GTA San Andreas used "real gang members" to record voiceover: "We showed them the scripts and they were like, 'we wouldn't say that'"
Jun. 21, 2024According to Rockstar Games veteran Lazlow Jones
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Real world gang members supposedly played a part in scrapping and rewriting dialogue from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, according toRockstar Gamesveteran Lazlow Jones.
Before departing Rockstar Games to joinco-founder Dan Houser at a new studio, Lazlow Jones played a huge part in the crime-ridden series. You’ve likely heard him spitting satire through the various in-game GTA radio stations, but Lazlow also worked as a prominent writer and audio recording director on several GTA games and Red Dead Redemption 2, which thrust him into places you might not expect from game development.
In an interview withKinda Funny Games, Lazlow reminisced that if the team “needed specific accents or languages, we’d travel to those places.” For Red Dead Redemption 2, that meant jetting off to Santa Fe, New Mexico to record with Native American communities, or traveling to New Orleans to work with Creole individuals because “those accents you just can’t get right with New York, LA actors.”
Mashing A through one of the studio’s games definitely gives the impression that these aren’t simply digital spaces cosplaying as real world locales - there’s legitimately some actual culture infused into each one. “One of the things I’m really proud of is the authenticity that we would go for,” Lazlow says.
Lazlow Jones and lead writer Dan Houser are no longer a part of the heavyweight studio, but Rockstar Games is barreling full steam ahead withGTA 6, currently slated to come out sometime next year, which is seeminglydepicting a Florida every bit as chaotic as the real thing.
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Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.
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