Will Gta 6 Be About Bikers Again
Before GTA 4 there was Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis , the first game to use the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE). Table tennis might seem like a strange fit for a group of studios best known for sweeping cowboy epics and open-world crime sagas, but there's a method to Rockstar's madness.
Think about what table tennis is – a game of physics. The ball must account for the angle of the racket, the speed of the hit, and the bounce when it hits the table. In multiplayer, both players must experience the same thing.
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis laid the groundwork for the Euphoria tech-powered physics of GTA 4 , which allowed NPCs to hang from car doors, dive away from approaching vehicles, and topple down when pushed. It's a procedural animation blending technique that calculates forces and applies them realistically to characters, and it's what makes messing with NPCs so fun in modern GTA games.
After the launch of GTA 4 came the release of Midnight Club Los Angeles , the fourth installment in the racing series. As well as allowing Rockstar to have a go at creating an open-world LA before the launch of GTA 5 , it experimented with adjusting traffic density depending on the time of day, it had a dynamic weather system, and it gave Rockstar the chance to improve its driving model for the main event. Go back and play GTA 4 now and you'll find the vehicles are much stiffer, more lifelike than they are in GTA 5 , a game that strikes the perfect balance between realism and arcade handling.
Shortly after that game landed, GTA 4 got a couple of expansions in the form of Episodes from Liberty City , introducing two new characters and showing the events of GTA 4 from a different perspective. This was one of the touchstones for GTA 5 's character switching mechanic.
Then came Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3, which improved the gunplay. The former also introduced wildlife while the latter added slow-motion bullet-time, which is also used as a special ability when controlling Michael in GTA 5 .
Everything Rockstar makes informs what's coming. Even LA Noire was seemingly a failed experiment in the groundbreaking (at the time, though soon outdated) facial animation tech. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to look back at the most recent games and see what they could mean for GTA 6 . Obviously, there have been fewer games between GTA 5 and GTA 6 than there were between GTA 4 and 5 , but there's a lot we can learn from Red Dead Redemption 2 , GTA Online , and the GTA 5 relaunch.
Customization has always been a big part of Rockstar's games, whether you're tricking out a whip or you're forcing Arthur Morgan to grow a mountain-man beard. While these kinds of options will likely be more varied in GTA 6 , I think the biggest influence here will be from Red Dead Online 's 'roles' system.
With roles, players can bring in bounties, hunt animals, or search for lost treasure. The system still hasn't reached its full potential, but I expect Rockstar to take the lessons it learned here and apply them to GTA 6 's online portion. Roleplaying servers are a big part of GTA Online on PC, where people pretend to be cops, criminals, taxi drivers, doctors, and all manner of other things. If there's not some kind of official implementation of this in GTA 6 Online , I will eat my cowboy hat.
Like a certain angry, Irish MMA fighter, the GTA games have traditionally punched in every direction – no one is safe. But GTA 6 gives Rockstar the opportunity to focus on the villains of society and the systems that hold its characters down. With the current-gen launch of GTA 5 , we get a rare look into the Rockstar mindset. GTA 5 came out nine years ago, at a time when many people weren't as aware of the struggles trans people experience every day.
GTA 5 originally had content that punched down at the trans community with edgy 'jokes', but those were removed for the re-release. It's proof that Rockstar has become more aware of social issues in our current society. In Red Dead Redemption 2 , some of the best characters are strong women, and the entire gang is multicultural. Rockstar has matured alongside its audience in the last decade, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if GTA 6 offers a female protagonist for the first time in the series. Even if not, we can expect fewer jokes where the punchline is a marginalized person.
While I think there will be more than one protagonist in GTA 6 , I don't think it'll work in the same way as it did in GTA 5 , where you could freely switch between characters at almost any time. Instead, I think it will be a mix of that approach and Red Dead Redemption 2 's – you'll get multiple characters, but you'll switch between them at certain points in the story.
The problem with free character switching is that it takes away from ownership, which is a big part of GTA . It's hard to track in your head which buildings and businesses belong to Franklin versus Michael versus Trevor, and it becomes a juggling act to keep track of finances when you decide to dip into the stock market. Of course, I'll miss switching to Trevor only to find him almost nude, on a beach, and surrounded by dead bikers. My biggest hope is that Rockstar turns it into an anthology – shorter stories, but more of them. I love seeing these worlds from a different perspective like in Episodes from Liberty City , and this method would prepare players to wear different roles online. Whatever happens, though, GTA 6 's main character shouldn't be American .
Sure, it's nice to be able to carry an RPG, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, a shotgun, an SMG, a pistol, a baseball bat, and ten grenades, but it's not very authentic is it? Authenticity is something Rockstar has been aiming at for a while now – you can see it in every interaction in Red Dead Redemption 2 , from petting your horse to stealing cans of beans from a farmstead. You can also see it in the arsenal. Arthur Morgan can only carry what physically fits on his person – pistols tucked in their holsters and long guns slung over his shoulder. Anything he can't carry with him stays on his horse, which acts as a portable backpack.
Swap the horse for a car and this system could work well in GTA 6 . Not only would it look cool, but you'd feel extra smart for bringing the right tools to each job, popping open your trunk and perusing your ever-growing armory to lock and load before a mission. Rockstar could even make it so police react to your character brandishing a firearm in public, giving us Hitman -style animations for tucking it into the small of our backs. Perhaps we'll start off by having a pistol shoved down our pants, before earning enough to get some concealed holsters.
If you think Rockstar is going to throw away everything it learned about natural beauty in Red Dead Redemption 2 , think again. One of the big rumors surrounding GTA 6 is that it's codenamed 'Americas' internally.
This could hint at the game taking place in South America as well as North America, which means there needs to be plenty of wild terrain between the two. Vice City – which is based on Miami – will likely be the main location for the game, of course, so there's also the option to truncate the landmass down and allow players to travel to Liberty City across Georgia, which houses places such as Blood Mountain Wilderness. Sounds lovely.
Another thing Red Dead Redemption 2 nailed was making seemingly empty space interesting. It wasn't just the simulated ecosystem and random events, it was in how Rockstar poured detail into every location.
Every lonely hut in Red Dead Redemption 2 houses some kind of secret or dirty past. Despite the world being ridiculously massive, there's always something to discover, and none of it is ever repeated again.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF .
Source: https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/gta-6-what-to-expect