Former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij says the GTA 4 NPC system was once designed to give every pedestrian a home, a job and a daily routine. It was an ambitious attempt to make Liberty City feel more authentic, right up until the bugs began multiplying and the studio decided that simulated commuting was not worth the trouble.
Vermeij, who worked on several Grand Theft Auto games, has regularly shared details about Rockstar Games’ development process since leaving the company. In an interview with Edge Magazine, he explained how one of Grand Theft Auto IV’s more elaborate ideas failed to survive production.
What would GTA 4’s pedestrians have done?
According to Vermeij, then-Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies wanted every non-player character in Grand Theft Auto IV to appear to have an independent life.
“Leslie Benzies wanted all the NPCs [in GTA 4] to have their own lives. A place to live. A schedule. Every morning, they would drive to work,” Vermeij said.
The concept would have given Liberty City’s residents fixed homes and routines rather than allowing them to appear wherever the game needed some traffic or pavement activity. On paper, that promised a more convincing city. In practice, it meant tracking countless virtual residents as they attempted to travel through an already complicated open world.
