Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look [video] | Hacker News Reader

Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look [video]

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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.

> It should be, but given the billions spent on development

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?

>I was concerned that they would fail to modernise into a world that is quite different now than 13 years ago

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 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 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.

> there's the iconic GTA parody in places

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

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!

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

> 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.

Let's not kid ourselves that either of those things is going to be any different in GTA 6.

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.

It runs 30fps maximum on consoles.

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

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

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.

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 looks great. I'm conventionally a critic of the pursuit of realism in games, particularly with faces, because of the uncanny valley, but the faces look great. They're not uncanny.

GTA VI is the biggest single entertainment property of all time and we've waited a dog's age for it to drop. It appears the level of polish and attention to detail throughout is unprecedented.

After GTA V the franchise was feeling played out for me. I thought I had decided I wasn't going to buy a console just so I can experience GTA VI, but my mind it seems is changing. It looks banger. It looks like it really does have the power to elevate the whole industry.

TBH life taught me to wait until after release so that we know if it's actually good or the hype wasn't worth it. For all the good work done in GTA V it just sucks IMO. You can see the 180° flip between GTA SA "do whatever you want to pass the mission" and TBoGT "you get a checkmark if you do the mission exactly as designed".

Either way, I don't care about the console release, I'm waiting for the PC release. And I'm also waiting for Witcher 4. If GTA VI is good, then I guess it'll will be worth it to buy a new PC just to be able to play these games on high settings 4k, despite the anus-watering prices.

Old guy here. Perhaps escape (escapism) is something I look for in games. To that end, the GTA series just leaves me scratching my head. What a bleak world they deliver.

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I really like their city reconstructions, and they add a lot to do, but I could certainly do without the yet-again-rising-through-the-criminal-ranks storyline.

When I was 13, these games were delightfully naughty and super exciting. But with age comes empathy, and it just doesn’t feel good anymore to rob and kill randos in a virtual world. I see enough of that shit on the news.

Same reason I probably can’t rewatch Clockwork Orange despite loving it as a teen. Crime, murder, and rape aren’t just abstract concepts anymore.

(Thankfully, there are plenty of games that don’t wallow in darkness. And don’t take 1000 hours to beat!)

So the first and perhaps only experience I had with GTA was in 1999. A friend in the goth-industrial-club scene was having a birthday party, and invites me out to her apartment in Phoenix. There are plenty of people at the party, late into the night. We sample rare bottles of lambic ale and enjoy the goth vibes. I linger for far too long. I suppose some of us crash out and sleep late into the next morning.

So there is a kid playing GTA on our hostess's Playstation. He's a stranger to me, and quite a bit younger. I was about 27 years old already. It might've been GTA I or the sequel; I don't know: I didn't play it anyway. But I am kind of thrilled to see it in action and curious to know how the gameplay goes, so I am sitting next to him and watching, and meanwhile our hostess is in the kitchen, or cleaning up, or whatever. And the kid plays half-heartedly, until he perceives us to be alone together, and he turns around on the sofa and kisses me on the mouth for no particular reason.

Obviously I am repulsed, and that is an unwelcome sort of gesture, and so I figure out how to trap him outside on the balcony, and I lock the door behind him. Then I seek out our hostess, and I tell her what had happened. And she cracks up laughing; it is so funny to her (it's funny to me, 27 years later for sure.) And she says I can exit gracefully, and she will take care of this guy after I'm gone.

So that is my story about Grand Theft Auto. Parents, don't let your kids play GTA because they may try some shit on their friends or party guests without consent. Try Stardew Valley instead.

Sold my 4090 last year, cant wait to play this in 10 years. Did they say what they're playing it on in the video? Is that ps5?

Yep PS5. But apparently for PS5 Pro as well, it will be capped at 30fps (!).

This is disappointing. I bought a PS5 Pro mostly for this game. I didn’t want to make the trade off between graphics and frame rate, which seemed to be what the base PS5 often makes people do (from what I read).

I guess we can hope for a future update once they figure out how to optimize more.

If you have a jailbroken PS5, you can get FPS patches that unlock the framerate for many games. RDR2 runs smoothly at 60FPS in 1080p with the patch [1]. I suspect that such patches will be released for GTA6 as well soon after release

1. https://youtu.be/QACSZ2S5HLo?t=232

Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed as well. Based on what I've read on various forums, I'm not holding my breath for any future updates that will unlock higher fps given CPU is already constrained, and PS5 Pro's benefits over the PS5 is GPU.

I guess it will be a typical Rockstar play of buying the PS6 version to get 60fps.

Why did you sell the 4090?

