Rockstar’s Looming Challenge with GTA 6 Gameplay

At this point in developer Rockstar Games’ lifespan, the success of GTA 6 on launch is a guarantee. The franchise is one of the biggest in gaming, and with GTA 5 the highest-grossing media of all time for a single release, hopeful fans will inevitably jump right in. While we can be completely confident about this initial success, what we’re not so comfortable predicting is the strength of GTA 6’s gameplay.

This might seem like a bold prediction, but looking back on the company’s behavior over the generations and that of gaming as a whole, there are some key indications that all might not be rosy. Sure, we hope to be wrong, but we’ve had our hopes about modern games dashed before, and sometimes it’s best to measure our expectations rather than buy into the hype.

AAA Gaming has Changed

Back in ye olde days before the mid-90s, most games were all about quick thrills. You’d load up, jump in, and get going with whatever action or adventure you sought. Though there were exceptions from the landscape of RPGs, this pattern saved players time and focused on the most important part of most games: the gameplay. This would eventually begin to shift, as more games opened themselves to more immersive stories instead of immediate action.

One of the earliest non-RPG games to stand out in this regard was Half-Life. Before this point, FPS games like Doom didn’t really bother setting the tone or story, you dropped in and kicked butt. Half-Life, on the other hand, began with a five-minute unskippable train ride to provide context and world building. It blew gamers of the time away, and it revolutionized video games in a way that would move beyond just FPS titles.

Adding to this drive toward more story-focussed experiences is an increasing emphasis on RPG mechanics. These are increasingly added to non-RPG titles as a way to increase game longevity and provide a sense of progression. This was the case with series like God of War, Doom, Resident Evil, Far Cry, and Tomb Raider. These also first appeared in GTA: San Andreas, which had the main character CJ build stats through repeating actions. Some people love this kind of expansion, while others hate it.

Consider, as a counterpoint, the type of gameplay that’s remained eternally classic by maintaining the jump-right-in spirit, such as online casinos. These games and the services they’re built on fully embrace speed and convenience, and in doing so they maintain enormous appeal to a large audience. The fastest payout casinos take this a step further by streamlining withdrawals to again cater to a fast pace. Websites like Wiz Slots and Lucky Spins combine these components with bonuses like deposit matches and free spins to enormously save on player time. Rockstar Games don’t take any directions like this, which brings us to the central point…

The Success of Rockstar’s Titles

Rockstar Games have rarely succeeded based on direct gameplay, instead, it’s what surrounds the gameplay that makes them fun. The GTA games up until GTA 4 never controlled well, and they didn’t feel great in your hands. Instead, they succeeded through the strength of open-world carnage, which was fantastic despite how the games felt, not because of it.

GTA 4 offered hilarious and detailed physics, which set it apart from anything else in an open world at the time. GTA 5 was best remembered for how it added massive online opportunities to the carnage, making it one of the most played games of all time, with 205 million copies sold. Nowadays, though, it does not even rank on the top ten most compelling games according to players on PS5, with the most hours put into title’s such as Rust and Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

Most recently, Red Dead Redemption 2 saw massive success through its graphics, acting, storytelling, and world building, but saw complaints about how it physically felt to play. Such an emphasis on realism resulted in the controls feeling sluggish and unresponsive, a black mark on what was otherwise one of the greatest games yet released.

What we Know

As we slowly approach the release of GTA 6 we already have some idea of what to expect. We know it’s going to be locked to 30 FPS on the current generation of consoles, which always feels worse in real-time than 60 FPS. We also know it’s going to be the result of more testing than any other game in Rockstar history, which gives us hope that the team can and will overcome any and all of our other concerns.

Ultimately, the real test of how well GTA 6 feels to play could be how well it evolves. GTA 5’s online wasn’t developed as the main selling point, yet it’s how the game has stayed popular since its first release back on the PS3 and Xbox 360 back in 2013. There’s no question GTA 6 will adopt online as its backbone, so we have at least a decade of asking ourselves about the gameplay before we can come to a final consensus.