Grand Theft Auto VI is the first game in the series built to make you care, according to the people who made it. Asked whether this is the first GTA that tries to encourage a measure of empathy, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson answered: “I would say so.”
Nelson and Rockstar’s head of licensing Jennifer Kolbe spoke to The Guardian for a hands-on feature in its Saturday edition, five days before the game launches on Thursday, November 19. The piece describes a slower, more deliberate kind of crime than GTA V, and a couple the player is asked to look after.
Rockstar added “mechanisms that encourage” empathy, for players who want them
Nelson tied the change to the story rather than to any rule the game imposes. “I would say that it’s a product of the story we’re trying to tell,” he said. “We’ve tried for the first time in a GTA to provide mechanisms that encourage it, for those who want to.”
The clearest of those mechanisms is the relationship between Jason and Lucia. “The relationship is yours to nurture or yours to lose,” Nelson said. “Whether it remains a romantic relationship is in your hands.” According to the feature, the two text and call each other when they are apart, can go on dates to the gym, a bar, a meditation retreat or a liquor-store stick-up, and there is a button to make them hold hands. Neglect the relationship and there are consequences.
Jason and Lucia start out hotwiring low-end cars and picking basic locks
The hands-on describes a game where you have to be more careful than in any earlier GTA. Jason and Lucia cannot steal any car they like or walk straight into a bank. At the start they can only hotwire low-end vehicles and pick basic locks, and they work up to higher-value jobs later.
Nelson gave the reasoning: “These guys are a younger couple with their backs against the wall. Narratively, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to go out and cause as much carnage and make as much noise as they can.”
In practice that means scoping out a target first, whether it is a gas station or a mall boutique. The feature says you can disable security cameras or steal the footage, find back doors and safe codes, and get out before witnesses arrive. Skip the preparation and things escalate fast: the jewellery store robbery shown to the paper ends with a guard opening fire and a police chase across half a district.
Rockstar says it is “not punishing people” who play the old way
None of this removes the freedom the series is known for. Nelson called working out how to encourage different behaviour without restricting players one of the biggest challenges of the game’s development.
Crime is a fundamental part of GTA, at least, up until now, it has been. We’re trying to make sure we’re not punishing people for playing the game they are used to … [but] your actions will have some effect on how the game plays out.
The smaller details point the same way. You can ask a passer-by if you can pet her dog, and Jason does. You can interrupt pedestrians mid-conversation. Pull out binoculars at the beach and a gull gets recorded in a wildlife logbook, which has 62 types of birds to spot.
“They could have made GTA 5.5, and done it faster”
The interview also addresses the 13-year wait. Kolbe said the team “would never stop working on this game if they had the choice,” and that a quicker, safer sequel was an option Rockstar passed on.
“They could have made GTA 5.5, and done it faster,” she said. “Ultimately, that’s not what they wanted.” Nelson put it more bluntly: “You have to take big swings. It can’t be just more of the same.”
On the cost of that swing, Nelson said the limit is no longer technology but people: “You can throw money at the problem, and you can to an extent, but it’s no guarantee of making something good.” The feature adds that the game has been in development in some form since 2015, when the team took its first research trips to Miami.
The paper also reports that many staff at Rockstar North are already taking time off ahead of launch. Take-Two confirmed development was complete on November 9. Grand Theft Auto VI is out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19.
