GTA 6 Felt Too Fast For Its Own Detail So Rockstar Slowed It Down
First is that in terms of scale, it's roughly the size of Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and Grand Theft Auto IV combined. That kind of scale is highly ambitious of Rockstar, especially with ray-tracing and all the modern RAGE engine features in mind, but the sheer scale is only part of the story.
Development head Aaron Garbut says the game contains "an order of magnitude more interiors" than those games, that "any random location" is densely hand-detailed, and that the overall realism has increased so much that Rockstar actually needed to slow down the game's vehicles and overall simulation to minimize an uncanny valley effect and enhance its realism.
The full-length Edge cover story (also available to read online through Gamesradar,) emphasizes the ways that Grand Theft Auto VI has upped the fidelity of its world simulation compared to Red Dead Redemption 2. Dynamic weather travels with clouds around the map, allowing players to drive through or around rough weather as they see fit, or brave intense waves at sea. Pedestrians will flee for cover from rain and thunder as well, and that's not even the tip of the iceberg.
Pedestrian and player interactions have become more systemic than ever as well. In the past, pedestrians would largely flee from you or fold under your demands, but in the Edge demo, Rockstar showed off just how much they've evolved.
Now, pedestrians are wary if you're even carrying a weapon on your back, not just waiting for you to aim and fire it. What's more, pedestrians can react to you looking at them too long, with one having been provoked to unleash his dog and chase the player. Other pedestrians may also fight back if you hijack their cars, or give police tracking information for newer models.
Grand Theft Auto VI also changes how the Wanted level is handled. Based on Red Dead Redemption 2, the new Criminal Profile system now attaches morality to Jason's and Lucia's actions in ways that directly influence how the story unfolds.
Whether this means more evil actions lead to a more tragic outcome is currently unclear—after all, it's a crime story, and a Grand Theft Auto one at that. For all we know ahead of launch, the "kindest" criminal route may have the saddest ending. Based on the peek of the story we got from the Extended Look, it's anyone's bet at this point.
