With GTA 6, Rockstar couldn't "just trot out something" fans would already expect

GTA 6 is shaping up to be a monumental release, from the sheer scale of its world to how it's expected to be the biggest game launch of all time. But those sky-high expectations were something Rockstar Games developers were very aware of during production.

Speaking exclusively to Edge Magazine about the upcoming blockbuster, long-time art director and one of GTA 6's lead developers Aaron Garbut explained that the studio couldn't simply put out a game that met fan expectations. After over a decade of waiting and a reportedly hefty budget, Rockstar needed to go above and beyond.

"We can't just trot out something that's what people might expect, or that was the easy thing to do," Garbut says of the project. "We've not compromised on the scale, the detail, the interactivity, the story, the open-world."

To really drive the point home, Garbut used an equally excessive metaphor: "I feel like we've built a pyramid on Everest."

That's apparent from everything we've learned about GTA 6 thus far. The open-world game is almost the same size as many of Rockstar's previous games combined, but the true ambition lies in the crime epic's smaller details. Case in point: GTA 6 has a full on sweat system that makes Jason and Lucia perspire based on how hard they dance, there's about 600,000 unique animations, and Rockstar built an entire writing team dedicated solely to background NPCs. Essentially, it's a game so big that no one single person at Rockstar knows everything about GTA 6.

GTA 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

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