The Pet Sounds of Grand Theft Auto III, Part 3

We have info and a wavefile on Chatterbox, the game's hilarious call-in show. Plus an interview.

By IGN Staff

When it comes to videogame sound, the guys who make the sound effects and music almost always get the short end of the stick. They're rushed, they have less time and disc space than anyone else, and they usually don't get much attention. With a few exceptions, such as with the folks who created the music for Medal of Honor, Spyro the Dragon, and Grand Theft Auto I and II, game-making musicians have to make due with what they're given.

Apparently, Rockstar has given the idea of game music many, many hours of thought. It's not too much of a surprise, given most of them once worked in the music industry. But still, we'd go so far to say that the music in Grand Theft Auto III is as integral to the game as any other aspect, only it's more than apparent. It's kind of like putting the drummer up near the front of the band, not hidden in the back, and just like in Elvin Jones' Jazz Machine, it works wonders.

Impressed as we are with Grand Theft Auto III's music, Rockstar isn't new to making the music in this series spectacular. Anyone who played Grand Theft Auto I or II knows they always have, but now, with better technology and more space to store music, the sound in Rockstar's flagship game for the holiday season has come together in a cohesive, intelligent fashion. It sounds better, and has more of an effect on the way you hear the game and you feel about it.

According to Rockstar's COO Terry Donovan, the sound design for Grand Theft Auto 3 was approached as if it were a movie. The 3D audio system is dynamic, wherein all sounds are referenced and scaled from the player's perspective. Everything from radio stations in cars, to collisions, in-game speech, car sounds, weapons, and weather effects were researched and implemented carefully and thoughtfully.

It's quite cool to know that you're that the videogame you show off to your friends has an incredible cool vibe to it. Or a jah vibe, or even an operatic one. You see, apart from the first Wipeout, the music selection and production in GTA3 is nearly unprecedented. The biggest difference between this game and any other, however, is that you can choose from a huge array of music instantly. I'll explain.

In Grand Theft Auto, players can carjack any vehicle on the street, and once they're in the driver's seat, they can then select any music station, thanks to that incredible concept called the radio. Every character in Liberty City has a favorite radio station that they listen to when in their car. Every car you carjack will be tuned to one of Liberty City's local radio stations broadcasting 24 hours, seven days a week. If you carjack Marie (the old Italian woman) while she's listening to Double Cleff FM you can retune to any of nine different radio stations, broadcasting over five hours of music consisting of around 50 songs. That's an insane amount of music.

Each station specializes in a particular kind of music that spans classical, hip hop, reggae, and is broken up with loads of hilarious commercials and jingles in between. There are 10 DJs parodying a wide mix of contemporary and classic radio. Perhaps the coolest aspect of the radio is listening to the Talk Radio show. And finally, players hear "informative" news flashes and police radio -- keeping the player up to date with all the chaos and disorder in the city.

From the "Maibatsu Monstrosity SUV" commercial to PetsOvernight.com (which "delivers little bundles of love directly to your door"), the car radio in itself is worth spending time listening to. Make sure to come back every few days, as we'll post new features on different stations and sound features in the game. Today's feature is on.

Chatter Box
Click on Chatter Box to listen

Chatterbox with Lazlow. Lazlow got kicked off the rock station, and so now he hosts a full hour of talk radio and studio guests, in which residents from Liberty City call in and discuss their opinions on American life, the rest of the world and what's wrong with just about everything. Chatterbox has never won an award, and it isn't about to. The station, along with several others, is owned by Donald Love, Liberty City's most prominent billionaire and media magnet. It features a whopping 63 minutes of call ins, guests and hilarious commentary.

The Sound Production Interview
IGN: The music concept in Grand Theft Auto III is much like it's been in the first two games. So, has anything changed?

Terry Donovan: From my perspective, DMA generated all the music for the original Grand Theft Auto, and 80% for GTA2. This time around, the inclusion of more licensed music ensured the continued rise in production value and diversity. I think it's really exciting for a videogame to feature Stretch Armstrong, as well as Luciano Pavarotti.

