GTA 4 scrapped a lot of San Andreas features to make the “massive jump” from PS2 to PS3, but the fan-favorite GPS used code from GTA 3 that was “basically unchanged”

GTA 4 often feels like an ignored middle child. It doesn’t quite have that same nostalgia factor as San Andreas, and it’s not the new, shiny GTA 5. Now, 17 years after its release, former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij shares some anecdotes about how it and other GTA games came to be.

“17 years ago, on April 29, 2008, we released Grand Theft Auto 4,” Vermeij tweets. “To focus on making the game truly next-gen, we dropped many game features from San Andreas. Stats (fitness, weight), Multiple cities, Stealth, Underwater swimming, Jet packs, Tanks, Bicycles, Monster trucks, Car modding, Planes.”

These were very beloved features in San Andreas, but I suppose they had to be sacrificed to bring the game up to Rockstar’s desired graphical standard.

“It was a big jump from San Andreas,” Vermeij writes. “It was also the hardware. PS2 to PS3 was a massive jump.”

Despite cutting some things, Vermeij states that GTA 4’s excellent GPS system, which rerouted you in real-time like an actual car’s navigation system, was “not all that hard.” He adds, “I wrote the car pathfinding for GTA 3 and it was basically unchanged in 4.”

The game also proved to be a good testing ground for what would later become Rockstar’s money-printing machine. “We finally realized a 32 player network game which later evolved into GTA Online,” Vermeij claims. Who knows what parts of GTA 6 will lead to whatever Rockstar cooks up in the future?

He also revealed some of the fun defenses added to GTA games to prevent people from pirating them. “I put in some code to make things go subtly wrong when the CD protection was removed. For instance; in Vice City it would rain forever.” Nothing game breaking, but annoying if you want to experience the way the game is truly meant to be played.

In the meantime, check out everything we know about GTA 6.