There are dozens of mechanics, ideas, and quirks that are considered core to Grand Theft Auto’s identity. The wide variety of vehicles; a cast of oddball criminals; radio stations playing hit after hit after hit; toilet humour packed into every billboard, product brand, and TV ad. But there’s one thing arguably more foundational than all those ideas, something that the entire concept of GTA was built upon: car chases. Since the very beginning, the series’ central hook has been committing crimes and getting away with it. The “getting away” part has, more often than not, been literal – tearing through the city streets as cops do everything in their power to put you behind bars.
Those chases, inspired by cinema’s best getaways, are manifested by Grand Theft Auto’s wanted system – an escalating state of emergency that sees the city’s police force deploy fiercer and fiercer measures as the severity of your crimes increases. Originally represented by four pixelated police heads, it evolved into the trademark star system – a single star causing just a couple of beat cops to investigate a pedestrian collision or break up an unarmed assault, and racking up a full six stars summoning a battalion of militarised law enforcement with the goal of putting an end to your unstoppable murder spree. The system has changed and advanced with each new game, and that evolution does not stop with GTA 6.
After Grand Theft Auto 5 dropped the number of stars by one to both streamline the system and match the five in the title, GTA 6 sees the full six stars returned to the HUD for the first time since 2009’s Chinatown Wars. While it’s still much too early to know the nuanced criteria for triggering each of those stars, during our hands-off demo at Rockstar’s Edinburgh HQ we saw that there are several new factors involved beyond the individual wanted levels themselves.
“We have this heat system,” explains Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North. “[The police] know what I look like and what I’m wearing. [If I find] a pair of glasses – I'll put on this and this baseball hat. But they still know what I'm wearing, so I would need to go to a clothing store or call my personal vehicle, which has changes of outfits in the trunk.”
“Changing your hair will change your appearance,” he continues, “but the police will still know what you are wearing, so not great if I am standing out in the open.”
Sitting beneath the row of wanted stars on the HUD are a series of new red icons, each of which identifies the level of information the police have on you. So far, we’ve seen three:
It appears the system goes even deeper than that, though. “You can see with these little icons on-screen, the police know what we're driving,” says Nelson, “so we should just jump out the vehicle. They also know we're a couple. You could split up, and that will also help lower the police’s perception of you.”
These factors add new layers to GTA’s foundational wanted system. Naturally, they influence the way the police force’s artificial intelligence is able to track you through the state of Leonida.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-6-wanted-system-explained