Dan Houser: Yes, we didn't change the concept, we expanded the audio experience just as the graphic experience has been expanded. We've really tried to bring the city to life and it needed to sound 3 dimensional...a lot more music and production value, conveniently facilitated by using a DVD disc to store a lot more media!

IGN: How did you decide what kinds of music to include the game; I mean did you just choose your own favorite kinds of music, or was it studiously, rigorously thought out?

Dan: Terry and I in conjunction with Craig Connor, Allan Walker (two of the sound guys at DMA) and the whole team at DMA created an initial wish list based on a few obvious parameters. We had to like the music, it had to be a broad diversity of music, it had to give the sensation of the player skipping through channels in a real city and it had to reflect the gangster movie culture that we are drawing on in the game.

Terry: In essence it was rigorously organized in terms of parameters and mildly disorganized in how it came together. We wanted definitely a few things like a hip hop station, and an opera station, but the dub reggae station, and the talk radio station were wonderful surprises when they all came together. But also we were adamant that DMA still produced their classic HEAD and LIPS stations, which wonderfully parody pop music fm radio stations in the USA. And considering they've won numerous awards for this parody and they were much loved by GTA fans, they were essential to include.

IGN: The talk show is absolutely hilarious -- people calling and getting smoked by the announcer, or simply giving their homely, sad or inconsequential stories. Was it difficult to create? I mean, did you guys just sit up all night thinking of how to parody radio and TV talk shows?

Terry: Dan was largely responsible for this, with a mutual friend of ours, a successful radio producer in the United States. I don't think he had to sit up all night to write the material. With all the media your head is blasted with, all you really have to do is keep your eyes and ears open, and wait for the ridiculous. Parodies are all around us in the news and media, so you don't have to try too hard.

Dan: The talk radio station was a really good opportunity to add character to liberty city and give it its weird and unique take on American life. On it, if you listen carefully you meet characters from elsewhere in the game, lunatics mostly, so you really bring the city to life.

IGN: The high level of sound production is quite obvious in Grand Theft Auto III. Can you tell us a little about how the music was handled, production-wise?

Terry: With the luxury of space afforded by DVD media, there was a lot more room to deliver audio at the quality of normal fm radio or 44.1 khz, In fact, there's 3 1/2 hours of radio in the game, which is more music than you hear on any film, or any other video game I know of. GTA3 is all about quality and quantity. And in terms of production process, both music, adverts, station imaging and radio DJ speech was delivered to Craig Connor at DMA who assembled the various assets into very smooth, well produced sounding radio stations. He's really the creative force that holds all the radio together in the game.

Dan: the attention to detail is amazing. Every DJ you hear is a real DJ in real life. We have stretch armstrong one of the biggest hip hop DJ s in America doing his own shows, while the dub reggae station was recorded in London by a reggae DJ in London who takes the lifestyle so seriously that he turned up 4 days late to the recording session. The end result is radio that sounds very right until you listen to the words, and then it sounds very wrong. This was the effect we wanted to create: high production values and absurd content.

IGN: While driving in tunnels, the sounds of cars, radio stations, sirens echo off the walls. Although it's only a little detail, it's this kind of little detail that raises Grand Theft Auto III a little higher than other games on PS2. What are some of the little details, sound-wise, like this that we should be aware of?

Dan: there are so many little details and we spent so much time creating the soundtrack to this game. Every pedestrian has his or her own personality, which you can tell from the dialogue. You can meet psychotic soccer moms or angry laundry deliverymen, and they look and sound as annoying and irritating as you feel they could. At the same time, the sound effects dept at DMA is populated exclusively with obsessives who have always taken the sound design very, very seriously. Sound is revolved around the 3d environment and distance is really appreciable. So you hear sirens and cars approaching, and hear them fade into the distance. All of this is only made possible because of the trust and shared purpose that exists between Rockstar and DMA.

Don't miss out on the many features we already have written on Grand Theft Auto III, including:

Also, make sure to visit Grand Theft Auto III site, www.grandtheftauto3.com with maps of the cities, information on the characters, cars, and more.

-- Douglass C. Perry