What has thus far only been the realm of fantasy and mods is becoming reality: the upgraded versions of Grand Theft Auto V for PS4, Xbox One and PC will have a first person mode.
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IGN reported the news today, having spoken extensively to Rockstar about the feature. It's not a half-baked idea or throwaway addition-the team put a lot of thought into it, and the game is fully playable that way.
"It's a very intense, in-your-face experience... literally," Rob Nelson, the Animation Director on GTA 5, told IGN. "Obviously, we felt like one of the most compelling things you could do to make an experience people have had before feel different was the new first-person mode."
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The developers have always wanted to implement such a mode, but several limitations kept them from doing so until now. There simply wasn't enough time to add it while working on the full game, and other requirements took priority. In addition, the last generation of consoles didn't quite have the horsepower needed to run the game in first person.
"We've always been in interested in it, but it's never really been an option for us," Nelson says. "I don't think we could've put it in the [last-gen version] because we were too busy making the game. We were too busy working on our third-person controls and the missions."
"We were out of memory on the old consoles for animations. We were constantly fighting about what we could have and what we could still push in, and what other areas you could steal memory back from - audio, art, maps - for animation. So we could've added all the atoms to make a first-person mode to the level we wanted. We weren't sure the world would have held up the way we would've wanted it to."
You can see the first person gameplay in action in the video below, and it looks pretty awesome. A console mod enabled a similar feature for the original version of the game, but it's hardly the same as this fully functioning mode. Grand Theft Auto V releases on current generation consoles and PC November 18.
