GTA 6 Roads Are Narrower by Design, Rockstar Developer Says
Grand Theft Auto VI has significantly narrower roads than Grand Theft Auto V, and Rockstar chose that on purpose. Aaron Garbut, a Rockstar developer, said so in comments relayed by games journalist Jason Schreier, according to GameSpot.
Schreier shared the details in a YouTube video published on October 19, 2026. The 18-minute video covers small points that did not make the cut of his larger story, which is a Bloomberg feature on the making of the game.
The narrower roads were planned from the start of development. According to GameSpot, that choice created what Garbut called "ripple effects," meaning the team had to build more buildings and other elements to fill the streets.
The team also looked at changing how players pick weapons. Rockstar's Rob Nelson told Schreier the studio considered a more realistic weapon system that would limit how many weapons a player could carry. Rockstar spent "months if not years" testing alternatives to the weapon wheel, the circular menu used to switch weapons. In the end, it kept the wheel. GamingBolt reported that the experiments aimed to bring the system closer to the one in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Small details can also come from individual people. Garbut said no single person at Rockstar holds the whole of GTA 6 in their head. Developers are free to add small touches of their own. Red Dead Redemption 2 offers an example: horses' testicles shrink or expand depending on the weather. That detail was not on the game's feature list and no director asked for it. Individual developers or teams added it.
Development was not always smooth. The Bloomberg feature says the work took more than eight years, including two delays. Nelson describes one phase as "a dark period." Schreier says Rockstar went through "dark" years between 2019 and 2022, which he ties to the COVID-19 pandemic and to a debate over how realistic the game should be. Schreier also reports that the studio balanced realism against the arcade-style fun that GTA is known for, and that the debate caused some internal tension.
GTA 6 is scheduled to launch on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, according to GameSpot's report.
For players counting down to launch, the details show how much work sits behind a single street or a horse's coat. Every one of those choices was made by someone on a team, and the story of how they got there is now part of the public record.
