Thirteen years. It's taken 13 years for Steven Ogg to finally get round to Grand Theft Auto V. The actor who lends his voice and his face to Trevor Philips had never really played the game since its 2013 release, and had said more than once that he barely ever watched any gameplay. But before closing the book on GTA 5 for good with GTA 6 on the horizon, Ned Luke, the man behind Michael De Santa, managed to sit him down in front of the game they both helped make a classic.
This first look actually comes from a show called "The Final Mission", a video series launched by Ned Luke that revisits all 69 missions in GTA 5. And so, controller in hand, Steven Ogg gets to see the famous North Yankton prologue and finally witness the results of all those motion capture sessions from the early 2010s. The funniest part is watching the actor react to his own character as if it were somebody else entirely. He clocks Trevor's physical details, jokes about his haircut and his receding hairline, but also acknowledges the quality of the writing and of Rockstar Games' work. A particularly amusing discovery when you consider the character has become one of the most iconic of his career.
Trevor was meant to die right at the start
Above all, the video gives Ned Luke the chance to let his co-star in on a few story details he didn't even know himself. Steven Ogg learns that Trevor was originally supposed to be killed in Brad's place during the sting set up by Michael and Dave Norton. The reason for that gap in his knowledge comes down to how Rockstar Games worked at the time. The actors recorded their scenes over several years, often in small chunks, without necessarily having access to the full script. Ogg explains that he was in the dark about much of the game's structure and had no idea about certain encounters between Michael, Franklin and Lamar.
Ned Luke, for his part, recalls the scenes with Dr Friedlander, for which he sometimes had to learn a huge number of pages of dialogue on extremely short notice. Steven Ogg also looks back on some of his more unlikely improvisations, including turning up on set in his underwear and cheerleader socks to get a laugh out of the crew.
There's a GTA 5 making-of out there!
This reunion between the two actors also reveals the existence of archive footage that has never seen the light of day. A Rockstar Games crew filmed behind the scenes throughout the production of GTA 5. Footage that, according to the pair, could today make for a genuinely precious documentary on how the game was put together. Ned Luke and Steven Ogg are therefore calling on Rockstar Games to dig those archives out and make them available to the public. After thirteen years, it would also be a way of closing the GTA 5 chapter with a fresh look at its creation.
And naturally, there was no way of wrapping this up without talking about GTA 6. Rediscovering their own game, the two actors get a real sense of how far Rockstar Games' technology has come in 13 years. Ned Luke is particularly impressed by the animation, the realism of the faces, the teeth and above all the eyes of the new characters glimpsed in the various trailers.
