On November 19, a meteorite will impact the world of popular culture. Its name is Grand Theft Auto VI and, after more than a decade of waiting, everything points to its arrival having consequences far beyond the video game: it will be one of the major phenomena of the year in cultural, technological, entertainment, and economic terms. EL PAÍS has been the only Spanish-language media invited to exclusively see Grand Theft Auto VI, a game that, after more than a decade of waiting, aims to revolutionize interactive entertainment. The visit to Rockstar North, the company’s headquarters in Edinburgh, took place a month ago. The session lasted about two hours and included the screening of the game’s third trailer (which premieres today on Netflix), an interview with Rob Nelson (development director and co-director of Rockstar North), and more than an hour of playable demonstration on PlayStation 5. We break down the news and secrets of a product that promises to revolutionize the industry. Spoiler: the game is everything people expect. And more.
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Question. We are perhaps talking about the most anticipated game in history. And the demand is at its highest. How do you manage such high expectations?
Answer: I think we are aware of it, but we just try to focus on what we know we have to do. If we think too much about the pressure and expectations, we can make mistakes. Many people loved GTA V, others did not; some believe GTA IV was better; some loved Red Dead Redemption 2 [the company’s previous game, from 2018], others thought it was too long or too slow. If you listen to everything and try to fix everything, you might end up making something a bit bland, without purpose. If we try to do everything, we will dilute what this game needs to convey. Will we ever be completely satisfied with it? Completely? I hope we meet as many expectations as people have about it.
The data may help contextualize the phenomenon: various studies estimate that only in the United States the economy will suffer more than 1 billion dollars due to the number of workers who will be “sick” on launch day, a Thursday. The US Army has offered four days off to its soldiers to play the game if they extend their work contract for several years. During these months, a legion of fans has been counting cigarette butts in the parking lot of Rockstar’s headquarters in Edinburgh in case increased activity indicated that some news about the game would be published. The launch, in short, will move billions in sales of consoles, accessories, and copies of the game. Not surprisingly, the previous installment of the saga, GTA V (2013), with 230 million copies sold and a huge multiplayer mode, is the highest-grossing cultural product ever: nearly 10 billion dollars.
Rockstar’s headquarters in Edinburgh is located between the Parliament and a hill. About 900 people work there, but the game was developed by almost 4,000 if you count all Rockstar studios worldwide. During the session, the controller was in Nelson’s hands, something unusual in a presentation of this type, which may raise suspicions. But the reason was quickly understood: if the journalist had been given the controller, he would have started stealing cars and acting crazy around the city, but Nelson’s mission was different: to first slowly show the different layers of a world built to react to what the player does. Of course, there was time later for chases and shootouts, but from the first minutes, with the character inside an apartment and the exterior of Vice City visible through the blinds, it was clear that Rockstar’s obsession is not only with graphics: it is with depth, with making every element of the setting seem to have a reason to be there and be able to become, when the time comes, part of a story.
The adventure takes place in Vice City, within the fictional State of Leonida, a distorted version of Florida. And the player will control two characters, Jason and Lucia, a couple (also romantic) of criminals who will have to survive among robberies, chases, and criminal conspiracies, while their relationship constitutes the emotional center of the story. When asked what he is most proud of about the game, Nelson thinks for a moment. “I think… the depth of the experience. How much you can immerse yourself in this world and get lost in it, maybe even more than in previous games, including Red Dead Redemption 2.” RDR2, the company’s previous game (2018), is an absolute masterpiece of the genre: a twilight western in which not only the gameplay works, but also the heartbreaking redemption story of the gunslinger Arthur Morgan. GTA VI aims to be a mix of both worlds: the freewheeling and wild experience of the GTA saga, but with the narrative depth of RDR2. “The world is much more interactive even than Red Dead 2: there are many more things you can pick up and interact with,” Nelson points out. “We are also proud of some new elements we have incorporated into the game: these characters and this story about a couple and how it feels to be in a relationship, something we hadn’t done before.”
Gameplay innovations
What EL PAÍS was able to see is enough to whet any gamer‘s appetite. There are many innovations: to start, the visual aspect, with impressive graphics, physics superior to almost any other game, and hyper-realistic details in environmental degradation (bullet holes in walls, scratches on cars). The player character also shows wounds and scratches if injured. More novelties: the police wanted level is now up to six stars, and the player has the “superpower” of concentration, which (like Dead Eye in Red Dead Redemption) slows down the environment and helps aim and in combat. The combat, by the way (we fought several pedestrians during the hour of gameplay), seems specifically like a fighting game, using interactive elements (car doors, for example) to strike. All this wrapped in a karma system that evaluates our actions and our criminal reputation in the world.
Reactions with pedestrians, and the small stories that happen randomly in the world, are endless. An example of what we experienced: the protagonist approaches a pair of police officers standing by their car; suddenly, the sound of breaking glass is heard, and when we turn around, a woman handcuffed with her hands behind her back is seen who has headbutted the car window and is crawling out like a worm. One of the officers pulls out a taser and shoots at her, but misses and hits his partner, who falls to the ground while the other officer starts yelling and the woman runs off and disappears into the crowd. Everything happened in a flash, but it reflects how packed with narrative stimuli and comedic situations this game is. People approach and talk to you, try to flirt with you, rob you, give you clues about a stash or a gang hideout… the level of interaction in conversations with the omnipresent pedestrians is simply astonishing, because Rockstar’s big bet is that the game’s systems are capable of creating stories by themselves. That every improvised situation could end up looking like a carefully written mission.
