While we might have had the odd spin-off here and there in Grand Theft Auto, and the series did technically tear up London back in 1999, Rockstar has always liked America as the focal point for GTA. As a satire of American and Western culture, there are few places better suited to Grand Theft Auto than the recognisable, sweeping landscapes of America.
However, at one point we really could have seen Grand Theft Auto take itself across the North Pacific Ocean and past the Philippine Sea to Japan and feature a game set in Tokyo. In an interview with Games Hub, former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij revealed how close we were to seeing a GTA game set in a different country.
"We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Istanbul. Tokyo almost actually happened," he explained. "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."
While the ideas were good, Vermeij says that really by that point GTA was so synonymous with America that people thought it was too big a risk to depart the good ol' US of A. "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, 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," he said.
"I think it's unlikely it's going to be in Bogota next time, especially since there's just more and more money involved as the project gets bigger. It doesn't make sense to set it in some left-field location for novelty. GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn't work."
Vermeij also thinks that a GTA: London return or a game set across all of Europe wouldn't work, as it's too big a risk when we get one Grand Theft Auto game a decade if we're lucky. For now, at least, we're just looking forward to our adventures in the great state of Leonida.