For decades, I’ve been enamored with how video games began to resemble movies. There were concerns about the industry becoming too much like Hollywood, emphasizing visual panache and fidelity over actual gameplay. And while that’s an ongoing discussion, no one’s taken that cinema-like craftsmanship quite as far as Rockstar, much less dared to try, lest their budgets balloon to the size of most third-world countries’ GDPs (if not several combined).
But as much as the minds behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption want you to experience a movie-level production through a video game, they also want you to play like it’s a movie. Want to talk about hand holding and how annoying too much player guidance can be? Try a stranglehold on any kind of player expression or deviation whatsoever during a story mission. Stick to the script, and nobody gets hurt.
I love the attention to detail in these games, and seeing the bar continuously raised with each new production is as fascinating as it is incredulous. And yet, in 2018, when open-world games took lessons from Breath of the Wild’s openness, Red Dead Redemption 2 stuck to its guns and instantly failed you for even thinking about ad-libbing.
Which brings us to Grand Theft Auto 6. After all these delays, less than six weeks away at long last, and it just keeps looking better and better. But it’s not the new Wanted system where cops will identify Lucia or Jason based on their features, much less build a criminal profile. It’s not the ability to walk into a store and rob it blind, going loud or silent depending on the occasion, and where taking too much time can result in very real consequences. It’s not even the reveal of the new radio stations and their hosts, or how you can finally listen to music while walking, much less the new podcasts.
It’s that Rockstar is making the mission design more “open.” IGN recently published its full interview with studio co-head Rob Nelson from August following the Extended Look. Much of it has already been reported, but one new piece of information stuck out – the “balance between freedom and world building,” which specifically talks about the “filmmaker mentality” of ensuring players stick to the script.
Nelson admitted that hitting those “beats” is important to “move the narrative forward in a believable way,” which means having to “guide the experience.” However, he then said, “With this game we have made a very conscious effort to open things up where possible, without compromising the quality of the experience.”
Remember the mission where Lucia and Jason are in a high-rise apartment, and crooks barge in? The former is stuck with the wealthy, communicating information to the latter on another floor as he systematically “neutralizes” targets. As it turns out, there are “multiple routes” to escape. Nelson also noted that even in sections that are guided – like the cop chase after picking up Raul – you can still find other ways to escape. Yes, there’s an “optimal route” – an instruction, if you will. But if you choose to improvise, the words “Mission Failed” aren’t waiting to greet you.
“Anything where a mission can become systemic, and if it’s a wanted level or robbery system – we try to make it so that it doesn’t feel inconsistent with how the game works in the open world,” said Nelson.
As noted, however, it’s a balancing act, because keeping that Rockstar-level of quality and cinematic presentation will be difficult with “too much freedom or too much choice.” But the objective is clear: Open things up. Make it so that players can try what they would attempt in the real world. Deviate from the script. Try something, anything else, and see what happens.
It somehow gets even better, because the team is “pushing very hard to raise the level of quality with everything that can happen in the open world and tying a lot of what you can do there into what you’re doing as part of the overall narrative,” per Nelson. Rudimentary game design would turn this into a teachable moment – where different activities and less impactful missions teach you the essentials, if not reinforce them, for the higher-stakes narrative scenarios. With how much you’ll be robbing people blind, whether for fun or to build up enough money for the mandatory heists, it makes sense.
But that’s not all, because with this approach, the team at Rockstar wants to “continue to try and blur the lines between different types of ‘content.'” “We are very excited about some of what we have going on now in the open world,” said Nelson, “with how it reacts to you and the systems we have working together.”
So while concerns about whether the developer will stick to its mission direction have been mulling about since Red Dead Redemption 2, standing here, I realize the team isn’t just trying to make them more open and, in turn, more forgiving of different approaches. It’s also making the world, which promises a “lot of emergent, natural-feeling stuff happening pretty often” when roaming around, more cinematic. The result is a Rockstar-level game, perhaps one of the most expensive ever made, that aims to break the boundaries of what constitutes an “activity” and a “story mission.”
Suddenly, engaging in a conversation with a random stranger in a ride-share doesn’t feel like just a forgettable occurrence. Nelson gave an example of robbing a pawn shop, and it sounds like a scene that you direct. Whether it ends up with you driving away or fighting off any pursuing cops, maybe speeding past a train crossing at the last possible second to get away or causing a wipeout with the pursuing vehicles, creating an opportunity to slip past, the result is something more substantial: A story that feels personal and spontaneous, with all the triple-A trappings that you could want.
That doesn’t just make Leonida and its many vast regions so endearing that you’ll dive in and experiment to your heart’s content. It also makes the main story much more replayable. Going through Red Dead Redemption 2 again and admiring all the little details while sticking to the script is all well and good. But taking in all those details and being able to mix things up, somehow impacting the story in the process, makes it even better. That’s what Grand Theft Auto 6 is aiming for, that too over the course of what’s seemingly an 80-hour-long tale if you moderately indulge in some side content.
If that sounds overly ambitious, impractical or downright insane, well, that’s because it is. However, this isn’t the point where I quote the developer on the absurdity of what it’s trying to accomplish or the obvious boundaries in place because come on, this is a triple-A game in 2026. Boundaries are to be expected and/or respected, or it gets the scent trails again with no toggles.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not expecting Rockstar to suddenly revive the immersive sim genre with Grand Theft Auto 6. Yet when it talks about multiple routes and letting players find their one way, I have a gut feeling it’s not content with simple alternatives. If the “correct way” is the most polished and cinematic, then the others may be as well, to the point where they’re not really alternatives.
And I believe this because, past faults notwithstanding, the development team didn’t just look at complaints about excessively railroading players and address them. Instead, it took that as a foundation to find ways to elevate the game as a whole. Story missions, side content, random occurrences, you name it. Granted, we only have Nelson’s words to go off of here, but considering this is the same team that’s claiming such extensive NPC diversity, such incredible interior details, and a broad swathe of activities while showing us its work, I’m inclined to buy into the ambition.
If the results indeed speak for themselves in as satirical, larger-than-life, and grotesque a fashion as the development team aims for, then GTA 6 could do more than appeal to the tens of millions of long-time fans or the casual masses. It may very well set a new standard for the genre beyond what we expected. Time will tell, as always, but as the weeks count down and it becomes all the more real, Rockstar’s vision is becoming all the more blinding in its brilliance.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
