The whole world is going feral as Grand Theft Auto 6's November release date approaches, desperate for even the tiniest of details. Meanwhile Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, is a man who has had to keep all those details secret for a very long time.
Finally, when I sat down in his office in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh for an exclusive IGN interview, he was able to spill some of those GTA 6 secrets for the very first time.
"I think the challenge for us on this game is the same as it is on any new game for us,” says Nelson. “How do we evolve and build upon the good things we have done before in all the ways these things need to evolve, but at the same time ensure that the game still has everything that made the previous games in this series resonate with people?"
The answer seems to be, for a large (if not the most) part, in creating a whole world that players can spend meaningful time in, engaging in fulfilling activities that go beyond simply grinding sidequests for cash or trying to boost stats to power through the main story. The setting of Leonida is begging to be explored and experienced by the player.
"The game is so big, I don’t know that there’s anybody on the team that knows all of it," he says.
As we're talking, Nelson is multitasking, playing through a slice of Grand Theft Auto 6 that will go on to perfectly exemplify his point. It's dense with NPCs, traffic weaving through the streets, and opportunities for mayhem at every turn. And those people on the sidewalks? They're ready to cause all sorts of chaos.
"While we pushed interaction with NPCs as far as we could for Red Dead Redemption 2, with this game we are taking it much further,” he explains. "The team has done an incredible job to create all of this crazy dialogue, and you can stand there and listen to them, but we’ve tried to find a balance where if you stand too close to a group, they should notice that you're eavesdropping."
"So, if you stand there and try to listen to the whole thing, they'll often turn around, notice you and go, ‘Oh hey, can I help you?’ Or if you follow people for too long and too close so that they can hear you, they’ll go, ‘Oh, hey.’ Then they may be aggressive, or they may just want to get away from you. When we first started these ideas back on Red Dead Redemption 2, we thought if we could get it working there in a more sparsely populated world, we imagined what it might feel like at scale in a modern world. So it was one of the scary but very worthwhile and fun challenges we took on with this game."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-6-rob-nelson-interview-rockstar-north
