It looks like Rockstar have nailed a solid 2026 update to previous releases, everything looks great. But is that enough? It should be, but given the billions spent on development I think there's an expectation of more.
It also looks like they've kept the art and writing fresh for 2026. GTAV feels dated at this point, no criticism of course, and I was concerned that they would fail to modernise into a world that is quite different now than 13 years ago, but it seems they've likely succeeded at that.
I'm looking forward to playing, eventually, when it comes out on desktop. But is this the game of a generation that justifies buying a console? I'm not sure.
For sure its enough. We haven't had a GTA game for a decade.
There was some interview with the Skyrim people who didn't want to do the next skyrim because of the success of Skyrim. Lets be honest, just make another Skyrim a little bit better here, a little bit better there, new stores done.
A game is better than no game especially after that much time
I think it's mostly about the characters. GTAV was, in my opinion, much lighter-hearted than this is looking. Trevor was a hoot, Michael's marital problems were made light of, even Franklin as probably the most serious character still had plenty of quite direct comedy written around him.
I'm not sure that would go down well in 2026. The redneck thing feels tired, the public narrative of wealth inequality would likely make Michael feel out of touch, and much of the audience would have identified with Franklin but he doesn't really have the struggles that today's Millennials and Gen-Z have.
These two characters seem more realistic in that sense. Less direct comedy (although I still see that there's the iconic GTA parody in places), a couple who are probably going to be much more relatable even if they're criminals, and a standing in society that is more relatable.
It's not that the comedy wouldn't land, the parody/satire is important and it looks like it's still there, it's more that I think V depended on some stereotypes that are long gone, or that society recognises differently now.
I don’t play games to find people I relate to. I play games to become a character for a period of time in the game. Rich, poor, redneck… it doesn’t really matter. They can all be interesting and engaging characters to take on if the game is written well and fun to play.
I think this a mistake a lot of modern game companies are making. They think people want to be represented, when what most people want is an escape. I want to do things in a game that I would never be able to do in real life. That’s half the fun.
I also think the venn diagram of people offended by stereotypes and those who play GTA barely overlap. They may be completely separate circles. The people who will complain about the game were never going to buy it, so Rockstar shouldn’t care about what they have to say. Make the game for the customers, not the activists and critics.
Let's say I'm caucasian male grown up in poor ex-USSR shithole struggling through immigration, changing countries and losing social circle multiple times along the way and struggling with loneliness, etc.
Then the least I want to do is to play game as migrant from Eastern Europe. Because if the character and their story is accurate and representive then I just be bored from it. And if it's inaccurate then it's just bad story telling.
I The Office, Dwight made a version of himself in Second Life that was the same as his real life. The whole idea that someone would want to experience their actual life in game form was the joke.
I see your point, and maybe I'm over indexing on this or not describing it well.
I don't see myself in either of these characters, but I do see them as representative of society, whereas I don't see the GTAV characters as representative of society. However, I think I did when I first played GTAV the year it came out.
The last game I played was James Bond First Light – and that's for the escapism you describe, I got to "be" James Bond, great. But in the same way, the game and story felt relevant today, with aspects being believable in 2026, which is a stark comparison to how watching Thunderball recently made me feel – that was jarring and much harder to "escape" into because of how out of touch it was (obviously understandably so).
I get what you are saying, I however just don't agree.
GTA has it roots in a story about the criminal world in a version of a US city with a clash of many subcultures within it.
I don't see at what time they tried to cater to teens, outside the parodying themes of that generation which they fit perfectly. I saw that every installment representative of a criminal from one of these cultures to top of the criminal food chain.
Be it the Scar Face parody of Vice City, Gang culture of San Andreas, the Immegrant story of the 4th or the trio they went for with the 5 with the LA story melting pot.
As a none-american it perfectly represented the characters and views of over the top depictions of the movie version of these places.
Be it the Scar Face parody of Vice City, Gang culture of San Andreas, the Immegrant story of the 4th or the trio they went for with the 5 with the LA story melting pot.
I think this is the crux of my point actually – these are all stories that were more relevant at the times they were released. GTAV seems to be more down to earth, and modernised the stereotypes that it's poking fun at.
