Bruce Straley, the Naughty Dog veteran who worked on the Jak, Uncharted, and The Last of Us franchises before leaving to start his own studio, is asking his followers why they are excited for GTA 6.
Posting on social media, Straley said he’s asking this question out of genuine curiosity, and not simply to stir the pot. “No shade, just curious,” he said.
Straley said he’s unsure if he’s interested in playing GTA 6, so he was asking followers to share the reasons why they are excited for Rockstar’s next big game.
“What do you hope is new in GTA 6 you haven’t already experienced in its predecessors? OR simply, Why are you gonna play GTA 6? Because I don’t know if I’m interested & I’m not sure if I’m an outlier,” he said.
Straley ended his post by reminding people that he worked in “the sausage factory a long time,” which is likely a reference to Naughty Dog.
Straley got a lot of responses to his post. Someone said they are looking forward to whatever Rockstar is cooking up in terms of new dynamic weather events, and Straley said he’s excited about the possibilities here.
“Using that crazy [Red Dead Redemption 2] weather tech to create dynamic events sounds sick. I can’t imagine that would be their priority at all, but that got me excited! Someone AAA should do that,” he said. Someone else suggested a surfing system in GTA 6, and Straley said that would be fun.
Another person said if GTA 6 has nonlinear missions that offer the player multiple solutions to one task, that would be compelling. Straley concurred.
“I think this is why I’m not very interested (yet?). RD2 looked awesome–maybe the best, but the systems themselves weren’t very deep. I was disappointed everything boiled down to ‘follow the yellow line,'” he said.
Another person said “deep [gameplay] systems don’t have mass appeal,” and Rockstar makes mass market games. Straley pushed back, saying, “Having deeper systems would allow for more varieties of players to play in their own style. And it feels like the potential of ‘open world’ should come with a payoff of ‘open approaches’ to gameplay. Just my opinion,” he said.
Straley worked at Naughty from 1999 to 2017, and he co-directed The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 during his time there. As for why he left, he said 18 years was “a long time for anybody to be anywhere,” and he wanted to find “new problems to solve” and “new creative outlets.”
He said Naughty Dog was the “pinnacle” of game developers, going on to note that he didn’t want to join another AAA studio because he didn’t want to deal with “a whole different bureaucratic or cultural system.”
Straley is now heading up Wildflower Interactive, which is making a game called Coven of the Chicken Foot. Microsoft was set to publish the title before the company backed out. Wildflower found other funding to keep going.
As for GTA 6, Rockstar’s long-awaited open-world crime game launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Some are expecting further announcements this week tied to parent company Take-Two’s next earnings report on August 7.