In the name of authenticity, RockStar hired real-life gang members and ex-convicts to do Grand Theft Auto V's voice acting and to rewrite parts of the game script.
This information was revealed by GTA: V's contributing writer and producer Lazlow Jones while talking to Chicago radio station WGN.
"In the game there's these rival gangs," he explained. "There's black gangs, Latino gangs... we recruited a guy who gets gang members, actual real gang members, like El Salvadoran gang dudes with amazing tattoos, one of which had literally gotten out of prison the day before."
According to Lazlow, using real gang members indeed changed the game's ambience and made it more realistic.
"We get these guys in to record the gang characters because we don't want a goofy L.A actor who went to a fancy school trying to be a hard gang member," he said. "There's nothing worse than that, so just go find the terrifying people and say 'can you come in here please?'"
The gang member were eager to help make the game more authentic, they ended up rewriting parts of the script to better fit the way real gangs speak.
"They look at the lines and say, 'I wouldn't say that,' so we say, 'OK, say what you would say.'" Jones reminisced. "There's a lot of sessions where we would just throw the script on the floor. 'This is irrelevant, let's just work on something real.'"