Gangsters don't resonate right now (in my opinion), immigration is viewed very differently, wealth inequality is viewed differently.
As a non-american it perfectly represented the characters and views of over the top depictions of the movie version of these places.
Maybe we disagree a little here – also not American, but where I feel that GTAV was more of that over the top depiction of the movie version, I'm getting a different vibe from GTAVI, something a little closer to the real America we see today.
I'm getting a different vibe from GTAVI, something a little closer to the real America we see today.
It seems like they are adding a lot of references to viral videos and news clips into the game. I’m an American, and while these things happened, they are all exceptional events, that’s why they made the news and went viral. Day-to-day, these over the top things aren’t things most people see all the time. The game seems like it’s going to take the “Florida Man” stereotype and turn it up to 11… as a general vibe. I don’t know that we saw enough to get a good read on the main characters, at least I haven’t.
I think it’s easy to get a skewed perspective of what real America is like from the news or bodycam footage… but it is entertaining, which will hopefully make for a good game.
I mostly play games that have good gameplay mechanics, be it fast action games, strategy or racing sims. There are very few games that can even get close to movies regarding characters and story, so I don't bother. That includes GTA with the possible exception of part IV.
Bioshock Infinite, for example, doesn't do it for me. It's a pretty bad shooter and the story is not as good as its authors think it is. The Witcher 3 doesn't do much for me, but I will try again after the recent free update - supposedly it's got improved combat.
The only game with not great mechanics that I like so far is Mass Effect. I'm impressed by the characters that feel like real-actual people and the varying environments that all feel true to life, all following the logic of their incentives and resembling their parallels in the real world. For example, the free trade moon(?) feels like something between Switzerland (or Singapore) and an office skyscraper, but with a little more crime and corruption - the local government just wants business to run smoothly and is willing to overlook some plausibly deniable sins of good customers. I have never seen anything like it in a game.
What are some games in various genres that you consider to have good gameplay mechanics? For me, I'd have to say Resident Evil 4 (original, haven't played the new one yet), Smash Bros. Ultimate, Rocket League, and, weirdly, Pikmin 3's mission mode.
Definitely Rocket League, the new Doom games (upgrades and glory kills are out of place though), Brutal Doom, racing sims like Dirt Rally and Assetto Corsa - difficult as heck but lowering expectations kinda works, the Half-Lifes, Hollow Knight has strong mechanics (I like the atmosphere but not the messy backstory), Command & Conquer 1 (far and away my all-time favorite for style, great units too, AI is trash), XCOM though the pod mechanics are a major blunder, the suspense and problem solving in Splinter Cell is nice (kinda clunky controls but movement is supposed to be difficult), Broforce has silly and satisfying mechanics, X-Wing and TIE Fighter (again)...
I recently got the remake of Resident Evil 1 and oh boy, the clunkiness of just about everything is off the charts just like I remember from a friend's PS1. I did want to like it, but somehow, Japanese games with a serious tone never seem to do it for me.
The gaming world, which is what I presume they meant, is much different today. The days of clunky gunplay and insta-failing a mission for going 10 feet out of the correct path are long gone and would be tiresome for most gamers.
Absolutely, I replayed some of GTAV is ~2018 it already felt a bit clunky in that respect.
I think some of this is technological, but much of it is style. There are likely limitations that forced some of those issues back in 2013, but I think it's more down to game design practices. It doesn't take a lot of tech to give you another 10 feet of leeway and trigger a sound bite with a snarky comment from another character.
Wait till you replay the earlier games. I bought the definitive edition trilogy in a sale, only just started playing thru them. Decided to skip GTA III completely after seeing the reviews and lack of unofficial patches. Vice City feels much more playable after adding a bunch of patches, but unfortunately it doesn't fix the clunkyness and difficulty of the missions. I'm only like 7 or 8 missions in and feel like quitting, having to retry several missions multiple times. Especially that RC helicopter mission, I've no idea how I even managed to complete that (took like 6 retries). But I'll somehow try and chug thru it.
Hopefully San Andreas is lot better (and given the number of mods available for it, it feels like it would be).
Just from the video you can gather that there's much more than just a visual upgrade. The fact that you can apparently just rob random stores, that there seems to be specific ways to open cars (so different cars, different difficulties?), the variety of activities, and the pnjs that seem to remember you, etc.
