GTA 6 Features “Significantly Narrower” Roads Than GTA 5; Devs Wanted Weapons System to Be More Like Red Dead Redemption 2
Vehicle chases are often a big part of any Grand Theft Auto game, and if you find it easy to drive around pedestrians and other vehicles in GTA 5, that will prove to be harder in GTA 6.
If you’re expecting Grand Theft Auto 6 to be bigger in every way compared to GTA 5, there’s at least one thing that’s now known, and that’s smaller: the roads.
This new tidbit of info might be something people noticed in the trailers, but it’s now confirmed.
GTA 6 Has Narrower Roads Compared to GTA 5 So It’s More Realistic
In a video talking about his experience visiting Rockstar’s main studio in Scotland, Jason Schreier talked about some of the info he wasn’t able to put in his “Making Of” GTA 6 feature.
According to Art Director Aaron Garbut. the roads are “significantly narrower” in GTA 6 than they were in GTA 5.
This was something Schreier didn’t notice until the developers pointed it out. In GTA 5, which was set in a fictional representation of Los Angeles, players saw these really wide roads that made it easy to zip through the streets and bypass traffic, and speed past other cars. Players really didn’t feel any traffic of any kind, which is an unrealistic depiction of LA. This made the game feel more racing game-ish, as players were freely driving around the city.
That won’t be the case with GTA 6. Rockstar’s idea for this highly anticipated sequel is narrower roads and denser traffic, which are things the studio has decided on from the very beginning of development.
This design decision had ripple effects to the rest of development. as Garbut said, “All these things sort of come to bite you later,” since this meant denser roads, narrower roads that equated to a lot more buildings, more construction around that concept — which is what Rockstar did.
GTA 6’s Weapon System Received Major Overhauls Multiple Times During Development
Another thing mentioned in the video is how realistic GTA 6 would be, and how much of these big systems from Red Dead Redemption 2 are going to carry over to this GTA game.
Rob Nelson, also one of the development leads, mentioned that Rockstar knew they wanted GTA 6’s weapon system to be more like Red Dead 2, where players couldn’t just carry an unlimited number of guns. Rockstar wanted it to be more realistic, where players had to select a loadout; players had to have a limited number of weapons they can hold at any given time.
Rockstar didn’t want it where players could just pull a rocket launcher out, then their guns and other stuff too. The developers’ idea was to use a weapon wheel but their concern was, wouldn’t all these blank spaces remind people of what they can’t actually do? What they can’t carry, and so on.
Rockstar second-guessed whether they should use a weapon wheel, and spent months — if not years — trying different things that would replace the weapon wheel. The devs tried trays, webs, and all sorts of different variations in the UI to just replace the weapon wheel. They even tried not having one, and after trying all these different iterations, they wound back where they started: with a weapon wheel, which is what players will see in the final version of GTA 6.
I’m interested in how these narrower roads will work in the game. It will probably make chases much more exciting and action-packed, and not to mention, way harder.
In related GTA 6 news, the developers revealed that players can expect “hundreds” of interior spaces that can be explored.
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