BuzzFeeds' Joseph Bernstein has been lucky enough to sit down for an exclusive interview with Rockstar Norths' art director Aaron Garbut, who's been in charge of the series' unique game design since Grand Theft Auto III, and has been with the company since it's DMA days. The article discusses how the world of Grand Theft Auto V has been built. It's well worth a read, so head over and check it out: Way Beyond Anything We've Done Before": Building The World Of "Grand Theft Auto V", than why not take a step back to 2008 and check out a similar interview IGN had with Garbut and Dan Houser for Grand Theft Auto IV: Building a Brave New World.

We've included a few notable sections below, including BuzzFeeds' trademark GIF pull-outs.

BuzzFeed: How did your research and location scouting of Los Angeles and California differ from that you did for Grand Theft Auto IV in New York? Did you go to California? How many times and where?

Aaron: We sent out quite a large team on a number of occasions who spent time with location scouts, architectural historians, off-duty police, DJ Pooh and our own research team. We’ve shot over 250,000 images and hours of video. We’ve driven all over Los Angeles and out into the surrounding desert, towns, and forests.

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BuzzFeed: I know that a tremendous amount of work went into creating the right “California” feel for the sunset, and for lighting and color in general. Can you tell me about this process?

Aaron: Owen Shepherd, our principal lighting artist, has spent the best part of four years working with our graphics coders to create the lighting solution we have in the game. From the clouds, to the ambient lighting, to the sheer volume of lights we can squeeze on screen, we have something pretty incredible. Every single light we place in the world is stored, streamed, and laid into the map, even into the distance.

The entire world draws all the time: You can fly high in the air at one corner of the map, look over the miles of city and skyscrapers, over the hills and desert to the furthest ridges of the most distant mountains. It’s all there and visible. That’s amazing to see. But the really cool bit is that you can see a street light in a distant town, fly toward it for kilometers until the street itself is visible and the light bulb eventually comes into view. It’s amazing. It’s a level of solidity that I’ve never seen before. It brings the world alive in an incredibly realistic and organic way.

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BuzzFeed: When it comes to depicting Californians, what were the visual or aesthetic things that you wanted to make sure you got in the game?

Aaron: We have a world that incorporates all of Los Angeles and its entire socioeconomic mix. We have countless specifics for workers of various types. We have to make every area feel properly populated and sit right with the world and layer another level of realism onto the world. Then we have the towns, farms, campsites, trailer parks, settlements, and various large installations outside the city. Then over that we layer the specifics: the crazies, the one-offs, the random characters, etc. The character team has done an amazing job; there’s so much variation in our characters, enough to populate this world, and over that they have built a massive library of clothing for each of the player characters to wear. Even our secondary characters have multiple outfits to cover every situation. And then there’s Grand Theft Auto Online…

Seriously, do yourself a favor and read the entire article, it's a compeling read with a great level of detailed information from a Rockstar veteran who's had a huge hand in crafting the spectacular games you've loved, and one in particular which is about to blow us all away!

Thanks, BuzzFeed and Aaron Garbut, for the terrific insight.