Why GTA IV is set in Liberty City

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"We've always wanted to do New York properly," says Rockstar's Dan Houser

Rockstar vice president of creative Dan Houser has been talking about why the firm decided on New York as the setting for GTA IV.

"We've always wanted to do New York properly," he said in the latest issue of the UK's Official Xbox Magazine. "With GTA III we were dealing with so many technical issues that we didn't really think trying to make somewhere like a real place was important at the time and then we discovered later that gave an added element of content to the place."

He added, "We've got a full time team of researchers and photographers in the office in New York who get emails from the artists in Scotland saying, 'hey can you find out what this building's like, or what the traffic flow's like around here?' or the designers want to find out how the law systems work. We wouldn't be as confident doing a next-gen game the way we wanted, somewhere we didn't have a base."

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