[...]The aim was to make a startlingly detailed digital recreation of New York that hummed with life and whose environment had a sense of having been lived in. This interactive experience needed to take place in a world that felt alive like no other.

The art team at Rockstar North in Scotland along with a full time research team in New York set about condensing and defining the essence of the city for the game.[...] It has an unprecedented amount of visual detail for a video game world and teams with life. From the gleaming skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan all the way down to the divots on a sidewalk in Queens, the utmost care was taken to make sure no detail, large or small, slipped through the cracks. For the game to be engaging, players have to believe in both the characters and the world they inhabit.

The world of Liberty City was to not only look alive, but also feel alive. [...] Thousands of advertisements from billboards to fly posters, for hundreds of brands, a full media system including radio and a functioning internet that people can use to discover things to do in the world in their down time. For the beauty of the world to have any meaning, people would have to have fun when they visited. New York is the most fun city on the planet, so it was felt that Liberty City would have to be the most fun digital city ever created...