I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, but now I think it just might
As someone who finds Rockstar gameplay mid, deep down want GTA6 fail and Rockstar turn into engine company like unreal. I know big part of the formula is $$$ but there's so much neat stuff in Rockstar games that AAA hasn't gotten close to in 10 years and I sense won't.
I know that's the likely timeline. My hope is that because consoles today look a lot more like PCs than they did in 2013 (or earlier during development), that it might be sooner, plus from leaks we know that development appears to mostly be happening on PC (I mean for real builds not just engine tools and cross-compiling).
But I realise that's just hope. It's probably also about business priorities and PC is just not a huge market.
Right now AI has trouble maintaining coherence over a few paragraphs of text. How long will it be before it is capable of maintaining coherence over something the size of a GTA game? And how much money will that cost?
Where people got this billions cost from? I doubt that they spent that much in GTA VI. RDR2 gave the base for GTA VI (engine and things like that), so I just find really odd they would spend 2 billions on the rest
They've themselves said they've at least doubled in size since RDR2 for this game, with a studio, for example, SOLELY dedicated to random crowd NPCs systems(!)
With the average Sony game with a fraction of this game's features costing upwards of 400mill, don't be so sure this behemoth didn't hit the 1.5 to 2 bill mark. Paying a growing number of devs, testers, plus insane amounts of marketing push for over a decade adds up more than you may think.
Other less complex recent AAA games cost 300-500 million, this game is easily between 1 and 2 billion, specially if you include marketing.
And just GTA Online is making 10 million USD every week.
The game screams money just looking at the sheer density of the city/map and the level of detail. There’s simply nothing quite like this, as usual with Rockstar.
Comments
It looks like Rockstar have nailed a solid 2026 update to previous releases, everything looks great. But is that enough? It should be, but given the billions spent on development I think there's an expectation of more.
It also looks like they've kept the art and writing fresh for 2026. GTAV feels dated at this point, no criticism of course, and I was concerned that they would fail to modernise into a world that is quite different now than 13 years ago, but it seems they've likely succeeded at that.
I'm looking forward to playing, eventually, when it comes out on desktop. But is this the game of a generation that justifies buying a console? I'm not sure.
For sure its enough. We haven't had a GTA game for a decade.
There was some interview with the Skyrim people who didn't want to do the next skyrim because of the success of Skyrim. Lets be honest, just make another Skyrim a little bit better here, a little bit better there, new stores done.
A game is better than no game especially after that much time
What do you mean by this? In what way has the world changed that you thought they might fail to capture?
I think it's mostly about the characters. GTAV was, in my opinion, much lighter-hearted than this is looking. Trevor was a hoot, Michael's marital problems were made light of, even Franklin as probably the most serious character still had plenty of quite direct comedy written around him.
I'm not sure that would go down well in 2026. The redneck thing feels tired, the public narrative of wealth inequality would likely make Michael feel out of touch, and much of the audience would have identified with Franklin but he doesn't really have the struggles that today's Millennials and Gen-Z have.
These two characters seem more realistic in that sense. Less direct comedy (although I still see that there's the iconic GTA parody in places), a couple who are probably going to be much more relatable even if they're criminals, and a standing in society that is more relatable.
It's not that the comedy wouldn't land, the parody/satire is important and it looks like it's still there, it's more that I think V depended on some stereotypes that are long gone, or that society recognises differently now.
I don’t play games to find people I relate to. I play games to become a character for a period of time in the game. Rich, poor, redneck… it doesn’t really matter. They can all be interesting and engaging characters to take on if the game is written well and fun to play.
I think this a mistake a lot of modern game companies are making. They think people want to be represented, when what most people want is an escape. I want to do things in a game that I would never be able to do in real life. That’s half the fun.
I also think the venn diagram of people offended by stereotypes and those who play GTA barely overlap. They may be completely separate circles. The people who will complain about the game were never going to buy it, so Rockstar shouldn’t care about what they have to say. Make the game for the customers, not the activists and critics.
I agree so much on this.
Let's say I'm caucasian male grown up in poor ex-USSR shithole struggling through immigration, changing countries and losing social circle multiple times along the way and struggling with loneliness, etc.
