GTA 6 Should Stray Far Away From Being A Real-Life Simulator

The world can be greedy at times. Too greedy I’d say. I’ve lost count of the number of people trying to endorse their opinion of how GTA 6 — the upcoming iteration in the mega-hit GTA franchise — needs to feature this, include that, encompass “x” gameplay feature; so forth, and whatnot. I mean, it’s pretty wild out there for GTA fans, and lately, one particular notion has been popping up on my feed more times than I’d like to admit. 

And that’s GTA 6 being a real-life simulator. From vehicles breaking down and becoming completely unusable from small-scale crashes to having to drink water and eat food to survive, I don’t think this particular concept is going to work well in our favor at the end of the day, and I’ve got a few thoughts in mind to share about that. 

What People Expect From GTA 6

Oh, don’t get me started about this. People are really picturing GTA 6 to be this messiah that’s going to save the gaming industry from a major lack of innovation. Let me tell you this: That’s not going to be the case.

GTA 6, no matter how grand in its glory, will push many boundaries — I’m sure — but people folks genuinely have to set their expectations right. Players are out on forums, talking about how they want to play as a homeless person in the game with no accessibility to their name whatsoever. It’s pretty crazy if you lean into it all really.

It also bears noticing here that a former Rockstar developer has already warned fans not to expect anything extremely groundbreaking from GTA 6. Certain technological gaps have to be kept in mind as you go about expecting something otherworldly from a mere video game product. 

Like, the difference between PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 was enormous, and PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 is not that not that big, right? So you don’t really have that technology jump to make things different and better,” says Obbe Vermeij, an ex-Rockstar dev.

He continues, “Because you can never have that jump. The jump from GTA 2 to GTA 3 was big, and from San Andreas to GTA 4 was very big. I don’t think we can ever see a jump like that again.” 

That being said, I know for a fact that GTA 6 will blow everything out of the water in its own way and redefine what we know of the open-world genre. Even more so, things will stay that way for the years to come, unless Rockstar further innovates its craft, of course.  

Above Everything Else, GTA 6 Needs To Balance Realism And Fun

Being able to enter most buildings and improved driving physics as compared to GTA 5 aside, the single biggest challenge that GTA 6 has to accomplish is that it needs to strike a good balance between realism and fun, period. If there’s any game developer in the industry that we can trust to innovate and improve beyond what we already know, it’s Rockstar—me and you both know that. 

Rockstar’s quality and consistency in the open-world genre are simply unmatched, and with GTA 6, it’s unlikely that the US-based developer is going to disappoint. However, I just fear that while pursuing hyperrealism in an attempt to break past the boundaries of the open-world domain’s norm, Rockstar ends up overcomplicating things, taking the fun out of the game itself.

Stop trying to make gta 6 a real life simulator
byu/yourtypicalnoobl inGTA6

Mods Are Always A Free Choice 

The silver lining for those expecting a bit too much from GTA 6 is that modders are never going to stop squeezing every last ounce of life out of the game, and hence, that’s where your safe haven is if you associate overly grand expectations from it. The dedicated GTA 5 page on NexusMods is home to a vast array of modifications that can alter your Grand Theft Auto experience. 

With GTA 6, I’m sure people will follow suit, but we have some ways to go before there’s a PC release of GTA 6. That is to say, Rockstar made it quite clear both in GTA 6’s first trailer and the official website for the game that it’s coming out on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 in 2025, with no mention of PC in sight. 

If we look at Rockstar’s past record, GTA 5 came out on PC 2 years after its initial launch for consoles. For Red Dead Redemption, however, the gap was only of 1 year. 

Whenever it comes out, me, and probably millions of other fans want GTA 6 to be balanced and fun—hyperrealism can go take a hike.