He's presided over one of the most successful and -- they hate it when we use this word -- controversial videogame series of all time. He's Sam Houser, Rockstar Games' president and one of the driving forces behind Grand Theft Auto. The series has delighted hardcore gamers, infuriated the clueless, and most importantly, introduced videogames to a whole new audience. Love it or hate it, but people still talk about it. That's what you get when you rattle the cage. When Elvis first made headlines, television networks had to film him from the waist up because his hip-shaking gyrations were deemed too risque. So too has Grand Theft Auto been targeted, taunted, and taken to task for the simple crime of pushing the envelope. We love that sort of tough love, though, and in GMR's in-depth interview, Sam Houser shoots straight from the hip.

GMR: The coming of San Andreas could--in hindsight--have been telegraphed as far back as the paper-map insert that came with the Grand Theft Auto/GTA London double pack, which showed topographical maps for Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. Why do you think the announcement of San Andreas came as such a surprise to the gaming community? Is San Andreas the unofficial conclusion to what seems like a trilogy that began with Grand Theft Auto III?

Houser: San Andreas is the official conclusion to a trilogy began with Grand Theft Auto III -- it's the third part in a series. The games' narratives are only loosely tied together and are not in chronological order, but it is a trilogy, [featuring] our distorted look at the East Coast around the time of the millennium (Grand Theft Auto III), followed by our reinterpretation of '80s Miami (Vice City), and lastly, our look at early-'90s California.

GMR: The game is five times the size of Vice City. How difficult will it be to sustain vital and entertaining gameplay for what could be well over 200 hours of playtime?

Houser: It's difficult in that making a game with strong, innovative gameplay in itself isn't a simple thing to do. It takes a really talented team of people and a lot of work and imagination--we are fortunate to have some of the strongest people in the industry at Rockstar North. The size is more of a challenge for the technology than it is for the gameplay; we have so many ideas for how to fill the state, so many things that we desperately wanted to cram in there, that there will always be something new to do or a new way to do it. Are you asking whether I think people will get bored? I hope not! The world is so alive, so varied, and so full of detail, plus we haven't really even begun to talk about the story yet. Our goal was to develop the key themes of Grand Theft Auto: freedom of choice and the ability to do lots of things closer to their logical conclusion; a bigger world, with much more to do in it; and much more interactivity between you and the environment, between player and lead character, and between characters within the game world.

GMR: Most games, successful or not, don't usually don't dominate the gaming universe starting with the third or fourth iteration. And even with the move into 3D, Grand Theft Auto has remained remarkably true to its origins. How would you explain the series suddenly catching fire on PS2, and how will San Andreas build on this momentum?

Houser: As we have developed the Grand Theft Auto franchise, we have always stayed true to the original core ideas that are the fundamental basis of what the game is -- these ideas of the freedom to go anywhere and do anything. Although a lot of people really got the original Grand Theft Auto and there is a really staunch and loyal fan base that grew out of that game, some people didn't really understand and appreciate the concept and gameplay until they could engage with it visually in 3D. Moving into 3D on the PlayStation 2 really allowed the team to go to town in every area, the details, the humor, the graphics, the story, the gameplay, the city life, etc, etc, etc. The world of Grand Theft Auto really took shape in 3D. The seeds were there in 2D, but it was in 3D that we were really able to make it its own place, and it was with Grand Theft Auto III that the chemistry of the team really came together perfectly for the first time. However, these key design ideals -- freedom and variety -- are what have always set Grand Theft Auto apart from other games and continue to do so. In adding new content, we all have a vision for how this will fit into the whole, and it's what helps us keep things fresh -- the underlying core is very strong but has not yet been taken to its logical extreme. This desire to keep pushing things is, I think, the reason for the continued success of the franchise.

All that being said, Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 have both sold significant numbers of copies, so [they] can scarcely be described as "underground" games -- just unconventional for their time in their preference for gameplay over graphics. The games still play well -- unlike a lot of early 3D games from the period.

