While the Grand Theft Auto games have had some pretty fun stories over the years, especially with the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and onwards, the most recent release – Grand Theft Auto 5 – was a bit of a let down in this regard. Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser, however, has compared the GTA titles to Charles Dickens novels, not in terms of quality, but rather for how the games handle their world-building.
In an interview with The Guardian, along with Dickens, Houser also brings up other great authors of the time, including Leo Tolstoy and Émile Zola. The point of these comparisons for Houser is to note that much like the books written by these classical authors, the Grand Theft Auto games also tend to provide a feeling that the in-game worlds offer interesting ways to look at the real world.
According to Houser, “while they’re not as good as Dickens,” they are similar, “in that he’s world-building. If you look at Dickens, Zola, Tolstoy or any of those authors, there’s that feeling of all the world is here – that’s what you’re trying to get in open world games. It’s a twisted prism, looking at a society that’s interesting in one way or another.”
Ultimately, this idea would also affect the writing of Red Dead Redemption 2 when it was in development, with Houser noting that he went on something of a binge on Victorian novels to tap into the sense of world and realism that those stories have provided. Among the stories that Houser experienced in the time was Middlemarch by George Elliot.
“I binged on Victorian novels for that,” Houser said. “I listened to the audiobook of Middlemarch walking to and from the office every day. I loved it.”
“I wanted it to feel from the writing perspective, slightly more novelistic,” he continued. “I thought that was a way of doing something new on the story side – and the game was going to look so pretty, the art was so strong, I thought the story had better really set it up. We were trying to fill out the three-dimensional lives of the characters, and also to capture that 19th-century feeling of life and death, which was very different from ours.”
Interestingly, Houser had previously spoken about how his favourite characters of all the games he had written were largely from the more serious games. In an interview from back in November, he noted that his favourite lead characters were Red Dead Redemption 2’s Arthur Morgan and Grand Theft Auto 4’s Niko Bellic.
“I think he’s the best lead character,” said Houser about Arthur Morgan. “You know, the lead characters are different from the side characters, and I think he’s the most rounded and works the best. Him and Niko are the two I like, you know. They were the two most ambitious. So, for me, it’s always sort of a toss-up, you know?”
Dan Houser has worked on several games throughout his time at Rockstar Games. He ultimately left the studio back in 2020. In another interview, he noted that he left the company because the scale of the games being worked on was getting too large for him.
