I've cut out a few of my favourite revelations below. Some are mild, some are more about business than creativity...others were just LOL moments.
Brian Baglow wrote:For the first time in the world, ever, exclusively, I can reveal that the girl four letter love is based around was Shirley Manson from Garbage.
[...]
Plus, no one has ever actually noticed that at the start of the song they all start out on bikes and yet he’s pulled out of a car by a cop. So he must have indulged in a bit of… (wait for it) GRAND THEFT AUTO. That’s the sort of quality writing you get from me. Self-referential and wonderful, yet entirely obliterated by curse words, innuendo and filth.
Raymond Usher wrote:And to think that GTA was going to be MIDI based rather than feature CD quality music, which raises the question, would it have been the success it is today if Colin hadn’t persuaded the management to part with a considerable amount of cash for our first ProTools setup?
Colin Anderson wrote:He said, “I hear you’re even putting a country track in the game. That’s great; I love country music. How fast is the banjo player you’re using?” At that point there was simply no turning back – BMG’s top brass were expecting it. None of us in the audio department even liked country music [...]
I remember reviewing examples of possible titles, and finding things like “Jesus, Drop Kick Me Through The Goalposts Of Life” and “Here’s A Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares”, and at that point I realised that no matter what we did we simply couldn’t go far enough to caricature country music!
Colin Anderson wrote:I took the decision that we had nothing to lose, as we could easily arrange another session with a different vocalist if it didn’t work out for any reason (something we’d already done on some of the other tracks).
Grant Middleton wrote:A guy called famousMIKO uploaded all the tracks to YouTube, and you can tell how many fond memories they inspire from the comments left.
Paul Mackie wrote:One more thing , the voice of Percy that you hear during game play was an accident which came about whilst I was taking the piss during a conference call with the audio dept at DMA, they were rolling about at the other end of the phone, I wrote some dialogue and in it went.. superb… That’s F’n team work…..
Colin Anderson wrote:I remember having a quick look at GTA IV when it was released and being gobsmacked at the scale of the game – it was always a big project, but nowadays it’s truly incredible. When I play it I can hear every asset in the game and imagine the production process that would have been required to create it all. When I add up all the time it must have taken it genuinely amazes me.
Colin Anderson wrote:I think there was also a version of the Star Spangled Banner we recorded that was to be played when the player stole the tank in the first game. That didn’t get used in the end, though I can’t remember why now. Maybe copyright reasons? I’m not sure.
BrianBrian Baglow wrote:I left DMA to join Rockstar. Worked there for a couple of years, then they bought DMA, were going to merge it with Rockstar and an Israeli technology company, so I moved back to Scotland to do the PR for this new entity. Three days after that, they closed the Dundee office and I eventually moved to Edinburgh as part of Rockstar North.
Paul Mackie wrote:Thanks for you kind messages over the years and do bother to give heartfelt compliments when you have the urge, it makes a difference to people’s lives in a profound way, it’s a great thing to do, it empowers all involved. Keep on enjoying GTA and these humble guys at Rockstar will continue to deliver the very best in gaming, they really do care.
