Company co-founder Dan Houser shared an interesting story about the development of Grand Theft Auto III and how Rockstar started working with 3D games.
"When I started working on GTA 3, the team had already thought out the plot, and I made a few edits. But in reality, we were just mastering the basic elements of how to build a narrative in an open world. We heard that others were using motion capture for cutscenes. It sounded great.
We didn't have any money, so we bought the service by the second. We found a studio in Long Island that could work by the minute.
They could only film three people at a time. We doubted that we could handle the voice acting of the main character. In the end, everything was done, let's say, on the fly. Alex Horton, the chief animator, did an amazing job, putting it all together literally on the go."
Grand Theft Auto 3 became what it is thanks to Rockstar's innovations on PlayStation 2. The ideas were then transferred to PC and Xbox, developing the franchise.
Alex Horton worked at Rockstar from 2002 to 2008, starting in the motion capture department and becoming an art director. He now runs his own studio, Horton Designworks.