Then the least I want to do is to play game as migrant from Eastern Europe. Because if the character and their story is accurate and representive then I just be bored from it. And if it's inaccurate then it's just bad story telling.
Hey SSX, its your cousin Niko, let’s go bowling.
Instantly removed potential 0.05% of players
Yeah, but if you do game with characters "representing" your actual audience you'll lose way more people.
A lot of gamers play games because they let them experience something they dont have in their real life. Not to roleplay their real self.
I The Office, Dwight made a version of himself in Second Life that was the same as his real life. The whole idea that someone would want to experience their actual life in game form was the joke.
I see your point, and maybe I'm over indexing on this or not describing it well.
I don't see myself in either of these characters, but I do see them as representative of society, whereas I don't see the GTAV characters as representative of society. However, I think I did when I first played GTAV the year it came out.
The last game I played was James Bond First Light – and that's for the escapism you describe, I got to "be" James Bond, great. But in the same way, the game and story felt relevant today, with aspects being believable in 2026, which is a stark comparison to how watching Thunderball recently made me feel – that was jarring and much harder to "escape" into because of how out of touch it was (obviously understandably so).
I get what you are saying, I however just don't agree. GTA has it roots in a story about the criminal world in a version of a US city with a clash of many subcultures within it.
I don't see at what time they tried to cater to teens, outside the parodying themes of that generation which they fit perfectly. I saw that every installment representative of a criminal from one of these cultures to top of the criminal food chain. Be it the Scar Face parody of Vice City, Gang culture of San Andreas, the Immegrant story of the 4th or the trio they went for with the 5 with the LA story melting pot.
As a none-american it perfectly represented the characters and views of over the top depictions of the movie version of these places.
I think this is the crux of my point actually – these are all stories that were more relevant at the times they were released. GTAV seems to be more down to earth, and modernised the stereotypes that it's poking fun at.
Gangsters don't resonate right now (in my opinion), immigration is viewed very differently, wealth inequality is viewed differently.
Maybe we disagree a little here – also not American, but where I feel that GTAV was more of that over the top depiction of the movie version, I'm getting a different vibe from GTAVI, something a little closer to the real America we see today.
It seems like they are adding a lot of references to viral videos and news clips into the game. I’m an American, and while these things happened, they are all exceptional events, that’s why they made the news and went viral. Day-to-day, these over the top things aren’t things most people see all the time. The game seems like it’s going to take the “Florida Man” stereotype and turn it up to 11… as a general vibe. I don’t know that we saw enough to get a good read on the main characters, at least I haven’t.
I think it’s easy to get a skewed perspective of what real America is like from the news or bodycam footage… but it is entertaining, which will hopefully make for a good game.
I mostly play games that have good gameplay mechanics, be it fast action games, strategy or racing sims. There are very few games that can even get close to movies regarding characters and story, so I don't bother. That includes GTA with the possible exception of part IV.
Bioshock Infinite, for example, doesn't do it for me. It's a pretty bad shooter and the story is not as good as its authors think it is. The Witcher 3 doesn't do much for me, but I will try again after the recent free update - supposedly it's got improved combat.
The only game with not great mechanics that I like so far is Mass Effect. I'm impressed by the characters that feel like real-actual people and the varying environments that all feel true to life, all following the logic of their incentives and resembling their parallels in the real world. For example, the free trade moon(?) feels like something between Switzerland (or Singapore) and an office skyscraper, but with a little more crime and corruption - the local government just wants business to run smoothly and is willing to overlook some plausibly deniable sins of good customers. I have never seen anything like it in a game.
What are some games in various genres that you consider to have good gameplay mechanics? For me, I'd have to say Resident Evil 4 (original, haven't played the new one yet), Smash Bros. Ultimate, Rocket League, and, weirdly, Pikmin 3's mission mode.
Definitely Rocket League, the new Doom games (upgrades and glory kills are out of place though), Brutal Doom, racing sims like Dirt Rally and Assetto Corsa - difficult as heck but lowering expectations kinda works, the Half-Lifes, Hollow Knight has strong mechanics (I like the atmosphere but not the messy backstory), Command & Conquer 1 (far and away my all-time favorite for style, great units too, AI is trash), XCOM though the pod mechanics are a major blunder, the suspense and problem solving in Splinter Cell is nice (kinda clunky controls but movement is supposed to be difficult), Broforce has silly and satisfying mechanics, X-Wing and TIE Fighter (again)...
