The Grand Theft Auto series is about, among other things, doing lots of crimes. Many of those crimes necessitate having a gun, and even shooting it at things. In the past, GTA has handled the necessity of guns and the difficulty inherent in having a character realistically carting a bunch around by allowing its protagonists’ handling of enormous weapons to go unchallenged, as long as the guns were not being used.
Well, no more. The state of Leonida is officially anti–open carry, because it sounds like in GTA 6 the authorities are going to get involved with individuals waving machine guns about in public places.
This comes from an interview with Rob Nelson, head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, published by Dazed today. The interview draws a comparison between GTA 5, which “satirized modern life with wacky characters, high-octane car chases and explosive gunfights,” and Red Dead Redemption 2, which “was hailed as one of the most realistic and immersive games to date, with a slower, more emotional tone suited to its storyline.” According to Nelson, GTA 6 sits squarely in the middle of those two things.
Dazed describes GTA 6 as having “all the weapons and supercars you’d expect” but with a more “grounded and reactive world” than before. For instance, in GTA 5, you could “traverse the city like a god”—you know, with guns out and all the confidence in the world. But now, “Walk down the street with a rifle, and the city will have something to say about it.”
What that sounds like is that people aren’t just going to let you stroll down Main Street with an assault rifle. In past GTAs, other people typically don’t react if you stand next to them or walk by them holding a gun, no matter how scary the gun looks. Even cops! They do react if you shoot or start to aim at or near them. But GTA 6 seems to include NPCs having realistic reactions to the display of weapons, something we’ve also seen hints of in past leaks where civilians reacted to a knife being carried around.
“We look back at our previous games with a critical eye and see where we want to evolve based on what we didn’t do as well as we would have liked to, either because we didn’t have the time, resources or technological capabilities, or in some cases things we just didn’t do as well or consider as fully as we could have,” said Nelson. “A lot of what we do is very iterative – we adjust a lot of things by feel based on what is working and what isn’t.”
It’s not clear if this means you’ll get arrested for having a pistol, or if there will just be a lot of people yelling and/or fleeing. It also isn’t super clear yet how this will work with player inventory: can you just not have guns on you? Do you need to carry them in a backpack or something? Either way, it seems likely to result in players having to behave a little differently when wandering about town, depending on whether they want to spark terror or just have a chill afternoon at the beach.