‘It’s a Step Forward in All Respects’ – Exclusive GTA 6 Interview
The whole world is going feral as Grand Theft Auto 6's November release date approaches, desperate for even the tiniest of details. Meanwhile Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, is a man who has had to keep all those details secret for a very long time.
Finally, when I sat down in his office in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh for an exclusive IGN interview, he was able to spill some of those GTA 6 secrets for the very first time.
"I think the challenge for us on this game is the same as it is on any new game for us,” says Nelson. “How do we evolve and build upon the good things we have done before in all the ways these things need to evolve, but at the same time ensure that the game still has everything that made the previous games in this series resonate with people?"
The answer seems to be, for a large (if not the most) part, in creating a whole world that players can spend meaningful time in, engaging in fulfilling activities that go beyond simply grinding sidequests for cash or trying to boost stats to power through the main story. The setting of Leonida is begging to be explored and experienced by the player.
"The game is so big, I don’t know that there’s anybody on the team that knows all of it," he says.
Making friends (or not) in Leonida
As we're talking, Nelson is multitasking, playing through a slice of Grand Theft Auto 6 that will go on to perfectly exemplify his point. It's dense with NPCs, traffic weaving through the streets, and opportunities for mayhem at every turn. And those people on the sidewalks? They're ready to cause all sorts of chaos.
"While we pushed interaction with NPCs as far as we could for Red Dead Redemption 2, with this game we are taking it much further,” he explains. "The team has done an incredible job to create all of this crazy dialogue, and you can stand there and listen to them, but we’ve tried to find a balance where if you stand too close to a group, they should notice that you're eavesdropping."
"So, if you stand there and try to listen to the whole thing, they'll often turn around, notice you and go, ‘Oh hey, can I help you?’ Or if you follow people for too long and too close so that they can hear you, they’ll go, ‘Oh, hey.’ Then they may be aggressive, or they may just want to get away from you. When we first started these ideas back on Red Dead Redemption 2, we thought if we could get it working there in a more sparsely populated world, we imagined what it might feel like at scale in a modern world. So it was one of the scary but very worthwhile and fun challenges we took on with this game."
According to Nelson, an epic amount of time, research and work went into populating the world, styling the NPCs so that every area of the world feels distinct. Rockstar even had a team in LA solely dedicated to NPC dialogue, which is how you end up with GTA gems like "you can use my balls like a punching bag" and "I can pee on you if you pay me."
The evolution of the world’s NPCs extend beyond banter, clothing, and mugging them for $5. It's one of the places where it’s clear that the development of Red Dead Redemption 2 has had a significant influence on GTA 6.
"This NPC interaction system is one that is returning and evolved from Red Dead Redemption 2,” says Nelson. “In the past, we’ve had systems where you can speak to NPCs, in Red Dead Redemption 1 and GTA 5 there were basic systems for interacting, but the interactions were very simple. But with Red Dead Redemption 2, we were finally able to incorporate the ability to interact with NPCs as a more fleshed-out system."
He specifically references the use of the left trigger, something that was once a binary system, and how the team had to adapt to allow for the more nuanced approach of using the trigger as a way to interact with the world without pulling out a weapon. That same system and the expertise around it have made their way into GTA 6.
"We have to do so much work in design, in code behaviors, in animation, in writing, to get these
interactions to feel believable," he says. "Now, everybody across all of these teams – across technical teams, animation teams, across design teams, across writing teams – need to in a way become students of human behavior. You find yourself watching how people behave out in the world and studying the rise and fall of a conversation as you pass two people."