‘Meet our heroes’: GTA co-creator reveals his new game universe

Absurd Ventures, the new transmedia company founded by GTA co-creator Dan Houser, has revealed its new game and animation universe, the ‘Absurdaverse’.

“Prepare to meet some new kinds of heroes (and watch them suffer),” reads an announcement published on Friday, alongside an image of twenty colorful characters, ranging from familiar GTA-style protagonists to a Viking and a hooded ghoul.

According to Absurd, more information on its plans for Absurdaverse will come this year, including animation projects and an “original story-driven action-comedy adventure game” set to star some of the characters revealed on Friday.

In addition to Absurdaverse, Absurd is also working on two further fiction “universes”: American Caper, which will begin life as a graphic novel, and A Better Paradise, which is an audio fiction series.

Dan Houser co-founded Rockstar in 1998, and eventually left the company in early 2020, after having written and produced its biggest games including GTA 3 – 5, Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, Bully, and Max Payne 3. He announced California-based Absurd Ventures in 2024.

Rockstar veterans Lazlow Jones and Michael Unsworth were working alongside Houser at Absurd.

Jones was previously responsible for in-game creative audio and video content, while former Red Dead Redemption series writer Unsworth worked on virtually all of Rockstar’s major releases during 16 years at the company.