To pay off the mortgage.

I'm traveling in a rv and only generate 600w of solar max in the best conditions a few hours a day, the 4090 itself took 500w. For comparison sake, my 24v rooftop air conditioner takes between 350-1200w and my oven takes 1200-2000w, my fridge takes under 100w. I have 12kw total battery capacity (and I'm never at 100%). This of course isn't including all my lights, fridge, etc. And I don't run anything as much as my computer.

I game on my m1 max macbook pro now which is shockingly good at ~100wh.

I tried to make it make sense but it just doesnt. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMRWCkjBSoFUpIKFbcPhds5... I have enough battery charging frustrations with the few things I do run daily.

Should've kept the GPU even if unused rather than sold it for whenever you're done traveling as they are much higher in price now if you wanted to re-buy, such as for local LLM usage.

I knew I shouldn't have responded to your stupid question. I didn't ask for your input.

Sorry if it came off that way, I was just confused why anyone would sell such an item, especially with the market as it is today, if they weren't desperate for money or something which you didn't seem to imply you were.

It didn't "came off that way". You literally decided to speak up about something that has nothing to do with you.

It's a discussion forum, if you don't like discussing then don't comment. No one needs your permission to comment on your posts.

I don't disagree, but no one forces you to be a jerk. Don't act surprised when you receive a pushback for that.

GeForce Now sub for a year can be had for 150 USD. The most premium one giving you access to their newest gear.

I hate subscription economy as much as the next guy but this is a very good deal in current environment.

No GTA game is on GeforceNow

GeForce Now allows you to play any game you own on steam, am I mistaken that you can play GTA V and IV and San Andreas (the horrible remake) this way?

"almost" any game, and not just Steam, but Xbox too.

No. Only games the publishers allow.

No you cannot, publishers sued Nvidia a while ago claiming it was unauthorized (even though it wasn't, it's just a cloud computer) so now Nvidia only allows specific games to be played. However other cloud GPU providers allow you to run Windows and Steam to play whatever game you want.

Can't imagine they won't try to get it working

I found this link today, 30fps and they're unsure if 60fps will ever be a thing for the ps5 https://kotaku.com/gta-6-will-be-30fps-at-launch-rockstar-re...

I'm a bit skeptic of the game because it's pushing higher prices in the industry while being totally unjustified.

But I'm not surprised at all? Like, all of these things the game does were/are entirely possible within the FiveM scripting API. Take a look at GTA RP servers like NoPixel, they've been pushing the limits so hard on a 13 year old game.

And the same API exists for Red Dead 2, which has a visual upgrade over the engine used for GTA V.

I don't know, I guess I'm expecting something to be wrong since it's very frequent and common nowadays for AAA games to ship broken and incomplete.

I hope I'm wrong, though.

If there's a game that can push higher prices, it's GTA VI. I'm not a fan of the last game, but I never expected a game to be one of the most anticipated entertainment products ever

GTA used to be colorful, fun, funny, and cinematic.

GTA VI seems to be missing that entirely. The whole world seems far too bleak and close to life (in a bad way).

This isn’t the GTA I used to know and love.

Sad to say this will be the first GTA game I’ll miss out on (I’ve played all of them, even GTA London 1969, GTA Advance, and Chinatown Wars).

I don’t know who’s running the show at these big game companies, but they sure know how to ruin games that used to be fun. Assassins Creed, Halo, and now GTA.

I think that's something younger players are looking for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, I - as an old chap - am still going to have fun playing!

Insane how a billion dollar game runs like garbage. Can't even reach 60FPS. What did they do for 13 years and all that money? Such an overhyped game.

You know, I would also love to see 60fps, but let's wait till the premiere, and then - just show me the list of games with that level of details and rich world running 60fps on machines like xbox or ps5.

It looks very good but two "bad guys suddenly crash the party" missions in one video?

There's the one at the end - I'm guessing the other is the police raid on the drug lab at the beginning? Personally I wouldn't have put them in the same bucket.

The second one is pretty much directly a Die Hard parody – new building, party, execs off doing drugs, dead guy in the lift. I'm looking forward to that one, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot more in there.

Most combat missions are bad guys crashing somewhere. It can be hired killers at a party, cops at a failed robbery, rival gang in a setup or a home invasion. It's just how games and action movies work. And it shows off shooting mechanics without revealing too much about the story.

Amazing they run this with a base ps5 from 2020.

I was honestly surprised, I was really expecting that it was at least from a ps5 pro. Even the 30fps did not shock me

Well I for one sold my kids to get the Netflix subscription. And my wife is dead. idk how

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