‘It’s a Big Map, a Very Big Map’ – GTA 6 Is Rockstar’s Most Complex World Yet
When it comes to open-world games, and especially Rockstar’s, one of the biggest questions is always “how big is the map?” Well, when it comes to GTA 6 we now have a answer. Kind of.
The main stories of Rockstar games and the bombastic missions that they’re made up of are always a huge part of the allure of these now once-in-a-generation events, but there’s always plenty to do once those tales have ended. As with 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2, it will be no different in GTA 6.
“There is a whole other world in Red Dead Redemption 2, yes. GTA 6 is very much like that,” Rob Nelson, co-studio head of Rockstar North, told IGN in an exclusive interview. “There's a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we're not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore you will be rewarded – a lot. It’s a big map, a very big map.”
To create such a large playground to play in takes a huge amount of time and effort, though, as well as the tools to build them with. This is where the power of the current generation of consoles comes into the picture, with Rockstar now able to push things even further than Red Dead Redemption 2 was able to go when it launched on PS4 and Xbox One.
“I think with Red Dead Redemption 2, we finally had the team and the tech and then took the time we needed to push the idea of making a fully realized consistent-feeling world further than we ever had,” Nelson explains. “With that game we took the time necessary to take advantage of that generation of hardware to maximize the quality of our open world population, design, and gameplay so that when you were riding from here to there in-game, you were constantly getting distracted and pulled in different directions. And then you could really get lost as that character in that place. That's when to me, these games can feel magical and create a sense of wonder that the world is alive – and you get these little shivers of ‘What’s happening?’
GTA 6 is a continuation of our team pushing in this direction – doing everything we possibly can to create the largest, deepest, most densely populated and complex world we have ever built for people to get lost in.”
One of the most noticeable improvements to the world of Leonida when compared to previous Grand Theft Auto locations, will be the people that populate. Thanks to the power of modern consoles, a far greater level of diversity will be seen when it comes to body shapes, height, and the way they move through Vice City and its surrounding areas.
“One of the coolest things about this game being developed from the ground up on this generation of hardware is taking advantage of all the memory that we have on the latest consoles combined with our teams’ experience doing this for so long together,” says Nelson.
“NPCs have more height differentiation and body shape differentiation than ever before, we could never have had this variety before because different body types had to share animation sets. So, if you had the same animation on the 5’6” person and the 6’2” person, they wouldn’t line up if they're fighting or sitting in cars—basically any interactions with each other or the environment. But on this game, the team worked out a system where they now retarget those animations on the fly. Now we have a huge variety of heights and shapes and it all works together because of what this team was able to pull off.”
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.