Rockstar - GTA IV

"In terms of the characters, as we were bringing up the quality of the graphics and the physics and the animation, the quality of the writing and story structure were always balanced to reflect those [things]...the reasons we could pull that off and make the cutscenes slightly longer is because we've got such good facial animation that you can afford to be a little bit more slow-paced in them and a little more intimate with some of them. They've got to look beautiful, some of the cut scenes, and they hold the game together nicely."

Dan Houser, VP of Creative, Rockstar Games