Former Rockstar lead debunks GTA 4 zombies rumor as "probably an experiment that didn't work out" as "artists were always trying to put zombies in things"

Like any other massive sandbox, there's a laundry list of ideas for GTA 4 that never made it into the full release for whatever reason. A longstanding rumor held that the undead were part of what hit the cutting room floor, and a lead developer has now put that notion to bed.

On Twitter, someone asked Obbe Vermeijj, a former technical director at Rockstar, about the fabled "cut zombie mode," as animations for the walking dead can be found in a development build from 2007. "I don't remember anything about zombies in 4," he says.

"Artists were always trying to put zombies in things," Vermiejj asserts. "Not something that got very far."

Well, there you have it. Despite some people's best efforts, Grand Theft Auto 4 remained free of any shambling, flesh-eating corpses. He clarifies it's likely something that was tested, among many other short-lived concepts.

"It was probably an experiment that didn't work out. There were a lot of those," he states in another reply. Indeed, there were, and this discussion is happening because of another: ferries. An old work-in-progress version of GTA 4 was found on an Xbox 360 bought at a car boot sale in Edinburgh, containing models for a ferry.

Vermeijj confirmed that it was something Rockstar hoped to implement, but couldn't get right due to the variables around stacking people and vehicles. These games are truly the sum of not only the parts that make it in, but the parts that don't. No wonder we've been waiting so long for GTA 6.

Sadly, I don't think we're going to suddenly see an outbreak of reanimated corpses in Leonida. More's the pity, quite frankly.

GTA 4 was apparently "so ahead of its time" that its own tech lead didn't know helicopters could do this: "Didn't really consider the side effects."