GTA 6 is so detailed no one person knows it all, Rockstar says
No one person at Rockstar knows everything inside Grand Theft Auto 6.
That is the account of Aaron Garbut, head of development at the studio. He spoke to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier during a visit to Rockstar North for a report on the making of the game, and said the project is too large and detailed for one mind to hold, according to Eurogamer.
He gave an unlikely example from Red Dead Redemption 2, the studio's open-world western released in 2018. Horses in that game have testicles with realistic movement, which contract in the cold and expand in warmth. The feature was not ordered from above.
It was added autonomously by one person or a small group. Garbut used it to explain how individual developers can shape Rockstar's games.
Staff working on Grand Theft Auto 6 have the same freedom to add things they think are cool. Phil Hooker, now director of technology, provided another case. The system in Red Dead Redemption 2 where players hold the left trigger to talk, greet or interact with what is nearby came from Hooker working on his own, not from a request by creative leads.
IGN also reported that link between developer freedom on GTA 6 and the horse detail in Red Dead Redemption 2.
The visit also produced small production details. Roads in Grand Theft Auto 6 are significantly narrower than in Grand Theft Auto 5, so players feel the pressure of traffic more. Rockstar tested replacements for the series' radial menu, the circular on-screen picker used to choose weapons and items, but decided to keep it.
The numbers show the growth behind that detail. Some artists have been on Grand Theft Auto 6 for 11 years. The art production team stood at five or six people on Grand Theft Auto 5 and now stands at 65 people. Rockstar has expanded from 2,441 employees to 4,711 employees across 12 offices since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018.
For players, this points to where surprises may come from. Not only large missions or story beats, but small behaviours added by someone with time and room to experiment. A narrower street makes a chase feel tighter. A familiar menu keeps controls steady while everything else grows.
