Why was it difficult for R* games to implement a swimming mechanic in GTA vice city and GTA 3. Why is it difficult to implement a swimming mechanic in the first place?
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It’s less about difficulty and more about restricting the game world, the water is just another form of an invisible wall
In general, swimming is problematic because it adds a several new character states and animation demands, particularly in 3D games. You have to be able to switch the player character’s physics on the fly as they get in and out. You might need new animations for entering and exiting water, and you almost certainly need new animations for their movements while in the water. This multiplies by each new type of character that can move between walking and swimming (maybe all of the humans can share an animation set, but what if the dogs should be able to swim, too?).
Moving around in water is frequently slower and less pleasant than moving on land, because designers choose to make an effort to make it feel like being in the water. That means it’s less fun than other things.
When you add the possibility of going into the water, you start running into other design quandaries, too. If an enemy dies in the water, does the body need to float? If enemies drop loot around their bodies, do you need to add physics for the loot so that it’ll float, too, or did you already add diving animations for the player to retrieve it from the bottom? If you expect the player to dive for loot, do they have a breath limit? Are your designers comfortable with enforcing a maximum depth on water?
Is there anything else to do in or under the water? Are you adding swimming just because of immersion, or do you intend to put something in the water to actually make it appealing? Do you have enough water-based mechanics and settings to make the whole affair worth the development effort?
In most cases it’s not. It’s a game design decision to restrict exploration and gameplay scenarios that can break the experience the designers want to convey.
That’s about swimming on the surface, swimming underwater adds another more set of problems like navigation controls, the need to have an underwater terrain and creatures (more content needs to be created but games are expensive to produce. Also increases the size of the game files), it can be boring and therefore unnecessary if the design team does not dedicate enough time to make it interesting and fun, may not be consistent with the rest of the game concept, can break other aspects of the game and more.
Sometimes limiting the player is a smart decision.
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