The Grand Theft Auto games have a long history of being made by developers who live far from their source material. The original game and its mainline sequels have all been led by Rockstar North, housed in a decidedly not US-based Edinburgh. But, even when it came to a comparatively local GTA mission pack set in London, the team chose instead to ask their newly acquired Canadian team to handle the development work. It didn’t matter that only a few people on the team had actually been to London before.

Yet, that distance, as proven across the series grants the developers a more incisive view of a place, one that focuses more on a setting’s cultural rendering than its reality.

As evidenced by Grand Theft Auto: London’s dog shit.

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