I recently got the remake of Resident Evil 1 and oh boy, the clunkiness of just about everything is off the charts just like I remember from a friend's PS1. I did want to like it, but somehow, Japanese games with a serious tone never seem to do it for me.
Oh yeah Half Life for sure! It's been so long since I played them.
I never tried Command and Conquer, I should give it a spin. Thanks for the list!
My favorite was the fancy nightclub called "Effluvia", a fancy word for "stinks like sewage".
Indeed, and likely playing on its similarity to "affluence".
Effluenza
The gaming world, which is what I presume they meant, is much different today. The days of clunky gunplay and insta-failing a mission for going 10 feet out of the correct path are long gone and would be tiresome for most gamers.
Absolutely, I replayed some of GTAV is ~2018 it already felt a bit clunky in that respect.
I think some of this is technological, but much of it is style. There are likely limitations that forced some of those issues back in 2013, but I think it's more down to game design practices. It doesn't take a lot of tech to give you another 10 feet of leeway and trigger a sound bite with a snarky comment from another character.
Wait till you replay the earlier games. I bought the definitive edition trilogy in a sale, only just started playing thru them. Decided to skip GTA III completely after seeing the reviews and lack of unofficial patches. Vice City feels much more playable after adding a bunch of patches, but unfortunately it doesn't fix the clunkyness and difficulty of the missions. I'm only like 7 or 8 missions in and feel like quitting, having to retry several missions multiple times. Especially that RC helicopter mission, I've no idea how I even managed to complete that (took like 6 retries). But I'll somehow try and chug thru it.
Hopefully San Andreas is lot better (and given the number of mods available for it, it feels like it would be).
The RC Helicopter mission was already frustrating back when the game came out, I vividly remember that mission
Let's not kid ourselves that either of those things is going to be any different in GTA 6.
Just from the video you can gather that there's much more than just a visual upgrade. The fact that you can apparently just rob random stores, that there seems to be specific ways to open cars (so different cars, different difficulties?), the variety of activities, and the pnjs that seem to remember you, etc. I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, but now I think it just might
As someone who finds Rockstar gameplay mid, deep down want GTA6 fail and Rockstar turn into engine company like unreal. I know big part of the formula is $$$ but there's so much neat stuff in Rockstar games that AAA hasn't gotten close to in 10 years and I sense won't.
It will likely be 1-2 years after release for the PC version to become available, judging from previous iterations.
I know that's the likely timeline. My hope is that because consoles today look a lot more like PCs than they did in 2013 (or earlier during development), that it might be sooner, plus from leaks we know that development appears to mostly be happening on PC (I mean for real builds not just engine tools and cross-compiling).
But I realise that's just hope. It's probably also about business priorities and PC is just not a huge market.
I wonder how much GTA 7 will cost to make, and how long…
This is the last GTA before the AI revolution, I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday.
Right now AI has trouble maintaining coherence over a few paragraphs of text. How long will it be before it is capable of maintaining coherence over something the size of a GTA game? And how much money will that cost?
Where people got this billions cost from? I doubt that they spent that much in GTA VI. RDR2 gave the base for GTA VI (engine and things like that), so I just find really odd they would spend 2 billions on the rest
They've themselves said they've at least doubled in size since RDR2 for this game, with a studio, for example, SOLELY dedicated to random crowd NPCs systems(!) With the average Sony game with a fraction of this game's features costing upwards of 400mill, don't be so sure this behemoth didn't hit the 1.5 to 2 bill mark. Paying a growing number of devs, testers, plus insane amounts of marketing push for over a decade adds up more than you may think.
Other less complex recent AAA games cost 300-500 million, this game is easily between 1 and 2 billion, specially if you include marketing.
And just GTA Online is making 10 million USD every week.
The game screams money just looking at the sheer density of the city/map and the level of detail. There’s simply nothing quite like this, as usual with Rockstar.
It runs 30fps maximum on consoles.