Apparently the bits of litter you can find blowing down streets and being pulled along by cars in GTA 3 were a bit of a controversial topic back in the day. Like, to the point where the developer that added these rogue newspapers and leaves to Liberty City ended up having to take them out of GTA San Andreas after losing a detritus debate within the Rockstar team.
This is according to ex-Rockstar Technical Director Obbe Vermeij, who served in that role on both of those entries in the series before eventually leaving the studio in 2009 following GTA 4’s release, and says he was the very developer responsible for the litter’s code coming to be.
“The streets of GTA 3 looked too clean, so I added litter,” Vermeij explained in a tweet revealing the truth about the trash, “It is a single rectangle that occasionally moves with the wind. It can also be dragged along by passing cars. The artists created four textures for it. Two newspapers and two leaves.”
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