The big takeaway from the unprecedented success of Red Dead Redemption 2 is that Rockstar is only getting better at creating open sandboxes. What’s next in store for this renowned developer?
In an investigation into Rockstar’s plans, Kotaku interviews 15 people who have either been working for or have recently left Rockstar. The good news is Grand Theft Auto 6 is possibly the next game coming from the developer.
It’s been over six years since the launch of GTA 5, and since then, fans have been eager to see how Rockstar will overcome the bar it has set for itself. According to the investigation, the game is still pretty far off, and fans shouldn’t expect it soon. However, it’s still good news that they are already working on it.
The investigation also notes that Rockstar has a different approach to the next game. Instead of launching one grand game, GTA 6 is going to launch as a moderately sized title, which will be expanded over time. This is to avoid crunch time that results in bugs and other issues.
Although we’ve yet to see the game and its release date, fans already have their eyes set on a few features they want.
The next GTA is still a ways away, so it'll be a while before we see whether the company's attempts to mitigate crunch are really successful, but in the last year Rockstar has made several quality-of-life improvements and replaced managers that staff described as toxic.
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) April 15, 2020
An online component
One of the reasons why GTA 5 is still replayable today is because of its GTA Online mode. This free addition to the game lets players enjoy the entire map of the base game along with some friends. Aside from causing trouble, players can also participate in special heists with others. It’s an online component that features player vs. player and player vs. enemy elements, and fans will surely want this for GTA 6.
A return to a single protagonist
It was fun having Franklin, Trevor, and Michael around in GTA 5, but it was a bit taxing to have to level up and take care of three separate characters. Fans would prefer if Rockstar would dial back on this and return to a single protagonist structure. That worked well with instant classics like GTA 4 and GTA: San Andreas.
A better open-world
The explorable world in the previous games was constantly evolving. It’s hard to think of how Rockstar can one-up themselves regarding this part of the next GTA game, but fans know exactly what they want.
They want the next explorable area to have the same attention to detail as Red Dead Redemption 2, but they want it on a larger scale as well.
Since we don’t know when the next GTA will launch, it’s plausible that we’ll be getting the game on the PS5 at launch. Regardless of when that release will be, we’re sure that fans are more than excited to get their hands on it now.
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