One of the biggest questions fans have had for years now is regarding the whereabouts of GTA 6. It wasn’t just a simple fan desire to play the next game in the franchise, but rather, the previous entry in the series was released nearly ten years ago, and there weren’t any clues as to when the next one would be announced, let alone when it would come out. Then, the leak happened, and everything got turned on its head, including when fans now thought the game might come out. Now, a new report has emerged that indicates that there is more going on here than we thought.
According to an insider named Tez2, Rockstar Games has been working on GTA 6 for a lot longer than people expected. How much longer? According to them, Rockstar has been working on this game since before Red Dead Redemption 2 launched in 2018. That would mean the game has been in development for at least five years, if not longer. But wait, there’s more. The insider also claimed the sequel to Red Dead Redemption caused work on the game to start from scratch.
Why would another game cause the reboot of a very different one? Multiple reasons, according to the report. The largest issue was crunch, or the amount of work it would take for the game to be finished in a short amount of time. Crunch is an infamous part of the video game industry and many studios get called out when they do it to their employees. The initial version of the game had such a scope to it that crunch would’ve been needed to get it done to the level they wanted. That coincides with other rumors about the game that it would feature multiple countries you could travel to instead of just one city or state like previous iterations.
Another issue that caused the reboot was technology that had been in the works. A programming patent was cited as the one that caused Rockstar to pause things. It was a program that would allow for more realistic behavior in NPCs, including how they acted behind the wheel of a car. The GTA franchise loves being in grand cities, so having realistic NPCs would be a big boon.
Fast forward to now, with the leaks that have come out, and it’s clear that while Rockstar has been working on GTA 6 for a while, they’re still working on making the game what they want it to be. It’s good that they acknowledged the flaws in what they had before and scaled things back so that they could complete it without overloading their team. Hopefully, when the game does come out, it’ll be everything they want and something that fans can enjoy.
Source: GTAForums