Rockstar Games has been quite vocal about how ambitious its upcoming title – Grand Theft Auto 6 – is going to be following the Extended Look showcase in August. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has now reported that the studio even went as far as to model advanced sweat technology for the game. In a recent video discussing why GTA 6 took so long to develop, Schreier spoke about his discussions with the development team where this information was revealed.
“They told me that they have a specific system in the game that will make it so Lucia, Jason, or whoever will exert different amounts of sweat depending on how much effort they’re putting in. If they’re dancing extra hard in the nightclub, they will sweat more than if they are not, which I think shows you the level of detail they’re putting into this game.”
Eagle-eyed fans have likely spotted an example of this sweat technology in action in the Extended Look showcase, which had a brief scene of Lucia enjoying her time in a nightclub. In the scene, Lucia had a realistic amount of sweat all over her as she vibed and danced to the music. This same technology will likely be visible elsewhere in the game as well, since Grand Theft Auto 6 will allow players to partake in several activities that would make a real-world person sweat, like working out in a gym or taking part in an underground fight club.
Interestingly, sweat on video game characters was once used to signify a major technological jump. We used to see this leading up to the launch of the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, where sports games would showcase how the in-game athlete would sweat realistically, giving the titles a massive jump in visual fidelity over their PS2/GameCube/Xbox versions.
Rockstar Games is no stranger to having these kinds of minor details in its games that tend to be incredible technical challenges to implement. Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, had realistic hair growth for protagonist Arthur Morgan. This allowed players to gradually grow out their beard, moustache, and hair, and it even extended into customization options where you could only get hairstyles that were at the same length or shorter than Arthur’s hair at the moment.
This also ties into what Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson has said about the world’s complexity in Grand Theft Auto 6 being comparable to that of Red Dead Redemption 2.
“There is a whole other world in Red Dead Redemption 2, yes. GTA 6 is very much like that. There’s a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we’re not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore, you will be rewarded – a lot. It’s a big map, a very big map.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 is making its way to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 19th. For more details, take a look at how the developers created an entire team dedicated to writing NPC chatter.
