GTA Tokyo "almost actually happened," but former dev claims it wouldn't have been made by Rockstar

Videogames and Japan, name a better pairing. From the big guns like Nintendo and Sony, to all the classic titles that have been made in the country, to memorable games set there, the country is synonymous with gaming. There's always excitement when major franchises head to its shores - Assassin's Creed did so this year with Shadows, and Forza Horizon plans to next year. A former Rockstar director has now confirmed that Grand Theft Auto nearly headed to Japan, and the fan-fantasized GTA Tokyo "almost actually happened."

The Grand Theft Auto series has always been popular, but has become a behemoth in the decade since GTA 5's launch and subsequent live service legacy. As we still await the GTA 6 release date, many fans of the series are looking back and reminiscing about some the best sandbox games ever made. GTA 4 is my personal highlight, but San Andreas also holds a place in my heart.

Rumors have swirled for a while that GTA Tokyo was considered, based on leaks and claims from anonymous sources, but there was never any concrete evidence. That's now changed, as former Rockstar technical director Obbe Vermeij confirms that it was close to fruition during his tenure at the studio.

"We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul," he tells GamesHub. "Tokyo almost actually happened. Another studio in Japan [was] going to do it, take our code and do GTA: Tokyo. But then that didn't happen in the end."

The interview is the first confirmation that GTA Tokyo was ever close to being developed, but I don't think anybody expected the bombshell that it would have been outsourced to a Japanese studio. However, as is so often the case with billion-dollar series, the executives decided to play things safe and remain in America.

"People love having these wild ideas but then when you've got billions of dollars riding on it it's too easy to go 'let's do what we know again,'" Vermeij says. "And also America is basically the epicenter of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven't been there. They have a mental image of the cities."

Vermeij seems to be forgetting that Rockstar originated in Scotland and the very first Grand Theft Auto game had two London expansions in 1999… I jest, of course, and GTA has satirized American culture for the vast majority of its existence. Vermeij says a new Grand Theft Auto game set in London is "not realistic," owing to extended development times of the modern era.

"If games still took a year to make then yeah, sure, you can have a little fun, but you're not going to get that when there's a GTA every 12 years," he says. "You're not going to set it in a new location."

Vermeij believes that future Grand Theft Auto games will be set in a rotating cast of US cities - New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas - because it's not worth the risk of looking further afield: "GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn't work."

Despite the risk-averse nature of development, it would have been interesting to see how a Japanese studio applied the series' classic satire to its own culture. I think I preferred not knowing that GTA: Tokyo ever existed, because the agony of learning that we were close to actually playing it is even more painful.