Before Leonida, Rockstar considered a much longer trip. A GTA set in Tokyo was once planned, with negotiations to involve a Japanese studio, according to former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij.
Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, he said the discussions were serious but above his area of responsibility. Vermeij did not identify the studio and said he does not know how close the project came to happening.
What GTA Tokyo might have been
The idea was to use GTA's technological foundation with a local team developing a game rooted in Japanese cultural references. Vermeij remembers samurai swords being part of the concept, but believes the story would have been contemporary rather than set in medieval Japan.
Take-Two filed a GTA Tokyo trademark in 2003. That registration was abandoned in 2008, and the game never released.
Other destinations were discussed too
Vermeij mentioned Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Istanbul, London and Paris among cities the team discussed. These were internal ideas, which does not mean every city became a project in production.
He left Rockstar in 2009, so his account concerns plans from that period. More recently, director Rob Nelson did not exclude other countries for GTA, while emphasizing that the United States still offers plenty to explore.
The next confirmed destination is Leonida and its six regions. Other borders remain a possibility, with no new GTA outside the US announced.
