When Grand Theft Auto V was first announced and shown off, one of the most intriguing new features of the game was the ability to control three different protagonists throughout the game. Unlike past games in the series where you controlled one character, such as Tommy Vercetti, this time you had the option to switch between three: Trevor, Franklin, and Michael.
In a recent interview with Edge, Rockstar North art director Aaron Garbut spoke about the decision to go with three playable characters rather than one.
[Having] multiple characters was a leap of faith. It was an interesting idea, and it felt like we could do interesting things with it, but it also felt like a change to the core of the game that might backfire. I think it really worked out.
Garbut also spoke about how the world’s design was done pretty much before everything. They had a layout of where they wanted each character to be from, so they were able to design it to the specifications before they even had a story set.