A recent Bloomberg report has sparked speculation among some players that GTA 6 could be unfinished just weeks before launch. However, comments about Rockstar continuing to make changes to the game have been taken out of context. Here is what the developer actually said about the release of Grand Theft Auto VI.
Rockstar’s GTA 6 Development Comments explained
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier recently published an extensive report about the making of GTA 6. However, a rumor that Grand Theft Auto VI was not completed yet only weeks before launch spread online, after some players took several quotes from the Bloomberg piece out of context.
In the report, Rockstar’s Phil Hooker explained that the studio has continued making changes to the game even months before launch: “The game’s never completely settled. We never have an exact blueprint. Even within the last few months, we’ve changed things.”
The quote doesn’t say that GTA 6 as a whole is unfinished weeks before release. It also doesn’t suggest that Rockstar plans to ship Grand Theft Auto VI with missing features or significant compromises.
The quote was largely talking about Grand Theft Auto VI being so ambitious on a technical level, that they continue to make refinements due to just how complex the game is. It was also explaining why the game took so long to get made.
Rockstar’s GTA 6 Comments Need More Context
One detail being overlooked is that Schreier visited Rockstar North in September. That places the conversation months before the game’s late November launch, rather than in the final days before release.
The wording matters here, too. Hooker said the team had changed things “within the last few months.” That doesn’t establish how significant those changes were or suggest that major features still needed to be completed. It also doesn’t give us context what build they were on, or when exactly those changes were made.
The other aspect I think that should be considered, is the context with which the quote was given. In their conversation with Jason Schreier, Rockstar were talking about just how complex GTA 6 is on a technical level. To demonstrated this, here is an excerpt from Schreier and Rockstar describing how a night club works in GTA 6:
“Designing a club for a typical video game might mean generating a few nonplayable characters in different-colored shirts, says top artist Aaron Garbut. In GTA VI, though, it means animating and scripting each individual patron, creating drinks, adding music, crafting lighting, matching the music to that lighting and composing all the other “layers and layers and layers of detail” that make a virtual club feel as authentic as possible.”
That example helps explain the level of detail Rockstar is working towards with GTA 6 and gives a little more context about the changes they continue to make given how complex the game’s systems are. All this to say, panic around Grand Theft Auto VI being “incomplete” seem to largely be unwarranted and started from a misunderstanding of Jason Schreier’s excellent report on the development of the game.
The post No, Rockstar Didn’t Say GTA 6 Is Unfinished Weeks Before Launch appeared first on VICE.
