games],” he added, “because we did try and evolve how we did the storytelling and did it in a fundamental way. I think the middle section of GTA 5 is amazing. When we got the three characters working… I think it was not flawless, but it was so smooth, that middle section. I thought that was really amazing. And then the end of Red Dead 1. Those are my favorite bits.”
