Comment by tialaramex
6 hours ago
We don't have enough information to claim it's the "right decision" only that this choice did work, not that other choices couldn't have been better.
In video games you can go back and try another option but life isn't like that and so we can only suppose what might have happened.
Well what happened was that despite being based on an aging Renderware engine and programmed using a language with many potential footguns, the game was stable enough across multiple platforms, architectures and OSes that it was both a critical and commercial success.
I know what you’re saying - you can’t really know what might have been in an alternate reality. But in that alternate reality they’d have had to come up with something truly monumental to outdo themselves here.
I think you’re just being a wee bit picky about me using the words “the right decision”. If we’re honest with ourselves there probably wasn’t a Rust-like language in the conversation when they set out to build GTA3, Vice City or San Andreas so this is all kind of moot unless we're suggesting that Rockstar should have started out by building that language...