Grand Theft Hamlet is a unique project in more ways than one, but it seemed from speaking to the film's co-directors Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls that a lot of the success of it was pinned on it being created within the framework of Grand Theft Auto Online.
Speaking to Gamereactor at a recent press junket, we asked Crane and Grylls what other games they think something like Grand Theft Hamlet could be accomplished within. This is what they had to say:
"It's really tough, I mean I have to say respect to Rockstar Games and the people who work there and design the game because it's a really a fantastic game in terms of what you can do with it and the flexibility and the creativity of it," said Grylls. "You have choices, you can do third person, first person, you can also use the in-game phone, camera, you know there's lots of amazing things about it," adding that they did try some Machinima-like films in Red Dead Redemption 2 as well.
"It's really hard to make an online game space that works well," said Crane, mentioning the now-cancelled Naughty Dog project to give The Last of Us an online experience. "It's tough to make one that works really well that you can play in without too many glitches. Especially if you want to make a film that's watchable because one thing we wanted to avoid was you know making something that basically looked like a 90 minute YouTube video."
Despite it being a tough challenge, Crane does think that another game could pull off a project similar to Grand Theft Hamlet. "I mean you can do something in you know Minecraft or Roblox but they have a very different kind of visual aesthetic or Fortnite you probably could," he said.
"There's so much stuff going on," added Grylls. "But there's something about this kind of fully formed world of Grand Theft Auto that is just so incredible and unique and very usable as a space. But you know it's hard anyway to make a film in it."
Grand Theft Hamlet is available to stream now on MUBI.