The painful wait for our trip to Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto V on PC is almost over, with it now due to launch in less than a week. In an interview, Rockstar Games assures us future DLC and updates ‘will arrive simultaneously’.
The studio also reaffirm that PC is the ”ultimate version” of GTA V, having drawn from a ”huge pool of knowledge” over its development cycle. Sadly, modding support is ‘dismissed’.
When asked specifically what, if anything, has the studio done to support community creativity on PC through mods, the studio redirected attention to GTA Online, and how ”our primary focus is making sure that nothing detracts from that experience or has a negative impact on the overall community of players.” It means modders will need to find their own solutions again.
PC does at least get superior video editing tools: ”The Rockstar editor in GTA V is a massive expansion from the video editor we had in GTA IV. The GTA community is incredibly creative and we wanted to give them a much more advanced set of tools to work with. With the Rockstar editor in GTA V, players can capture and manipulate game footage at will.”
Rockstar has spent considerable time making sure the game can scale to an enormous range of PC hardware. ”There are over 25 parameters you can tweak that can optimize graphics and performance. The game will automatically optimize the settings for your hardware when you first start it up, but you have a great deal of freedom,” the studio told Gamespot.
Grand Theft Auto IV was heavily criticised for its very strict controls when it came to PC configuration settings, as by default it ‘locked out’ certain changes from being made depending on the hardware it detected. This was later undone with official patches.
”We want to deliver something for all different kinds of PC players, from those with modest rigs right up to the hard core who immerse themselves in really high end systems. It is a fun challenge for us and it is well worth it as the game looks absolutely stunning.”
Initial reports are good that Rockstar has managed to deliver a stable and gorgeous PC version, which is something GTA IV stumbled with.
”PC players want the freedom to set their game up in a way that maximizes the opportunities their system provides, so the main thing we have focused on is flexibility, with a lot of graphical and control options so people can customise the game and play it as they want.”
As for delivering new content and updates on PC: ”We plan to deliver updates to PC and consoles simultaneously. There can be occasional variations in timing based on specifics from one console to another but PC will not be on a separate timetable to other platforms.”
Check out the full interview between Rockstar Games and Gamespot for more.
Grand Theft Auto V releases on PC April 14th.
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