Rockstar Games has made no secret of the fact that Grand Theft Auto 6 has been a grand undertaking for the studio. In an interview with Edge magazine (via GamesRadar), Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson provided another example of how ambitious the team has been with the title, confirming that around 600,000 animations were created for the NPCs alone, which will help them be more expressive in showcasing their personality traits.
These NPC animations will be seen by players depending on their actions in the game as well as the state of the in-game world itself. This could range from the kinds of vehicles that are nearby, the player’s own behavior towards the NPCs, and even the weather and time of day
Along with this, Nelson also noted that the animations will be put to good use thanks to procedural systems used in the game to populate its world and fill out empty spaces. This means that NPCs you see while simply roaming around Leonida will even end up having their own distinct personalities, and their general behaviors will fall in line with these traits.
Nelson said that the behind-the-scenes decision about which animation plays out depends on questions like “Who’s going to be aggressive? How many people are going to go for a weapon? How many are going to test me?”
Grand Theft Auto 6 is slated to use an evolution of the NPC interaction system that we last saw in Red Dead Redemption 2. According to a report from earlier this month, the team had seemingly started working on its NPC system, where players would have the ability to greet or antagonize other characters, all the way back in 2014 or 2015. The 600,000 animations created by Rockstar for Grand Theft Auto 6 will likely end up making the game feel even more alive than Red Dead Redemption 2 did, despite the latter being critically praised for its open-world gameplay.
On the subject of NPCs, Rockstar had also confirmed earlier this month that there was an entire team dedicated to only writing for the NPC chatter that one would typically hear while roaming around.
“It’s a team from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life, but we all share a sense of humor and a desire to have a bit of fun with the ridiculousness of humans and the media and advertising. And none of us see it as background! It’s all part of the tapestry of the game and creates the experience of living in this wild world,” explained vice president of narrative Rupert Humphries.
The studio has also confirmed that characters in Grand Theft Auto 6 will sweat in a realistic manner depending on the intensity of their activities. According to Schreier, the studio has said that this was showcased in the Extended Look, which featured Lucia dancing at a nightclub while sweating profusely.
“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.”
Grand Theft Auto 6 is making its way to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 19th, and those who pre-ordered the title will be able to start preloading it on the 12th.