More examples of how deep the game’s mechanics are: we can play with cans after drinking them, read every magazine in supermarkets… doors, vehicles, trash cans, everything stops being simple decoration. The physical variety and character animations have been expanded, and their reactions depend on what happens around them: they can be friendly, aggressive, suspicious. The goal is for the player to need the interface less (in fact, it can be adjusted to hide it completely) and look more at the world around them.
In the second half of the demonstration, there was also time to do what is expected of a Grand Theft Auto: steal vehicles, rob stores, escape the police, and star in shootouts in the streets and from cars. Also, as will be seen in the Netflix trailer premiering this Thursday, not everything will be urban: you can go scuba diving among corals, drive huge vehicles in the countryside, paraglide among skyscrapers, interact with wildlife… the game aims to be, simply, infinite, and the combination of pedestrians with routines, relationships, vehicles, police, economy, activities, and consequences produces a particularly powerful feeling: it does not seem like a world built around missions, but missions capable of sprouting from a world that worked without us.
Even stealing a car, one of the saga’s most recognizable actions, gains new layers of depth. Vehicles can have alarms, trackers, different security systems, and the player has specific tools (lockpicks, mobile hacking) to overcome those barriers. The same goes for heists: it is possible to access through different places, use tools to avoid alarms, destroy camera recordings, open safes in different ways, and coordinate with your partner (Jason or Lucia, whoever is not being used), who can watch the hostages while the player acts. Violence ceases to always be the easiest solution: the game records the player’s behavior and allows developing less aggressive strategies to safeguard our reputation. The relationship with the police also changes: chases no longer depend solely on accumulating stars (now the maximum wanted level will be six), but on what happened, the violence used, and the scandal our crime generated.
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Distorting mirror
Gameplay innovations aside, the heart of the game will be the (love) story between the two protagonists, Jason Duval, a former military man, and Lucia Caminos, a Hispanic criminal. When asked about influences, Nelson is clear: “Bonnie and Clyde, The Getaway. Noir: Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford, Miami stories. Edward Bunker… That kind of classic crime novel. And, obviously, we love Michael Mann… And the action movies of the eighties and nineties for the high-octane missions,” he laughs. It is evident that the game exudes the tarantinoesque humor so typical of GTA, but in this case, the game dialogues with the real world: the situation in the United States, the immigration issue, Lucia’s Latin roots…
Question. Lucia’s immigrant background is something many have highlighted. Is this a more political game than other installments of the saga?
Answer. I think our main goal is to entertain people, before trying to make any kind of political statement. You have to think that we work on a very long development cycle. So something very relevant today may not be when the game is finished, because that is another issue: we live in a crazy time, where everything moves very fast and social media amplifies and exacerbates everything. Everything goes so fast and the news cycle is so fast that it would be impossible for us to keep up. So we pay attention, but think that we have been working on this game through three presidential administrations! Many things have happened, and others have stopped being news. It is more about trying to capture the fun and peculiarities of society at this particular moment and, hopefully, of the era this game tries to represent.
Q. A slice of life.
A. A slice of life. I think that is when the game is at its best: when it captures a kind of timeless human stupidity. I think that is the best approach, and we have to find a fun angle.
There is another reason why Nelson has the controller and not the journalist, and that is that the session also works as a bug test: during the demonstration, Nelson points out small errors to his colleagues that need to be fixed. But beware, it is not that the game has flaws (this journalist did not see any serious ones). We are talking about tiny things: a character who raises their head too much when talking, a texture that shines too much, a car door that opens when it shouldn’t. For the player, these are practically invisible imperfections; for Rockstar, they are obsessive adjustments that will be made until the very moment the game is released.
Impact and controversy
The launch has not been without controversy either. Rockstar has bet that the game will only be sold in digital format, not on disc; a decision that has provoked criticism among collectors and defenders of the physical format and adds to Sony’s announcement (the company behind the PlayStation console) to stop releasing games in physical format in 2028. Something that could disrupt the entire industry.
Q. Given this, do you think the future of video games is only digital?
A: I don’t know… The only thing I know is that this decision [not releasing the game on physical disc] gives us more time to work. And I will take advantage of every second we can get before launch. But I really don’t know. We feel very fortunate to be where we are in the industry because it is going through a scary moment. We just want to offer the game at the highest possible level and, hopefully, be able to move forward, and we hope the industry can find a better situation.
Added to this is the price, as the standard edition will cost $79.99, while the Ultimate edition (which includes exclusive stores or vehicles) will reach $99.99, a price many see as very expensive. Still, this part seems to have worked well for Rockstar, as 90% of the pre-orders already made for the game have opted for the more expensive version.
Its own yardstick
GTA VI impresses not only because it has better graphics, more cars, more characters, or more activities. It impresses because all these elements seem connected: a conversation can become a clue, a clue a robbery, a robbery a chase, a chase a mission. And it all may have started because Jason decided to call Lucia to spend the afternoon. After more than an hour of demonstration, that seems to be the most interesting conclusion: Rockstar does not seem to want to simply build a bigger video game than the previous ones, it wants to build a world capable of surviving the player, reacting to him, and obviously surprising him. A world where stories are not always waiting to be activated, but can happen by accident.
Maybe that is why GTA VI is much more than the release of a video game. On November 19, not only will a new installment of one of the most important sagas in history arrive: a cultural event that has been growing in the imagination of millions of people for more than ten years will arrive. The question is no longer whether Rockstar will be able to live up to expectations. It is whether, once the world of Leonida opens before us, we will be able to explore all it promises.