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One of the best GTA protagonists almost met a grisly end, as Rockstar’s former lead writer reveals why the series is predominantly set in the US.
GTA 4 might be the most divisive entry in the series because of it’s questionable car handling and more serious tone, but its protagonist is one of the best.
The 2008 sequel to GTA: San Andreas is centred around ex-soldier Niko Bellic, an Eastern European immigrant who moves to Liberty City in pursuit of the American Dream, inspired by his cousin Roman’s exaggerated stories of riches in the city.
While Niko continues to endure in GTA lore (he’s referred to in various Easter eggs in GTA 5), the character almost met a very different fate in GTA 4. Warning, if you’re sensitive to spoilers for the original Red Dead Redemption, turn away now.
Speaking in an interview with Lex Fridman, Rockstar co-founder and lead writer Dan Houser, who left the company in 2020, discussed the decision to kill John Marston at the end of 2010’s Red Dead Redemption. It was a rare instance where the central protagonist is killed in a game, but Houser initially wanted to pull the same trick in GTA 4.
‘Well, I would have liked to, at the end of GTA 4, kill Niko, but you couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘The game doesn’t work.’
Speaking about the decision to kill John Marston instead, he added: ‘It was this thing where we hadn’t done it, thought about doing it, hadn’t done it. And then going, let’s take the risk and do it… and it worked.’
When Marston is shot dead in Red Dead Redemption, players take control of his son Jack, who avenges his father. While Houser doesn’t go into the specifics of why they didn’t kill Niko, his answer implies it was due to the plausibility, and satisfaction, of players controlling another character once the story is completed.
Elsewhere in the same interview, Houser discussed why the GTA series has never returned to London, or tried another location outside of the US, since the series transitioned to 3D.
According to Houser, the studio ‘always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else’.
He added: ‘The game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider’s perspective. That was so much about what [the series] was that it wouldn’t really have worked in the same way elsewhere.’
The only time the series strayed from being an American send-up is in two separate expansion packs set in 1960s London, for the original top-down GTA, both of which Houser worked on. Ever since then, every GTA game has been set in a fictional spin on the US.
There have been other open world games set in London though, including The Getaway on the PlayStation 2 and 2020’s Watch Dogs: Legion.
Rockstar’s next game, GTA 6, is set in the fictional US state of Leonida, based on Florida, which will encompass Vice City, first seen in 2002’s GTA: Vice City. GTA 6 is set to launch worldwide on May 26, 2026 across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
