GTA 6 is expected to make Vice City feel more alive in a number of ways, with more diversity spread across a higher density of NPCs, including greater differences in height and body shape. The change might not sound huge on its own, but it will no doubt go a long way in bringing GTA 6‘s world to life.
GTA 6 NPCs will have more height and body type variation than ever before, according to Rockstar. Previous Grand Theft Auto games had to be more careful about how different characters were built because NPCs with different proportions often needed to share animation sets. A 5-foot-6 character and a 6-foot-2 character, for example, could not always use the exact same animation without running into problems when interacting with other NPCs or the environment—all of which are problems that arose due to hardware and tech.
GTA 6’s NPCs Are Much More Unique
In a statement to IGN, Rockstar studio co-lead Rob Nelson explained that the solution in GTA 6 is a system that can retarget animations on the fly. Instead of requiring separate animation sets for every possible body type, the game can adjust an animation to better fit the individual NPC using it. This allows GTA 6‘s characters to have much greater differences in height and shape while still making their movements work properly, whether they are fighting, sitting in cars, or interacting with other characters. In Nelson’s words,
“NPCs have more height differentiation and body shape differentiation than ever before; we could never have had this variety before because different body types had to share animation sets…In this game, the team worked out a system where they now retarget those animations on the fly. Now we have a huge variety of heights and shapes, and it all works together because of what this team was able to pull off.”
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This is particularly important because NPCs are constantly interacting with GTA 6‘s open world of Vice City/Leonida, protagonists Jason and Lucia, and the people around them. A fight between two characters of different heights needs to account for their proportions, while getting into a vehicle or performing another environmental interaction creates similar problems. The Greet or Antagonize system from Red Dead 2 also returns, meaning that those differences can lead to different reactions. All in all, the new animation system allows GTA 6 to make those adjustments dynamically and create more unique NPC encounters.
The result is more than simply giving GTA 6 NPCs different builds; it impacts how those physical builds influence clothes and styles, as well as how face shapes and sizes influence hairstyles, expressions, and so forth. All of this is for the purpose of making GTA 6‘s world “the largest, deepest, most densely populated and complex world we have ever built for people to get lost in,” according to Nelson. This gives Rockstar more flexibility when creating the pedestrians, drivers, and other GTA 6 characters that fill Vice City, and it should help prevent large portions of the population from feeling like the same character model with minor changes.
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GTA 6 is taking advantage of newer console hardware to push its NPCs further, and body type variety is one of the more technical improvements happening behind the scenes. Players may simply notice that GTA 6 characters look more physically distinct as they explore Vice City; in other words, the new animation system is putting in overtime to make this the most unique Rockstar game world yet.
- Released
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November 19, 2026
- ESRB
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Rating Pending – Likely Mature 17+
