GMR: The game is five times the size of Vice City. How difficult will it be to sustain vital and entertaining gameplay for what could be well over 200 hours of playtime?

Houser: It's difficult in that making a game with strong, innovative gameplay in itself isn't a simple thing to do. It takes a really talented team of people and a lot of work and imagination--we are fortunate to have some of the strongest people in the industry at Rockstar North. The size is more of a challenge for the technology than it is for the gameplay; we have so many ideas for how to fill the state, so many things that we desperately wanted to cram in there, that there will always be something new to do or a new way to do it. Are you asking whether I think people will get bored? I hope not! The world is so alive, so varied, and so full of detail, plus we haven't really even begun to talk about the story yet. Our goal was to develop the key themes of Grand Theft Auto: freedom of choice and the ability to do lots of things closer to their logical conclusion; a bigger world, with much more to do in it; and much more interactivity between you and the environment, between player and lead character, and between characters within the game world.