Illusion Softworks (now 2K) saw things differently: if the hardware of the day was capable of realising enormous 3D spaces, why not treat a virtual city as a grand movie set, rather than a sociopath’s playpen? I n the wake of Grand Theft Auto III’s success in the early noughties, many action games were happy to follow Rockstar’s blueprint and build a big city map, where the player could roam freely and do heinous things to passers-by.
