One former Rockstar Games developer says the reason why the GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 studio makes open-world games so "exceptionally" well is because audio devs aren't limited by creative constraints, and are encouraged to "go nuts" with their ideas.
Speaking in a new interview with Reece 'Kiwi Talkz' Reilly (below), former Rockstar Games audio designer Rob Carr – who has credits on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more – discusses the constraints (and lack thereof) audio devs like himself face at the studio when working on massive open-world games.
"One thing that Rockstar does exceptionally, very, very well is the open world," he begins. "And the reason why they do it so well is because most of the developers that are on board as an audio person, on GTA 5, for an example, the first thing that you ask in any job is like, 'OK, well, what are the limits, what are the constraints that we have here?'
"And you're given technical limitations, yes, like, 'OK, well, each soundbank has to be X, Y, and Z, these are your limitations for every mission. These are the technical constraints,'" he continues. "OK, well, what's the creative constraints? 'There isn't any. Go nuts.'"
As for what that means in practice, Carr suggests that "if you want to do footsteps, and you want 10,000 different, unique sounds for that, go nuts" – it might just be that the scale of an idea like that ends up getting cut down later down the line. "It's easier to dial it down, you know, dial it back, go too much and then strip some fat off than it is to not do enough and then have to push for that extra five or 10% at the end of the project," he suggests.
While he doesn't talk about GTA 6 here, you can't help but wonder if Rockstar might be making similar changes to its upcoming open-world behemoth around now ahead of its launch this November. More importantly, I wonder how many footstep sounds it's going to have?
