The exciting thing about Rockstar games is not that they have the most advanced technology behind them, the best stories, or the most avant-garde game systems. It’s the extraordinary amount of work the studio invests into the little details that make up its big worlds. Red Dead Redemption’s dynamic horse testicles (they shrink when it’s cold) are a frequently-cited example of that commitment to the particulars.
A pair of videos purported to be leaked GTA 6 gameplay surfaced online today, and if they are legit (the immediate copyright takedowns suggest as much), they seem to confirm that GTA 6 is more of the same. The short clips obviously can’t express the full scope of Rockstar’s designs—and we don’t know how recent they are—but there’s nothing in them to indicate that GTA 6 will reinvent the open-world crime spree.
In one, the player shoots some hoops as protagonist Jason. It’s cool that a basketball on the ground and a hoop nailed to the side of your house are not just static props. There’s a system in place for shooting accurately, and the game tracks the number of shots made.
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The other clip is a very typical GTA scene: The player makes a reckless turn in a car, gets clipped by a delivery truck, beats the delivery truck driver to death, and then goes on the run from incoming police.
It’s possible that Rockstar has an ace up its sleeve, some new innovation that it’s managed to keep a secret all these years. We still don’t know what’s going on with GTA Online or what the GTA roleplaying mod creators that Rockstar hired have been up to.
For now, though, my expectation is that GTA 6’s appeal will again be the scale and concentration of detail that only budgets and timelines like Rockstar’s can achieve: A bigger, higher-fidelity city with more possibilities, more consequences, more simulation.
That’s enough to make me curious, but I wonder how next week’s official GTA 6 gameplay reveal will be received if that’s the case. This is the most anticipated game of all time. If it isn’t transformative in some heretofore unknown way that is somehow both radically new and familiar to GTA fans, will it register as a disappointment to the “unprecedented” number of people who’ve already preordered it?
If you’ve peeped that leaked footage, what’s your take on it? And if you haven’t seen the footage, which has been removed on copyright grounds everywhere we’ve seen it, here are 15 details we noticed.