Rumor: Grand Theft Auto 6 Will Boast Huge Game Engine Upgrades

Rockstarmag has shared some new rumors about Grand Theft Auto 6, but in a different direction than most of the other rumors we have heard about so far.

Rockstarmag clarifies that these rumors do not come from the notorious Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks. Instead, they come from their own insider sources, and they claim to have verified them as well.

So Grand Theft Auto games run on a proprietary game engine called Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, or RAGE for short. Grand Theft Auto 6 will debut several advancements that will come with RAGE 9’s engine.

First off, RAGE is transitioning to a new water rendering engine, that will, in Rockstarmag’s words, be capable of “physically simulating water in an open-world video game in real time”. They go so far as to claim that this may indicate that the water will be a bigger part of the game, with water sports activities like surfing possibly being part of the game. This writer would personally suggest they add water skiing, as every b-movie producer’s filmable water sport of choice.

Secondly, the vehicle physics will benefit from “a significant increase in the number of polygons.” Rockstar will continue to use the arcade style controls of earlier Grand Theft Auto games for better accessibility. However, the improved physics will lead to more realistic accidents. This also means that augmenting your vehicle, for example, with a spoiler, will help you get through difficult storms.

Speaking of storms, the third major change is the addition of a realistic weather system. Much like a good sim racer, rain and wind will affect your driving, but this also affects the rest of the game. Your beach days can get ruined by strong winds, and you can expect to be stunned by sunrises and sunsets.

Lastly, Grand Theft Auto 6 will benefit from improved lighting thanks to physics-based rendering. This technology has been in the RAGE engine for a while now, and was used in Red Dead Redemption 2.  Howeve, RAGE 9 promises to introduce players to physically simulated light.

Of course, with these sorts of technologies, seeing is better than believing, but one can consider the generational leap games by other companies made between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, or Xbox One to Xbox Series X|S, and that’s the sort of improvement you can expect to see.

Of course, as always, GameRanx cannot verify the veracity of these rumors. But they do seem like commonsense and expected changes to bring Grand Theft Auto 6 up to the current generation of consoles.