While the Grand Theft Auto franchise – as its name would imply – has always involved stealing vehicles, Rockstar Games has decided to make the activity slightly more challenging in Grand Theft Auto 6. In an interview with IGN, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson explained that this was in a bid to make the title more realistic.
The same realism also extends to the driving system in the game. “The streets in this game are narrower and more realistic in terms of scale. Which, in addition to all the density of the traffic on the roads, makes driving slightly more challenging and requires a bit of skill.”
As for stealing vehicles, Nelson spoke about wanting to encourage players to be more careful about which cars they steal. This, he said, was achieved by adding vehicles throughout the game that players aren’t equipped to steal. The vehicles will only become available after the player gets deeper into the story and gets access to more tools.
“We have put some layers of stratification into the vehicles. Previously, you could just press triangle to automatically hotwire and steal any vehicle that you wanted and take off. We felt like that left a lot of potential gameplay on the table in terms of progression and decision-making for players. So now, you start off the game, and there are certain parked cars that are not accessible to you until you get a bit further along with the story and you acquire certain tools to get into them, but you can always carjack any driver you see.”
“I think it gives all the vehicles more meaning, and you need to pay attention to what you’re doing a bit more.”
Interestingly, there will also be vehicles that are equipped with high-end anti-theft systems, like an “advanced GPS tracking system” that notifies the police when they are being stolen. To deal with this, players will eventually be able to get their hands on an app in their in-game smartphones, called Waink, that can check whether a scanned car has this technology or not. The app will also provide other details, like how much money can be made by selling it.
“For example, it tells me this car is locked, it’s got an alarm, and has no tracker. It also tells me how much it’s worth if I go to take it to a Pay n’ Spray or a specialty car fence, and how much it would cost for me to register it for myself. So, for example, this car needs a key cloner. This other car will just need a Slim Jim. So we’ve added a lot of fun little tools you need or mechanics you need to perform these formerly binary actions,” he explained.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 19th.
