Obbe Vermeij, who served as the technical director for legendary games such as "GTA III," "Vice City," "San Andreas," and "GTA IV," discussed plans to take the series beyond the United States in an interview with "GamesHub." He said the team had ideas for cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul, but "GTA: Tokyo" came closest to becoming a reality.
Vermeij noted that the plan was for an external studio based in Japan to use Rockstar's existing game code to develop a new GTA game set in Tokyo. However, the project was canceled for unknown reasons, and the series returned its focus to American cities.
The former developer also emphasized that, in the current reality, it is much more difficult for GTA games to venture outside the United States. A game's development now takes more than 10 years, and project budgets are measured in billions of dollars. Faced with such significant risks, the company is reluctant to abandon the American culture and cities familiar to everyone, such as Vice City and Los Santos. In his opinion, the series will most likely continue to rotate among well-known American cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.