GMR: The milieu of Liberty and Vice City was steeped in the mythos of Goodfellas and The Sopranos. San Andreas tips its hat to the barrio. Discuss the shift in community for this game.

Houser: Actually, I would say that Goodfellas and Sopranos were more Liberty City with the grit and grime of a New York-style city, while Vice City was more Scarface and Miami Vice, so the shift in setting and influences and references should be no surprise to people. Although rich in references and imagery from these times, places, and people, neither of these two games focused only on one community, and San Andreas won't, either -- it will be full of a multitude of people with different backgrounds and personalities. It's impossible to call them a single community as such -- just a location with a lot of different people living there. The West Coast in the '90s was really the epicenter of so much that was going on at that time -- culturally and socially there was so much energy -- both positive and negative, so it was really appealing to us, just as '80s Miami had been. But to do it right, we had to do it on a bigger scale than before.

GMR: One gameplay element that seems improved is the gunplay and armed combat. Did the dev team recognize the need for a finessed system? The game mechanics seem to be informed by lessons learned from the development of Rockstar North's own Manhunt.

Houser: In every game we make, we are always learning and pushing ourselves harder and further, and naturally we carry over things we have learned from one project to another. I think Manhunt's targeting and gunplay was really visceral to play, not so much because of the blood or violence, but because of the way it felt to shoot the weapons. We loved the way it feels and plays and wanted to bring that sense of physicality to the gunplay in Grand Theft Auto. However, I think we have taken it beyond what was in Manhunt to something that works better in the more open-plan Grand Theft Auto world.

GMR: San Andreas offers a more personal level of customization, such as the haircuts and non-context-sensitive outfit changes. Is this to help draw the player in even closer to the main character and his motivations, or is it purely for fun aesthetic reasons?

Houser: If the player has control over where he goes, what he does, and how he does it, a natural extension to his freedom and level of interactivity with the environment is to give him control over what he looks like. We also wanted to blur the lines more between what was in-mission and part of the story and your "leisure time" in the game. These kinds of leisure-time activities really keep you connected to the environment and the character even when you aren't doing missions. It gives the player a much stronger relationship with the character they are playing as, and as a result, makes it more personal. By altering Carl's appearance, you are beginning to exist in his world, both in an obvious way -- you are controlling how your character looks -- but also in a less obvious way -- all of your actions feel like they have consequences, and you are always in the world.

GMR: Vice City arrived a surprisingly short year after Grand Theft Auto III (which was still doing brisk business at the time). That's because the plot was already written prior to the development of Grand Theft Auto III, so building the game around it seemed relatively straightforward. Two years will have passed between Vice City and San Andreas. Did you have to build the story and plot and script from the ground up, or was it, too, somewhat prewritten? Tell us about the origins of this game.

Houser: The origins were in the previous games--how did we develop the ideas of the previous games and use them and expand on them to make something truly epic? The story and characters evolve as the game evolves, as in previous versions. We knew the location, and we knew some of the new gameplay elements we wanted to include, and everything evolves up from there. One of things we are constantly trying to improve is our storytelling skill, and I think we have taken that much further in San Andreas than in previous iterations.

GMR: Is San Andreas designed to compel players to spend as much time in the countryside as they do in the inner-city portions of the game? These parts seem to have a dash of Smuggler's Run to them. Is this part of the goal to create the perfect open-ended game, which Grand Theft Auto does so well?

Houser: Well, we're always trying to make the best game we can -- on any project. And we find open-plan, nonlinear games inherently more appealing than linear games. So, having to some extent pioneered "in and out of vehicle" game design, then open-city game design, now it became logical to include urban and rural locations in one continuous "level" or "world." People can spend their time where they want in the game. The game is designed to give people the choice -- you can play the game where you want, to some extent -- we make sure missions take you all over the map, so people should slowly learn about the surprises of the whole map.

GMR: Please tell us your overall objective goal with San Andreas. Simply to make the best game possible or total world domination? Or somewhere in between?

Houser: To make something we want to play, and to make something that any fan of action gaming would want to play.